Thursday, July 26, 2018

The Blog of the Gods: Gifts Abound

A Gift from the Gods?
Screengrab via LU on YouTube
The seven participants for the Gift of the Gods Championship were finalized last week, a show that I took the week off on, and that seven became six when Antonio Cueto decided that six was a luckier number than seven. The Mack threw out Mil Muertes after winning an impromptu battle royale, because wouldn't you? And that spot is where Lucha Underground picks up this week. Time to dive in!

So This Is What Cocaine Feels Like

So within a few seconds of Sammy Guevara looking for vengeance against "Savage" Jake Strong, it was the former Jack Swagger treating Guevara like he was a sack of potatoes in the loading dock of a Greek diner. Within a minute of that, Strong was using him as a bowling ball into chairs that doubled as pins. And not 30 seconds after that, Guevara was climbing up big ladders and doing moonsaults to the floor. I'm not sure the match lasted five minutes, but it was packed with all the killer they had. I've never done cocaine, but I imagine the effects are similar to just packing in everything you've got in a high-impact wrestling match into such little time. Such a headrush. Still, it wasn't just big spots for the sake of it. Guevara still had a receipt to give for getting attacked after their short-lived alliance, and Strong just swatted him away like a mayfly. Guevara's desire for reprisal was insignificant, at least for now. What this match set out to do was again reinforce that Strong was the Pentagón Dark of ankles. It really feels like the endgame is ankle taker vs. arm-breaker, but the Champ has both Cage and now Marty "The Moth" Martinez gunning for him (see later in the post). Still, it is a long season...

Speaking of taking legs, it's great to hear Famous B won't lose his leg. I'm sure it was all the nursing of Beautiful Brenda helping him along. Then again, the morbidity in me wanted to see B come back with some kind of janky prosthetic. Hey, Lucha Underground is proudly a B-movie of a wrestling promotion. What's more B-movie than bad fake prosthetics?

La Pizza de la Muerte

Pour a can of crushed San Marzanos out for my man Vinnie Massaro, as he was the latest sacrifice in the Matanza Cueto Invincibility Tour. It didn't help that Antonio Cueto came out and basically said he was earmarked for dismissal since he took over for his late son Dario. I think Massaro would rather have been fired than absorbed into the aether. Anyway, the least believable thing in that entire segment was Massaro acting like pineapple on pizza is an affront to God and nature. It's good. Maybe you heathens should open your palates a bit more. Anyway, Matanza showed that he wasn't all bad, as he exacted some justice on the pizza delivery guy for attempting to pick Massaro's pocket after he had been given Wrath of the Gods right on top of the damn pizza. You don't steal a man's money after he's been broken in half. Bad form!

Anyway, this was a second straight segment where a suspected big bad was just running in place. Soon, Matanza is going to run out of randos to eliminate. Is he gunning for Penta as well? Or will he be the chess piece in play to retrieve the Gauntlet of the Gods? Hopefully it's the latter, because the number of guys who are gonna have claims to the Lucha Underground Championship is growing by the week.

Three, Oh, It's a Magic Number

Antonio Cueto just couldn't stop tinkering with the Gift of the Gods title match. After eliminating Mil Muertes the week before, he came out to halve the field again in more immediate fashion. Two trios went at it with the winners going for the title in a triple threat match, almost like a compact version of a torneo cibernetico. Son of Havoc and Ivelisse Velez were placed together and tasked to pick their third, and they went with The Mack, obviously. The trios match was, as the kids say, a big mood, and Mack was the big star, as always. He's such a power pack, a big guy who moves better than so many spot guys, and he has swagger. It was on full display here, dropping dudes with double lariats and flying through the air with a fly-ass tope con hilo. It's a shame his team didn't win, because Mack should be someone's top Champion, right? Why not Lucha Underground?

The other guys were really good here too, obviously. This match had some creative spots, even one as simple as King Cuerno casually entering the ring to boot Velez in the posterior as she applied an octopus lock on El Dragon Azteca, Jr. At first, I didn't really understand the overall storytelling, but it was also my overt lust for The Temple to be as lawless a place as possible. Like, why did Muertes wait until after the match to appear and wreak havoc? Why didn't Killshot come down the stairs while the match was going on, to add some more tension to tie into ongoing narratives? But on reflection, maybe just because you can have fuckery going on all the time doesn't mean you should. The missed Havoc shooting star press into Cuerno winning with the Thrill of the Hunt (swinging Samoan Driver) was beautifully executed too, and it gave legitimacy to the winning trio. Continuing the stories after the match was effective too.

Getting into the actual triple threat for the title, it was everything I wanted it to be and more. While the opening match was akin to the short-term but towering headrush of a cocaine snort, this match had a sustained intensity, like drinking a strong cup of coffee. The interwoven spots in the beginning moving into the big displays later and later on in the match, with each wrestler settling nicely into a role all gave this match a feel of importance. You had Cuerno, who acted like a wrestler who had inches and pounds on both his opponents. Then Desmond X was the spitfire, the guy combining a street fighter's mentality, replete with the desire to make the biggest, most peacocking splash of the contest. And finally, Azteca hit the traditional luchador notes with the leverage throws and the dives.

While Azteca won the match in spectacular fashion — I love any kind of pinning combo done with big impact off the top, especially the casadora victory roll — the match did its job to create yet another humongous star with the X stutter-step senton atomico from atop the floor entrance. It wasn't just the actual spot itself, but it was the timing of him appearing up there. The last you saw of him was Cuerno going bowling into chairs with him as the ball, and he was then out of sight and out of mind. It gave a great visual shock to the viewer (at least at home, I'm not sure who in the live arena was aware of him getting there), giving X an ethereal feel to him. As always, supernatural shit is always welcome in the Temple.

So while X is a made man, and Cuerno is Cuerno, Azteca becomes yet another in a long line of potential contenders for Penta. Of the three known by the end of this episode, Azteca probably would give him the best match. Still, Lucha Underground had a strong bounceback episode this week, and... wait, what, another segment?

A Moth to Flame

A Martinez/Penta title program would be great just for the build to it, and the framing of the "post-show" segment was perfect. Once again, Lucha Underground's production team really gets its characters and how they should be shot in a way that enhances them without too much exposition. Now, if only they knew how to shoot in-ring action that didn't follow the lead of one Kevin Dunn...