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Lucha Underground returned last night (Dec. 7) from the Temple in Boyle Heights and set off to crown a couple number one contenders to Johnny Mundo’s titles.
You can find all of the results at the live blog here.
Lost Control
The main focus of the night was the set up of who would next face Johnny Mundo for the Lucha Underground title. But the real story is how Dario Cueto has lost so much control of his brother, the monster Matanza.
We learn in the opening scene that Dario has created the Battle of the Bulls, a tournament to crowd a number one contender. There will be four fatal 4-way matches. The winner of those matches will enter a final fatal 4-way with the winner becoming number one contender.
This is revealed to us when Angelico tells Dario Cueto that he wants to face Johnny Mundo tonight. Unfortunately, Johnny has a restraining order on the South African. Because Johnny is a slimy dirtbag. However, after a physical threat from Angelico, Dario says he can compete in the Battle. (That match was not last night.)
The first match tonight was Cage vs. Texano vs. Joey Wagner vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. Cage ended up winning to advance to the final match.
Meanwhile, prior to the second match, Dario checked on his brother, making sure he didn’t want to be part of this Battle the Bulls, being the biggest bull around. But Matanza just screamed for Rey. Dario tells his brother that El Dragon Azteca was so set on revenge and it didn’t just get his arm broken but almost cost him his life. He doesn’t want that to happen to his baby brother.
Matanza put his hand through the bars around Dario’s head, almost lovingly. That is until he banged his brother’s head against the bar knocking him out! And then he reached for the key that his brother dropped.
After he escaped the cage, he made his way into the main event match after it had started. It was a match between Mil Muertes, El Dragon Azteca Jr., the Mack, and Marty “The Moth” Martinez. After all four men had worn each other down, the monster interjected himself and beat the hell out of Azteca.
Dario then ran out holding a rag to his bloody forehead and holding Matanza’s key. He was able to coax him to the back, adverting major disaster for now. The Moth tried to take advantage of the moment with an attempted pin of a beaten Dragon Azteca. However the Mack interrupted the count, hit a Stunner on the Moth, and won the match. He’ll be joining Cage in the final match.
Seeing Dario have so little control of a situation is amazing. He also so cool and calculated all the time. Even when he was arrested at the end of last season, he was smiling because he knew he had things under control. But now he looks lost. He knows that his brother is an unstoppable force and so far, he’s been the only one to be able to corral him. If he can’t, then there’s pretty much an angry God on the loose.
The image of a bloodied Dario running out pleading with his brother to stop was great and this is clearly not done yet. Perhaps Dario will need to turn to whomever gets embodied by the other God (either Cage or Texano) to stop his brother who is out of control. But for now, Dario has no choice but to serve his brother up Rey Mysterio.
The first #1 contender
Dario granted Sexy Star a match with PJ Black last night with the stipulation that if she wins she gets a title shot against Johnny Mundo in a cage and if she loses she never gets another title shot ever again.
She ended up winning the match, a match that never fully clicked. When Jack Evans tried to interfere (because of course), he got superkicked by PJ by accident and Sexy rolled up Black for the pinfall.
Now, she’s got a rematch date with Johnny in a steel cage. Dario told Sexy Star that the rematch would be in a steel cage to prevent the World Wide Underground from interfering. Apparently, Dario doesn’t watch steel cages matches, or even the last steel cage match put on in his own Temple earlier this season. Johnny Mundo was involved in that one as well and Taya found herself inside assisting Johnny the cage by the end of the match. So despite Dario saying the steel cage would keep the World Wide Underground out, fully expect the cage just to trap Sexy Star in with them.
Quick Hits
There were two other backstage scenes building up things for later.
Queen Kobra
In one scene, Kobra Moon was sitting on a sick looking Kobra Throne (seriously need to look into getting one of those for my apartment) in front of two men kneeling before here. She tells a story about the Kobra tribe a millennia ago. When faced with a war, there were three generals who fought for the tribe, but one of them abandoned them.
The other two survive, they were the two men kneeling before the queen. And now she charged these two to find the one that left them all those year ago.
I think the big take away here is that these two generals had SNAKE FACES! They were snake people!
Part of me wanted to assume that Drago was the third general, but if I recall their small history prior, he was a prisoner of the tribe and not a leader. (Feel free to correct me in the comments on that one.)
This story has been shaping up to be pretty good. Kobra Moon was lost her first season but now they are building some great mythos around her and her tribe. And of course... friggin’ snake men!
Back into the Fire
Officer Reyes (Cortez Castro) returned to Captain Vasquez’s office. The Captain (who may also be a thousand years old) told Reyes that she now trusts him and needs him back in the Temple. This confused Reyes. Dario Cueto knows who he is. Because of that, she said he’ll need to go even deeper under cover... and she handed him a luchador mask.
I’m starting to wonder how slow burn of a story this is. At first I thought we may get a big advancement in it this year, but now I’m starting to wonder if this is going to be a Temple overarching plot for the years to come.
As for now, we wait for a new masked man to debut.
After last week’s fantastic episode, this was always going to be a cool down. That doesn’t mean it was by any means bad though. I enjoy the episodes that thread one story throughout it over ones that have random segments. While the latter is going to be necessary, I like that this was all about crowning Johnny’s number one contenders while the other stories were briefly touched on with their cinematic clips.
Johnny Mundo is going to have his work cut out for him. First Sexy Star, and then the winner of the fatal 4- way (we need the other two 4-ways first). Meanwhile, the mythos of the Kobra tribe is starting to heat up and I look forward to that coming into play more.
Hey, here’s a random thing to close out. Whatever happened to Night Claw, the Black Panther looking dude from the season finale last season?