Mil Muertes vs. Fenix vs. Jeremiah Crane, Lucha Underground 4×03 ~ REST IN PIECES (6/27/2018)

This was a three way Grave Consequences match.

Lucha Underground Season Four is barely worth covering. I do not intend on watching much of it, let alone narrowing that down too much into anything worth writing about. Based on the segments during this specific episode, Dario Cueto was murdered at the end of season 3, his dad is in control now, and his dad maybe also killed him. The ropes are blue and yellow and the temple feels more corporate, and wildly incorrect, which based on the results for the season and what people have said about it, is fitting. I mean, Jack Swagger ends the show as its champion. Shit here is probably exactly as dire as it looks.

You can even see that here, foisting an absolute dud (post-fed Sami Callihan) onto the company’s most proven match up and stipulation, watering it down immeasurably during the first half before he’s eliminated. A lot of matches could tell the story of the decline of Lucha Underground, but parts of this are as good as any. Aesthetic changes that feel weird, losing the spirit of the thing, loser talent decisions, all sort of perfectly summed up by adding Sami Callihan to Mil Muertes vs. Rey Fenix, the pairing that’s resulted in not only probably the company’s most famous match, but also maybe its overall best one as well.

However.

However.

When that first fall gets rid of the dead weight, and when the match comes down to just Fenix and Mil for the last two-thirds, very little of that matters, because Mil and Fenix are still just absolute magic together, even in their final ever shot at it.

Fenix bleeds, takes these obscene bumps, has the most energetic and snappy offense in the world when handled by Lucha Undergound mics, cameras, and editing. Mil is a monster unlike almost anything else in wrestling when given the material all of these Fenix matches give him. There is nothing in these Fenix/Mil matches that does not look great and does not sound great, there is very little dead air (not entirely on them, but a whole lot of other Lucha Underground matches have a lot of waste/bad parts, even with the editing), and this is not the match to betray any of that in their last moment together.

Certainly something of a greatest hits show, but the hits are real real great.

It will never be what it was, but when Fenix bleeds and when Mil hurls him full force into a metal coffin, it feels like it might be easier than ever to be taken back into time.

***

 

Fenix vs. Aerostar vs. Drago, Lucha Underground 3×07 ~ “PAYBACK TIME” (10/19/2016)

This was to determine who enters AZTEC WARFARE III at number twenty, with the losers then also being barred from the match.

It is an absolute blast.

Drago wins with the DDT Destroyer on Aerostar, whatever, this is only like ten percent about the finish of the match, and way more about the body of the thing, and the body of the thing whips so much ass.

Ten minutes or so of some incredibly cool spots. That’s it. Sick dives and hard kicks and a bunch of real sick shit off the top rope. Fenix bleeds a little from the nose and white gear stained red is objectively perfect, even in small amounts. Mostly though, it’s just that when executed perfectly and placed in the right context (not over fifteen minutes usually), matches like these are virtually always a whole lot of fun.

Not all great matches are great for reasons that one can write a lot about.

Instinctively, I think that you, The Reader, knew that if this was going to be a great match, that it would be a great match for very specific reasons, and you were a thousand percent correct. It was and it was.

This match rocks so much because they let three absolute lunatics go wild, and then did things to elevate the match they could naturally create. That means the company either edited it down to a reasonable length (while also likely trimming a lot of stuff that maybe wasn’t 100% perfect looking), restricted them in the first place, or some combination of both. It’s a great match for some real obvious and stupid reasons, but there’s also a lesson in this that’s largely gone ignored ever since this show went off the air.

***

 

Chris Hero vs. Fenix, AAW Defining Moment (9/16/2016)

The real battle here took place in the first half, between a fan with a very loud airhorn and everyone else in the venue. It’s a wonderful fight, as both commentary and then Hero himself become increasingly irate with this fan, to say nothing of everyone around him. It winds up benefitting the match in a strange sort of a way, throwing Hero off and giving Fenix windows early on, which along with Hero’s anger at the guy, only wound up encouraging him.

