Lucha Underground S03E29: The Hunger Inside

The Hunger Inside

DARIO & MATANZA BACKSTAGE - GREAT! This was Matanza's first appearance since he attacked Dario and went on the loose before the half-season break, and I was expecting Dario to taunt him with the plate of food and be a spiteful dick and be your stereotypical villain in this situation demanding total obedience and being so overtly controlling as to quickly alienate the one he is trying to control, but this is Lucha Underground so I should have known better. The relationship between these two is wonderful simply because they have found a spot where I really don't know I Dario cares about his brother or wants to control his brother so he can use him as a weapon… or both.

They show us Rey Mysterio's family in the crowd. And Rey isn't even scheduled to wrestle tonight. ANGLE ALERT! ANGLE ALERT! ANGLE ALERT! ANGLE ALERT!

CUETO CUP QUARTERFINAL MATCH:
Fenix vs. Pindar (w/Kobra Moon) - 4.5/10

They started to tell a story with Pindar working over Fenix's back, but the match was too short for it to really play out.

DARIO CUETO & THE WORLDWIDE UNDERGROUND IN DARIO'S OFFICE - Excellent. Jack's jaw is wired shut due to an injury sustained last week. Both Dario and P.J. make fun of him. He warns them not to interfere in tonight's Johnny Mundo vs. Dragon Azteca Jr. main event, and to give them incentive not to, he says that Taya, Ricky, and P.J. will each get a chance to win a Gift of the Gods Title medallion next week so long as they don't interfere.

CUETO CUP QUARTERFINAL MATCH:
Dante Fox vs. Prince Puma - 7.75/10

This match was basically ten minutes of an extremely fun spotfest, and if we're being honest, that's what both of these men excel at.

As if his insistence on trying to force as many military-sounding words as possible into every sentence about Dante Fox wasn't infuriating enough, Striker insisted that the P.J. Black was Prince Puma match was "what many are calling a five-star match." Please keep in mind that when he recorded this line no one had actually seen that match yet. It wouldn't have bothered me if he had said something generic like "many are calling it a must-see match" or something like that, but in the culture of pro wrestling, the term "five-star match" is inextricably linked with Dave Meltzer and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter… so what Stirker is telling us that there is a fictional Dave Meltzer in the LU Universe who buys tapes from Dario's illegal underground fighting league and rates them in his published newsletter. As I said before: if he had just been generic about this it would have been fine, but he's got to try to sound as smart (in both meanings of the word) as possible, and all it does is make him even more annoying.

And speaking of things that Striker says that are infuriating, can we please get rid of this "The Believers" nonsense? What, exactly, do they "believe" in?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Good. Killshot came out to attack Fox because Fox cost him his shot in the Cueto Cup, then told him that, as Fox had told him, "This isn't over between us." I would have enjoyed this a lot more if Striker hadn't insisted saying "war is hell" in a solemn tone. He's such a hack.

CAPTAIN VASQUEZ & OFFICER RICKY REYES IN VASQUEZ'S OFFICE- Very interesting. She tells him that Cage murdered Councilman Delgado and that Cage is a god. Reyes is confused, both as to why she called Cage a god and as to why she doesn't just go arrest him. She tells him "It's not him I want. It's that: the gauntlet. Bring it to me." And all of a sudden I don't trust her at all.

Reyes says that "there isn't a man alive" who will be able to get the gauntlet away from Cage. After he leaves she pulls out her half of the medallion immortality or whatever and says "maybe you're right." This is significant because (and I'm not sure if she knows this or not) but the other half of that medallion is in the possession of Catrina, who is both the manager of Mil Muertes and has also been known to commune with the dead (via the Ouija board she and Crane apparently played with as kids).

EL DRAGON AZTECA JR. vs. JOHNNY MUNDO - 6.5/10

We once again cut to Rey's family at ringside, with Striker particularly pointing out Eddie Guerr… Rey's son Dominic, so now we know who is going to either get assaulted or get his ass kicked when he tries to save Rey from a post-match beat-down. This match was the same as the previous one, but a lot less spectacular.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Didn't like it. Mundo gets a chair and attacks El Dragon Azteca Jr. He fits the chair around El Dragon Azteca's neck clearly setting up to CRUSH HIS THROAT with a Pillmanizer… and Matt Striker is just casually finishing his stupid metaphor about Johnny Mundo "trading in the calligraphy pen for a steel chair as he looks to end another book." HE'S ABOUT END A MAN'S CAREER, IF NOT HIS LIFE!

Rey comes out to make the save, and only once Rey shows up does Striker start screaming about how Mundo was about to end a man's career. Mundo leaves and Rey goes over to hug his son and kiss his wife and daughter, and although it doesn't seem possible, Matt Striker is laying this on even thicker on commentary.

Then Rey turned to leave and Mundo came back and started talking trash to his family about him. Dominic got up and got in Mundo's face for getting in his mom's face… and then security came out to break them up. Since when is there a f*cking security staff in The Temple?

Rey came back but got tackled by the Worldwide Underground and stuff happened and people got in the way and finally Johnny laid Dominic out with a belt shot. I thought this was WAY overproduced. I think it would have worked a lot better for Johnny to just come back and whack Dominic in the back of the head with the title belt, then flee. No security, no pull-apart, no unnecessary trash-talking or any of that.

MARTY THE MOTH SPIES ON MELISSA SANTOS & FENIX - They're going home together. They had a very nice, natural interaction, although I thought it would have been a lot better if they had just done the entire thing in Spanish instead of throwing in one random line of English. She asks about his mask, so Marty plans to take the mask away. Marty is creepy. Excellent segment. Not just the execution, but I kind of like the idea of someone going after someone's mask on a Lucha show, but for a reason that is more than just the usual "I hate you and therefore I want to humiliate you."

A GREAT show from Lucha Underground.