Fenix walks into a room. Pentagon Jr. is there and tells him that he will win the LU Title from him tonight. Then the lights flicker and Catrina appears. She tells Pentagon Jr. that he shouldn’t be here. He lost his right to compete in Aztec Warfare when he put his hands on her a few weeks ago. He tells her he isn’t afraid of her or Mil Muertes because cero miedo and stuff. They had some cool dialogue, including Catrina telling him “the only reason you have zero fear is because you don’t know real fear.” She also said that she knew “dark arts,” further fueling suspicion that she is some sort of evil spirit (possibly the ghost of a witch).
She then told Fenix that Mil would kill him and take his title back, then she disappeared. Fenix actually looked scared of this. Once she was gone, Fenix and Pentagon Jr. went back to having their stare-down, then went on their separate ways.
We’ve got a band dressed in traditional Aztec regalia playing traditional Aztec instruments, including big drums, which gives me hope that my suggestion that Matanza’s entrance music be the deep, heavy drums that were playing during his reveal last week might have been implemented.
The announcers have been told that Pentagon Jr. did not receive an invitation to Aztec Warfare. Vampiro accurately describes this as “straight-up whack.” Of course, they said this right after emphasizing that “anything goes” in Aztec Warfare, so if the previous segment didn’t have you convinced that Pentagon Jr. is going to run in and attack Mil Muertes, this should.
AZTEC WARFARE MATCH FOR THE LUCHA UNDERGROUND TITLE: Fenix(c) vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. King Cuerno vs. Argenis vs. Johnny Mundo vs. Joey Ryan vs. Prince Puma vs. Jack Evans vs. Taya vs. Cage vs. Mascarita Sagrada vs. Marty “The Moth” Martinez vs. Drago vs. The Mac vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. PJ Black vs. Aerostar vs. Dragon Azteca Jr. vs. El Texano Jr. vs. Mil Muertes (w/Catrina)… vs. “THE MONTSTER,” MATANZA CUETO! (w/Dario Cueto)-
This is a REALLY hard match to rate because everything from the moment Mil Muertes entered the match an onwards really felt more like it should be rated as a segment (and a perfect one at that). The stuff with Matanza was also just so… different from anything we’ve seen before that I don’t even know how to rate it as a match. At the same time, I feel like not rating it as a match would be a disservice to the action and stories (although there almost didn’t seem to be too many stories) that came before it, so if I HAD to rate this as a match, I’d give it a 9.75/10, which is a rating I usually reserve for matches that would have been ten if not for some minor flaw like one or two spots that didn’t make sense or a bad botch or something that looks like someone is clearly stalling. The “match” part of this match was in the 9.5 range (I’ll get into the few things I didn’t like below), but the segment part of this was definitely perfect, so I’ll average the two to get to 9.75/10.
As an overall whole, this match felt like a hybrid of last year’s action-packed but very story-driven match and a Royal Rumble where there are some important stories going in, but there is a lot of stuff that is also just action or just stories self-contained to this match. It was also a lot more chaotic, with more action going on all over the place and fewer eliminations than would be expected based on how last year’s match went. Obviously there were reasons for that (both to set up Matanza destroying everyone and because we’ve had a whole additional year to get to know the characters, so we have significantly more characters getting focus than we did at this time last year (heck, Sexy Star, and our new trios champs didn’t even make it into the match, nor did Pentagon Jr, although there was a kayfabe reason for that one). Due to a combination of these factors, it didn’t feel like there was as much focus on the individual stories as there was last year. The stories were still there (Jack & PJ vs. Drago, Cage vs. Mundo & Taya, The Moth vs. The Mack), but they didn’t feel like they got as much focus because they were pretty much all fighting for screen time at the same time, and not just with each other, but with the need to focus on guys like Rey and Fenix and Puma as well.
This was also different from last year’s show in that, while last year’s show felt like a big storyline nexus where some stories began, others took big turns, and still others concluded, this year’s felt mostly like it was unimportant continuance of some stories, with the truly big stuff only happening in terms of Mil’s elimination, Dragon Azteca’s debut, and the Matanza stuff. Obviously that was a consequence of some of the above issues as well as the need for the focus to be on the Matanza stuff and Muertes vs. Pentagon stuff, but it still contributed to this feeling that the match just wasn’t quite as intricately booked as last year. That doesn’t mean it was bad. Just… less impressive to me. This was like a really great angle from WWE or the current ROH product, whereas last year felt like the sort of brilliant intersection that you’d get from Gabe or Quack at the top of their game.