It’s a charming little story that unfortunately ended midway through the contest when said fan was removed from the building, which is wild because I thought this was America. In a rarity, it’s a 2016 Chris Hero contest that ends too soon.

As for the advertised match, hey, it’s Chris Hero vs. Fenix in 2016.

Hero also riffs around a little on the mat to start, offering a little more depth and fleshing the obvious story out a little more with some nice moments of condescension. Nothing that sets the world on fire, but it’s the sort of Hero stuff I really like and wish he did more of. Even just setting the stage like this, it’s nice to see. The match then also becomes the sort of fireworks show one would imagine, and that’s all quite fun too. Hero striking at will, anti-aircraft style, Fenix dying, Fenix doing sick stuff out of the air to come back. The like. What have you. Things of that nature.

They don’t bring what one would imagine exists on another plane of existence as the biggest and wildest version of this match to AAW, obviously, but it maybe works to their advantage as I’m way more liable to enjoy the fifteen-ish minute version of this than some theoretical twenty plus minute version. Sometimes, subdued and lower key is better and with this match up feeling like it has such a high margin of error, it feels like sometimes is all the time.

Justice for the airhorn guy.

***

Aztec Warfare II, Lucha Underground 2×09 ~ “AZTEC WARFARE II” (3/23/2016)

This was for Fenix’s LU Title.

As with any Royal Rumble type match or the previous year’s Aztec Warfare match, I am not especially interested in detailing the order of the participants or everything that happens minute by minute. Go read a 411 Mania recap.

Once again, this is absolutely spectacular, and the greatest display of Lucha Underground as a whole. You get the strengths with any of the Fenix vs. Mil matches, you can find the weaknesses in a bunch of spots, but Aztec Warfare gives you a complete picture in a way that few other matches ever can. It’s a match with another incredible Fenix run, Rey Mysterio’s debut, the big piece of booking at the very end as the long awaited debut of DARIO CUETO’S BASEMENT MONSTER BROTHER hits, but then also a long angle where a sexual predator hangs around and where a good chunk of the match goes to some real embarrassing also-ran shit like Chavo Jr, a Brian Cage vs. Johnny Mundo feud, and a parade of rejects and nothings in the secod half. The full picture of the thing, warts and all.

Mostly, it’s great.

The match stacks the deck early on with new champion Fenix and debuting Mysterio in succession, followed by a bevy of LU’s best like King Cuerno, Prince Puma, Willie Mack, Drago, Aerostar, and the like. What you’d expect to be great here is outstanding. Mysterio looks reinvigorated once again by getting to wrestle great wrestlers in long matches again, delivering in virtually every exchange the match allows him. The big reveal at the end is another strong point of the match as Jeff Cobb in a mask running the table with everyone left is mostly great. The way the match gets Mil Muertes out of the way before then, so they don’t blow the huge Monster vs. Monster match on day one, is also a thing of beauty. Pentagon Jr. isn’t let into the match by evil tyrant Catrina, so he jumps Mil coming out, brains him with a chair, leading to a Rey splash and a two or three man stack pin. Mil’s out, and that’s not IDEAL (ideally, they fight off or do a big spot elsewhere, and Mil never even has to eat a pin), but it’s enough that they knew what to do here and did as good of a job as they did with it.

It would be a lie to say this isn’t a match with issues though, and that it isn’t worse than the previous year’s effort as a result.

The most obvious one is all of the stuff in the middle. The dick pervert’s involvement, the Johnny Mundo vs. Brian Cage shit, fucking PJ Black showing up, it’s like a rundown of every reason Lucha Underground gradually stopped feeling like it did in the first season, and why a ranking of the best LU seasons is just listing them in numerical order (probably, i haven’t seen anything from S4). These things all generally fly by in a rush, it’s not the end of the world, but this is a match comprised of three sections, and the middle one is clearly the least of them.

Something about the entire Matanza Cueto deal just feels a little bit off once he gets into the ring too.

