BRM Reviews the 8/30/2017 Lucha Underground

[Big Red Machine]

DARIO VISITS MANTANZA- and tells him that he wants him to DESTROY REY MYSTERIO IN TWO WEEKS!

Ultima Lucha III with last an entire month, and it starts in just a few weeks.

SON OF MADNESS vs. MASCARITA SAGRADA- no rating, boring segment
Mascarita is wearing the colors of the motorcycle club, and Striker tells us that Son of Havoc made him a member. Son of Havoc left the club because he didn’t like being a member, right? So why would he make his pal Mascarita a member if he didn’t like being in it? Also, if he hasn’t been in the club this whole time, how can he make someone a member of a club he himself isn’t part of? And wouldn’t the president of the club (or at least the chapter) need to approve membership?
This was all, of course, a set-up for Son of Havoc to have to come out and save Mascarita Sagrada, but I felt that Mascarita deserved the ask-kicking that he got because he should have known not to wear the club’s colors, and especially when Son of Madness is around.
They brawled until Dario sent security out to break them up. I giggled when Dario told security to “stop this madness. And this havoc.” Dario then booked them in the main event in a match for one of the Aztec medallions. Also, the match will be a “Boyle Heights Biker Brawl.” I really didn’t like him giving it a stupid name. That’s such a lame, clichéd, “PRO WRESTLING” thing to do, and Dario feels like he should be above that.

ARGENIS vs. MARTY “THE MOTH” MARTINEZ (w/Mariposa)- 4/10
They keep telling me that Argenis is part of some famous Lucha family, but I don’t remember them ever mentioning that before, and they won’t give me any specifics, so I feel totally lost.
Argenis bled all over place. As Vampiro put it, “he’s not just bleeding. He’s pouring blood.” F*cking Matt Striker, on the other hand, said sh*t like “as the platelettes fall” and “plasma and hemoglobin everywhere.” I wish someone would make Striker bleed like this.
Striker would later say “we apologize for this graphic scene here.” Isn’t this supposed to be a f*king underground fight club?
Marty, who had ripped Argenis’ mask during the match, went after it after the match as well, and ripped it off. He then cut a creepy promo to Melissa, saying that he wants to win Fenix’s mask at Ultima Lucha III. Then Fenix showed up and took out both Marty and his sister and cut a promo telling Marty that he will face him at Ultima Lucha III in a Mask vs. Hair match. They haven’t actually ever established that Marty’s hair has any sort of special significance to him and on the one hand I’d think that a crazy person like Marty wouldn’t really care too much about losing it, but they can easily have him play up that he thinks that without his hair Melissa will never love him because he’ll be too ugly for her.

JOEY RYAN vs. SEXY STAR- DUD!
The mere sight of Sexy Star is infuriating me at the moment, so I’m going to mute the commentary so that Striker doesn’t say anything idiotic and blow me over the edge.
The match was very boring. The most entertaining part of it was Taya coming out with a pro-Sexy Star sign and I guess the gimmick was that she was mocking Sexy Star’s fans, although I wouldn’t really know because aside from those three plants in that match where she won the title (and they sure didn’t act in any way close to the way Taya was acting here- like I didn’t see Taya as parodying any specific behavior of theirs), I don’t think we’ve actually ever seen a Sexy Star fan.
Sexy Star attacked Taya on the outside. I’ll be nice and assume that Taya maybe said something to her, but Sexy Star actually has quite the history of unprovoked assaults on this show, so she really doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. What she did deserve is that kick in the face she got from Joey at the finish of this match. I realize that the kick was a work, but it was still satisfying seeing her get kicked in the face after what she did to Courtney Rush this past weekend.

(P.S. somebody later told me some of the sh*t Striker said during this match, and I’m glad I did mute it or else I might have punched several holes in my wall.)

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Joey tries to stick his non-euphemistic lollypop in Sexy Star’s mouth but Cortez Castro/Officer Ricky Reyes comes out and hits Joey from behind with a Kendo stick. This only served to infuriate me by reminding me just how f*cking dumb last week’s “Mask vs. Mask” match with Reyes, Sexy Star, and Joey was.

OFFICER RICKY REYES GOES TO SEE DARIO- he wants to arrest Dario for the murder of Mr. Cisqo but Dario points out to him that that that won’t do any good (because it hasn’t in the past) and instead offers him the chance for revenge on Joey Ryan in a some sort of weapons match with a silly name next week. Reyes accepts, emphasizing his point by taking the Kendo stick he had been brandishing and breaking it over his own knee.
Of particular interest here, though, was how Dario react to Reyes coming towards him with the Kendo stick: he grabbed the red bull statuette. There is, of course, an innocent enough explanation for this: it is the only thing around that Dario could use as a weapon if need be- and if the story he told Black Lotus is to be believed, he has used it this way in the past. But there are more interesting possibilities as well. The first is that Dario knows that this statuette is some sort of magically potent weapon, which would explain his general lack of fear or Reyes’ weapon- or that the red bull statuette is precious and Dario absolutely does not want it destroyed in someone’s fit of rage. My theory on that is that it perhaps contains part of his brother’s soul- whatever bit had to be removed to make room for the Aztec deity that supposedly inhabits him (as per a ritual performed by their father). Just my theory.