So… with the bad stuff out of the way, let’s get to all of the good, in (mostly) chronological order:
Famous B and the chick from his commercial are in the crowd. He gave his business card to some of the wrestlers and also a few fans.
Big pop for Rey, as expected. Striker describes Rey as the “King of Lucha Libre,” which seems a bit spurious for a guy who has never won Rey de Reyes (or even King of the Ring). His statement that “if ever Lucha Libre had a face; if ever Lucha Libre had a heart and a soul” feels much more true (Santo excluded, obviously). Rey looked great and got to do cool stuff with a lot of different guys, including Fenix. Fenix also had some really cool sequences with Johnny Mundo.
Joey Ryan comes out. He has handcuffs in his tights because
Joey handcuffs himself to the railing so he can’t be eliminated. Vampiro described Joey’s tactics thus: “what do you call a baby cat? Exactly. It starts with a ‘p.’” It’s going to be so awesome when someone like Mil Muertes or Cage just rips the railing out, beats Joey over the head with it and pins him.
Striker claims that Joey earned this spot by winning a qualifying match. I guess that must have happened at some sort of Temple-sponsored side-event or an unrecorded fight night, because as far as we’ve seen, Joey is 0-1 here at the Temple.
As the match progressed, Joey would occasionally get clocked by someone- sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident- because he couldn’t get out of the way because of the handcuffs, and it got funnier every time.
Johnny throws Cage through office window just like he did to Del Rio last year… but Cage is up a minute later because HE’S A MACHINE (incidentally, this actually the first time we’ve seen Cage bleed in LU, thus proving that he is in fact not a machine)! That whole bit was awesome. Not just as a lone spot, but as a reference to the promotion’s past, which was something they did a lot of in this match in a lot of different ways, and I really enjoyed all of it. Cage and The Mack had a face-off that wasn’t only your typical big-man face-off, but also calls back to their match at Ultima Lucha. Even simple things like Fenix, Prince Puma, and Mil Muertes all coming out at the same number as last year was just a cool little touch that made things all feel just a little more special and just a little more epic.
I thought they did a great job with Dragon Azteca Jr., both by giving him some nice shine right away, and also in the way he was made to look better than anyone else- save for his sensei, Rey- against Matanza, to show that their training was at least somewhat effective. Vampiro also made sure to put over the fact that there is a lot of history behind his mask.
So… time to discuss the two big angles:
Mil Muertes makes his entrance… but gets jumped by Pentagon Jr. Pentagon assaults him with a chair. Then Mil is quickly eliminated by the combination of Rey Mysterio Jr. and Prince Puma. This was a GREAT surprise elimination, and also gave them a reason to not have Mil Muertes and Matanza interact yet. Catrina goes nuts, slaps Vampiro, and tells him to “get the f*ck out of here.” I assume that means he is fired, except that he probably won’t stay fired because at that very moment…
DARIO CUETO RETURNS! He got the second biggest pop of the night, only down to the man he introduced as a bonus twenty-first entrant into Aztec Warfare… “THE MONSTER,” MATANZA CUETO!.
Matanza got in the ring and everyone attacked him, but he did the ROAR spot and shoved them all off. Then Fenix came at him… and Matanza eliminated the champion with just one move! One by one the wrestlers would try to test themselves against him, and as we would learn, Matanza does not have a “finisher;” Matanza just has moves, but when Matanza hits you with a move, you don’t get up. I think the only people who were put down with more than one actual move were guys pinned by combinations, guys who he used a single strike to knock down first, and the one guy he randomly decided to show off his ability to do a standing shooting star press to (I never figured Matanza as the high-flying type). In other words, NO ONE KICKED OUT OF ANYTHING MATANZA DID! Not that Deucalion was bad or anything, but this was one step further.
So we’ve got a new champion, the old boss, and a lot of issues still unresolved. An EPIC show. Lucha Underground delivered. As always.