Jeff Cobb is a good find here. Outside of real maniacs watching old Tim Thatcher stuff on Youtube, it’s not a name that’s too far out there at this point, and so you can plug him in without any preconceived notions. At the same time, I think he’s a little too short for this to work perfectly and definitely too polished. There’s too much of Jeff Cobb in it, honestly. The perfect suplexes, things like rolling Gutwrench Suplexes, things like that. The Tour of the Island is a breathtakingly gorgeous move when done perfectly, the one he does on Mysterio at the end of the match to win the title is really maybe Cobb’s best ever, but these things feel like they should be beyond the imprisoned cannibal monster that Matanza was built up as in all those vignettes.

Something about it, and the entire presentation feels off in a way that’s hard to really quantify.

It’s maybe not the ultimate expression of the idea, but the Matanza push in general at the expense of all the other stuff in the promotion that was hot and working on its own, feels like one of those crucial moments where Lucha Underground opted to be a television show featuring pro wrestling rather than embracing certain realities of being wrestling TV. It led them to many of their highest highs, but comes with a price too, here and yet to come. Equal parts gift and curse.

Matanza wins the title, the Mil era ends a little too soon for my tastes, and it’s around here where I personally stopped paying quite so much attention to Lucha Underground. I have to tell myself sometimes that not every other person in the world is me, that my experiences are not always universal, but from what I recall after this, the promotion feels far less interesting, even if that still makes it more interesting than just about every other televised wrestling product in the entire world.

Like much of Lucha Underground’s second season, as a match, this is not what it was the first time around.

Expectations are too high, and you can only ever come out of nowhere the once.

However, like most of Lucha Underground’s sophomore effort as well, it’s still so much better and weirder and more interesting than almost everything else around.

***1/4

Mil Muertes vs. Fenix, Lucha Underground 2×08 ~ “LIFE AFTER DEATH” (3/16/2016)

This was for Mil’s LU Title.

On the occasion of their last major go-around, Mil and Fenix had one of the best matches of 2015 and one of the handful of matches that, years removed, it seems that Lucha Underground will be known for. Not only one of the great bloody fights of the decade, but an even more impressive thing as the clear and away best casket/coffin match of all time, even if it went by an infinitely cooler name.

A year later, we return, with Mil having suffered neither loss nor setback since Grave Consequences, including absolutely TRUCKING Fenix in the shorter return match.

The great thing about this match is that it not only recognizes their bloody history and the expectations that come with it, going back to familiar wells of both Fenix’s mask and then his skin being ripped open, but it’s also a match that clearly remembers their less famous match as well.

At all times, Fenix is one move or false step away from being obliterated once again. Frequently, he suffers worse fates than through most of their prior meetings, save his fall through the office roof that ended their prior meeting. He’s busted open in what feels like no time, hurled around through the crowd with even more ferocity and hate than there seemed to be in their previous meetings when Muertes took him on a brawling tour of scenic Boyle Heights, thrown into chairs, and worse. Delightfully, this is a match that takes the metaphorical and turns it literal, with Mil’s attempt to knock Fenix off the edge of a razorblade that it seems like he spends the match on resulting in him literally shoving Fenix down in the middle of a careful balancing act.

Like any great babyface though — and make no mistake based on his later career tag team or spot show work, Fenix is an incredible babyface in Lucha Underground — Fenix gets up every time, and this time, he returns fire in not only increasingly spectacular ways, but now in increasingly angry ways.

In Grave Consequences a year ago, Fenix was no victim exactly, but it’s different than the anger he gets to show here, and it’s a lot different than the success with which he wields it. It’s not just that he gets up after the shove off the balcony, walks it again, and dives onto Mil on the floor as he thinks he’s escaped. It’s not that he uses a chair on Mil in revenge. The real meat of the thing is that in a first for Lucha Underground, having both the temerity and the ability to return the favor and rip a hole in Mil Muertes’ mask. The blood doesn’t come flowing with it like you’d want, but between the visible hair now and just the visual shorthand for the idea that someone can do that to Muertes, he feels human in a way that he never really has before.

The result is a really really awesome finishing run, and one of LU’s best ever.