BOYLE HEIGHTS BIKER BRAWL FOR ONE OF THE SEVEN ANCIENT AZTEC MEDALLIONS: Son of Havoc vs. Son of Madness- 7.5/10
They had a pretty great weapons brawl, but I can’t escape the feeling that this feud really isn’t going anywhere. Don’t get me wrong: I can see where it logically goes next (Son of Madness attacks Son of Havoc during the Gift of the Gods Title match at Ultima Lucha)… but then we’re just back to square one again. It has really started to feel like there is too much going on for the writers to handle. It feels like has been months since we’ve seen any real advancement in the Dragon/Lucha Super Friends/Reptile Tribe angle, Famous B has been courting El Texano Jr. for months, the Rabbit Tribe still haven’t done sh*t, we never found out who was sending Sexy Star spiders, Ivelisse, Angelico, and Black Lotus have all disappeared without a trace, etc. Meanwhile, we’ve got this totally pointless Benjamin Cooke character upsetting the balance of the Worldwide Underground, who had been working perfectly up until this point, we had the total mess last week with Reyes, Joey, and Sexy Star, the Aztec Medallions (with them the Gift of the Gods Title) feel like total afterthoughts. The show feels like it has very much gotten away from the writers, and I’m quite worried that they won’t be able to fix it. Johnny Mundo’s threat to Dario about taking the title to another promotion feels so completely un-Lucha Underground that it makes me feel like the writers have given up on the things that made the show special. We almost never get backstory vignettes anymore (the Drago angle, SoM vs. SoH feud, and Crane/Catrina history all feel like stories that could really benefit from these), Dario seems more and more like a regular old wrestling authority figure who happens to be a really good actor rather than as the extremely dangerous, powerful, and cunning man of mystery he was in the beginning (which I think has been due to a lack of focus on the Matanza backstory and him not having anyone to play off of like he did with Black Lotus), and it feels like the writers have lost their grip on macro time management (meaning how to pace things within the season rather than time management within a show like ROH has major problems with). I know we’re coming off of a HUGE show last week, but there are only four weeks or whatever until Ultima Lucha III. My excitement level should be ramping up, but instead it is going down. That’s not good.


Anyway, Son of Havoc won the match and took back his colors. If he left the motorcycle club then why does he still care about wearing their colors?

A boring and disheartening show from Lucha Underground, despite the efforts of the two wrestlers in the main event.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Striker (when Mascarita Sagrada comes out wearing the club’s colors)- “It looks like someone put Han Solo in a dryer.”
Why, Striker? Because Mascarita is wearing a black vest and therefore he looks like Han Solo? Like no one else has ever worn a black vest before? I wouldn’t be doing this except that Striker has previously gone so far out of his way to try to prove his nerd credentials (he even once mentioned the Beyonder), so I feel I have the right to get upset when he says something that offends me as a nerd. And I’m sure any nerd worth his or her quatloos will agree with me that Striker deserves to be publically shamed for implying that Han Solo wears white pants and a mask like Mascarita Sagrada and not his black pants with red Corellian Blood Stripes on them. (And yes, I typed that whole paragraph without needing to look anything up, even the correct spellings of “quatloos” and “Corellian.” If you couldn’t have done so yourself, you should feel inadequate).

[cero2k]

ARGENIS vs. MARTY “THE MOTH” MARTINEZ (w/Mariposa)- 4/10
They keep telling me that Argenis is part of some famous Lucha family, but I don’t remember them ever mentioning that before, and they won’t give me any specifics, so I feel totally lost.

they used to mention it a lot when he started showing up. his family is Dr Karonte and Caristico (which i think they didn't want to mention since he's gone from AAA

[Big Red Machine]

ARGENIS vs. MARTY “THE MOTH” MARTINEZ (w/Mariposa)- 4/10
They keep telling me that Argenis is part of some famous Lucha family, but I don’t remember them ever mentioning that before, and they won’t give me any specifics, so I feel totally lost.

they used to mention it a lot when he started showing up. his family is Dr Karonte and Caristico (which i think they didn't want to mention since he's gone from AAA

Yeah, but that was years ago and they should know better. It absolutely infuriates me when announcers say things like everyone watching knows every piece of background info. One of the things in the ROH episode that broke me for ROH TV was the announcers constantly saying sh*t like "we know the tumultuous history between Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Hanson" and I was sitting there, thinking "I have no idea what you're talking about and I have seen every single episode of ROH TV and every single show and PPV that either of these men have been on!" It's just plain bad announcing.