A Review Of A Kinda Halloween Lucha Underground Episode.

* This review was made at the recommendation of my friend @maybejom, who runs the Dragon Screw blog, check him out! He’s good people.

Lucha Underground is a promotion that I definitely have interesting feelings about. While I think I should maybe do a full rewatch of the company’s history (not any time soon mind you, with the IWA:MS project on the horizon) it’s definitely got some really fun stuff like being the promotion to give Marty “The Moth” Martinez, somebody who has brought some of my favorite TV heel work ever purely by being a disgusting freak ass pervert, a top guy position, alongside some incredible violent performances with matches like Penta vs. Vampiro and Dante Fox vs. Killshot. I’ll fully admit here that the fourth season was when I was pretty much tapped out of the company at the time of it airing, the only thing I really know about it was the reveal of Wade Barrett at the end of the season which never went anywhere due to the company straight up dying not that long after the end of the season, but since it’s Halloween I figured why not try and cram some themed reviews in at the end of the month? I’m mostly focusing on the two marquee matches on this episode because I’m gonna be honest, I skipped through a lot of the in-between stuff due to a lack of interest. Except for the Worldwide Underground segment, if only because I completely forgot that Johnny Mundo/Hennigan/TV/Elite/Blackcraft had a faction involving Taya Valkyrie, Jack Evans, and PJ Black/Justin Gabriel. Real neat stuff.

Mil Muertes (w/Catrina) vs. The Mack - Haunted House Steel Cage Match - ****

I’m not ashamed to admit that this was the whole entire reason why I wanted to watch this show to begin with, and goddamn this match didn’t disappoint me at all. The concept of a promotion such as Lucha Underground, which typically runs more “serious” match concepts like Grave Consequences or Hell of War, putting on a “Haunted House” match amuses me quite a lot to be quite honest. The whole presentation with the objects strewn across the ring and cage… shout outs to the tables with things like “SPOOKY!” written on them, very funny, and the pre-match graphic feels like something you’d see on either a late 80s/early 90s WCW Halloween Havoc, or a low-level American promotion like Smokey Mountain Wrestling. It’s out of place for sure, but it’s out of place in the best way because this is actually FUN. These two just beat the shit out of each other, man. Mack does a really good “babyface in peril” when he gets his shit kicked in by Mil, his selling throughout this match in general is genuinely really really good and it helps Muertes look like a genuine monster. Big fan of Muertes spearing Mack through the wall of the cage twice. I love cage spots like that where there’s a bit of struggle  instead of the wrestler going clean through a cage wall. Mack getting stabbed in the head was the right amount of goofy mixed with looking incredibly cool with, again, how he sells it and also how he looked after getting busted open. The best spot was quite obviously the finish with Muertes giving Mack a Flatliner off the top of the cage through the “Haunted” table, Muertes doing the Flatliner has always been great. Overall just an incredibly campy and fun steel cage match, Mack and Muertes show a ton of really good chemistry here to the point that I wish they actually had more matches. Go out of your way to watch this, honestly.

Pentagon Dark © vs. Cage - Last Man Or Machine Standing Match, Lucha Underground Championship - ***

This match was…. okay, I guess.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m coming off of watching the prior awesome campy Muertes/Mack match, or if it’s because a Brian Cage World Title Match™ really doesn’t move me all that much to begin with but there was nothing particularly all that great or horrible in this. Cage is just one of those guys who I honestly feel like is always stuck in the wrong era of wrestling, with the type of moveset and look he has he just SCREAMS late-stage WCW Power Plant graduate turned Natural Born Thrillers member but realistically there’s nothing he’s done to make himself stand out compared to other big men with good athletics. I LIKED what Cage does in the story for the match, being the unbreakable monster that Penta hasn’t broken, and, in turn, getting broken by the champ. Cage does also manage to pull off an actually decent looking suplex off the ropes through some tables on the outside… but that’s really about all I can say. It’s mostly a fine Penta carryjob, with the finishing stretch of Penta basically dominating with a Packaged Piledriver through some chairs, snapping both of Cage’s arms and then giving the stomp through a cinder block being pretty fun. The match went a little longer than I think it should have but that’s probably because of me not liking Cage all that much, if you shaved some time off this and gave it to Mack & Muertes (and also maybe made that the main event) I probably would’ve liked it a little more, but i’m not sure by how much.