As usual for a promotion built on this sort of maximalism, it goes maybe a little too far with a top rope Flatliner. It beat Prince Puma to give him the title, it’s not a move without history, but it’s never totally felt like Mil Muertes to me. Everything else though, spot on and perfect. These insane Fenix bumps for the spears, his frantic comebacks, using a chair to block a punch and then hitting Mil like five or six times in a row in the face with it. It’s all incredible. Most impressively is the feeling brought forward by all of it, beyond the awe of every insane thing that happens, it’s a feeling more and more like this is something actually doable.

At the end, Fenix blocks a second Flatliner into a prawn hold and then a European Clutch for the big upset, opting to simply trap the big man when the chance was there instead of trying to destroy him like he did once upon a time.

It’s not the best idea in the world, at least not now. Mil had so much more in him in this reign, and even if this does kind of feel like the best overall ending for the reign (this or white hot character Pentagon Jr. getting it done), it’s definitely something that feels early. All the same, it is pretty much perfectly done, the ideal version of this sort of wrestling trope in an environment like this. These two are a perfect match for each other, naturally emphasizing the best things about each other in theory and in actuality as well, creating the best possible versions of both Muertes and Fenix whenever they wrestle each other. One last time together one on one, forget any qualifiers, Fenix vs. Mil was some of the best wrestling anywhere in the world.

As with all the Lucha Underground matches that, at the time, I was head over heels in love with, it’s maybe not THAT great years later. As with the previous Mil/Fenix match that I felt that way about, LU’s greatest and most famous match, that feeling is a lot less diminished than usual. The words I’ve used may be different, the rating slightly lower (although I cannot stress this enough, star ratings are not real), but the raw feeling of the thing remains exactly the same.

One of Lucha Underground’s greatest accomplishments, and perhaps as a result of their other notable match, the show’s most underrated one.

***1/2

King Cuerno vs. Fenix, Lucha Underground 2×06 ~ “GIFT OF THE GODS” (3/2/2016)

This was a ladder match for the Gift of the Gods Title.

Again, it rocks.

Just a festival of remarkably cool stuff, but with both cooler moves and then even better set ups than we saw in their match from several weeks prior.

A lot of times in a match like this, and with Fenix matches in general, it sometimes feels like he just goes with the coolest spot at any given moment. Here though, one gets the feeling that they thought about a few things beforehand, like Fenix’s flip dive over the railing or things of that nature, and then managed to direct the match in a way to get to these ideas in a more naturalistic sense. At some point you hit a wall in that regard, you’re only ever going to make a wild ass stunt show like this so realistic, but this match does a genuinely shocking job of it.

Beyond that, it also like, makes a ton of sense as a ladder match?

So often in a ladder match, there’s only mere lip service paid to the idea that you have to wear someone down first, but this is a match that really commits to that. A ladder isn’t used in the ring for like ten plus minutes, there’s only a handful of moments in which anyone tries to try and get the title down, and it’s not a well they try to draw water from time and time again. Truly, this is a match more about doing harm to each other in and out of the ring to get to those moments, adding a startlingly logical element to the entire thing as well. This is the match people pretended that bad Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho ladder match was, which makes sense, as it features two better wrestlers.

Throughout the match, they play with a theme of hunter King Cuerno enjoying the process leading to the kill just a little too much, and it’s through that idea that the match comes to a close as well. After almost losing Fenix a few times throughout the match because of this and after losing the advantage a few times because of this, it fittingly leads to Cuerno’s demise here too. After hitting his finish once, he insists on bringing a table inside and trying it off the top, giving Fenix the time to recover and the space to counter into a hurricanrana off the top and through the table as well.

After that, Fenix simply climbs the ladder and gets the title down. No muss and no fuss, a sequence that perfectly sums up the feud and these two characters before delivering a gorgeous and nasty closing spot, and then getting to the finish with more clarity and precision than you usually get from a ladder match at this point in wrestling history.

Somehow, the most sensible ladder match in years comes out of Lucha Underground.

***

Fenix vs. King Cuerno, Lucha Underground 2×03 ~ “THE HUNT IS ON” (2/10/2016)

This was a LAST LUCHADORE STANDING match.

It’s dumb and spectacular and awesome. The sort of match you sit back and watch and mutter some variation of “hell yeah dude” every few moments until the end. There are at least three really tremendous dives here, a bunch of great shots, and very little waste to be found overall.

Cuerno chases Fenix up a ladder against one of the walls up to a platform, but Fenix is tricky and kicks it over to send Our Hero careening down through a table down on the ground. It’s a believable finish if not a great one, clearly meant more to extend the feud than anything else

All in all, it’s a tremendous experience and certainly a great match, despite everything else.

Sometimes the fireworks show is exactly enough.

The only real problem with this match is one you run into on LU from time time, which is that this is not the end of the feud, there is an even bigger, dumber, and more spectacular match to be had, and so this is shortchanged in some regard. The finish is awesome, but not perfect and definitive, the match clearly has more to offer. Of course, none of these things would be quite so annoying had it been cut for something besides the show needing to end with a vignette of Ricky Reyes as an undercover cop.

But that is Lucha Underground.

No other place would gift you something like this, and so on occasion, it can be worth it to also suffer through the incredibly ridiculous stories cooked up around matches like these.

If you want to dance, you’ve got to pay the fiddler, and matches like these are a dance worth having.

***

The Young Bucks vs. The Lucha Bros, AEW All Out 2021 (9/5/2021)

This was a steel cage match for the Bucks’ AEW World Tag Team Titles.

I didn’t like this much at all in the building, but given the overwhelmingly positive reaction it got online from almost everyone save the little circle of people I talk to, all the awards it’s probably going to get, and all the lists it’s probably going to top, I figured I would give it another shot. Live vs. tape can change things, I guess, and really, I would always prefer to be in the majority for something as universally beloved as this match seems to be.

Sadly, that didn’t happen.

It’s not as bad as I remembered, but it still isn’t really any good, and is somehow also a little more boring than I recalled. I could write about it, but I’m bored of vitriol with stuff like this, so I’ll talk about something else that came to mind instead.

Watching this again, I’m reminded of the genre of Tik Tok videos where someone with a dog or multiple dogs will buy a dog mask and scare their pets with it.

The video begins when the human puts the mask on and either peers around the corner or walks on all fours when entering a room, and the poor dogs just freak out. Completely lose their shit at the unholy sight that God has put before them. Confronted with something that looks sort of like something they recognize and know, but is very clearly not the thing it’s supposed to be. There are human hands on something with their heads. A look and sound that resembles their own, but not, a cruel imitation of something so wonderful and sacred. What profanities will Dr. Moreau come up with next? This is a false presentation, and one that feels deeply evil and spiritually incorrect. A cruel and profane imitation of life.

In response to such a sight, the dogs in question run around and bark very loudly and in such a panicked tone, occasionally doubling back to try and attack this monster that has invaded their space, trying to do something, anything, when confronted with this otherworldly terror, driven mad by something this wildly depraved.

Anyways, that’s how watching this felt.

Bullet Club (AJ Styles/The Young Bucks) vs. Team AAA (Aero Star/Drago/Fenix), CHIKARA King of Trios 2015 Night Three (9/6/2015)

This was the final of the 2015 King of Trios tournament.

At the time, this was regarded as something of a disappointment, and so I had actually never seen it until right now (or, October 20th, 2015, for those reading in the future).

While I won’t go that far, it’s not hard to see why other people thought that. Combine the killer run that AJ and the Bucks had been on as a trio and as individual acts and pair it up against the Lucha Underground trio only a month after that landmark first season came to an end AND given the hype their recent PWG weekend had garnered. People seemed to expect some all time barnburner, but it’s 2015, and nobody on this level is going to go nuts in CHIKARA anymore. That’s kind of the trade off. You maybe only get this in CHIKARA, but you still get the sort of a house show effort that stars are going to put in on a 2015 CHIKARA show.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad match though or that it’s not a good little match.

Not getting the hardest effort version of a thing doesn’t mean the thing you do get is inherently bad.

This is no epic, but it is just a fun little match with a nice story to tell.

I’ve always been someone very interested in house show or smaller show level performances from guys, mostly because of how revealing they are. Who gives a shit and who doesn’t, but also the ways in which that’s reflected in the match. While neither AJ or the Bucks are breaking out a lot of dives or things off the top, or doing much beyond a B level heel performance, that’s still really good. The Bucks bother less with the schtick now, stooge a lot, and AJ joins them in that. It’s a fun change of pace for the usually very serious AJ Styles at this point, stooging and playing a fool early on like he hasn’t in a while.

As they’ve spent all weekend demonstrating, the three luchadors once again have a much more interesting and effective match when faced with this contrast. The Bullet Club team is better than any other at repeatedly stifling them, leaping on each new entry into the match as they come on, but having to do more and more each time to stop them. Eventually, they can’t. The kicker is then that, for the first time in the tournament, it’s not immediately over within a minute or two of Team AAA finally getting free and loose and going wild. It’s not a perfect match, but it is picture perfect tournament wrestling, building up something for three matches and then giving the biggest challenge yet in the finals.

The final third or so is pretty awesome, if not out of this world great. You don’t get EVERYTHING, but there’s still a lot, and almost all of it is very very fun. Some unfortunate slip ups do happen, but they’re all covered up especially well, typically by an all-time master at hiding the mistakes of faster junior heavyweights in AJ Styles. The Bullet Club team succeeds in the ways they always do, but they’re always cut off before the second or third thing in a row. The key is what it always is, and that’s splitting the Bucks apart in crucial moments. The luchador contingent is able to do that, and after doing their crowding spots to Nick Jackson, Fenix uses the rope walk springboard 450 Splash to win.

If not all that it could be, still a more coherent and thus better match than virtually every other time that Fenix and the Bucks met. Having never expected anything going in, it’s a match that did more for me than I would have imagined.

three boy

Nightmare Warriors (Hallowicked/Frightmare/Silver Ant) vs. Team AAA (Aero Star/Drago/Fenix), CHIKARA King of Trios 2015 Night Two (9/5/2015)

This was a quarterfinal match in the 2015 King of Trios tournament.

Hallowicked and Frightmare EVIL (the moral state, not the wrestler) now, and they’ve dragged poor Silver Ant slowly down with them after they’ve been forced to team together for some reason. It’s CHIKARA bullshit. I don’t actually know. I lost track around 2012ish and zombie CHIKARA rarely offers anywhere near the quality of wrestling that inspired me to watch in spite of all of the goofy comic book nonsense that I don’t love, so I’m not even going to pretend to know.

That’s not the point though.

Once again, the Lucha Underground team shines far more in CHIKARA than in any other U.S. independent environment. Things get a little dance fighty with Frightmare, but Hallowicked and Silver Ant are both phenomenal bases for all of the wilder impulses that the outside stars come up with. Beyond that, Silver Ant especially shines when the match asks them to try and contain the heroes, as every single thing he does looks tremendous and always fits into the perfect place in the match. Hallowicked isn’t quite that, and sadly is a guy who seems to go as CHIKARA goes (great from 2005-2013ish, more average after that). That isn’t to say he’s bad here, but there’s a real kind of baseline feeling to everything he does, especially compared to everything he’s proven able of in the past. All very basic, which is less offensive here than in a title match, both because the match calls for it and because Silver Ant is so great at leading the match for their side.

For the second time in as many days, the point is made that the crazier flying feels much more uproarious when there’s a sense of victory to it happening in the first place. The stuff Drago, Aero Star, and Fenix can do will always be phenomenal but when they have to fight to get it off against bigger guys who want very much for the match not to devolve into a fireworks show, the match devolving into a fireworks show in and of itself feels like a victory, instead of having something that begins like that and never wavers in tone or pace for the next ten or twenty minutes or whatever. Styles make fights, and the success of a match like this compared to the matches had by the LU contingent elsewhere on the independents is proof of that.

The CHIKARA guys are once again at a near total loss when they begin to get bombed out from the sky above. Silver Ant gets hit by an Aero Star outside-in middle rope vault over the top into a splash, followed by Fenix’s gorgeous rope walk springboard 450 Splash, and that’s that.

Another super fun outing from the Temple exiles in CHIKARA, clearly at home in a place just as evil.

***