Go grab a snack and a drink, this half is somehow longer than the first half.
See you at the bitter end------------------------------------------------------------
Sacrifice to the Gods: Johnny Mundo vs “The Monster” Matanza Cueto
No Taya with Johnny, I wonder if he’s even noticed since she’s not a gauntlet.
Oops, somebody isn’t happy. Antonio, who may have been showing up anyway, tells Mundo that the gauntlet doesn’t belong to him! He doesn’t know where he got it, but he won’t be returning to slamtown with it.
Papa Cueto thinks Mundo is going to end up in a pool of his own blood in the middle of the ring on the ancient Aztec seal.
Hmm, maybe this is all about blood and tonight just happens to be the night that enough is spilled on the seal to activate it and it… does whatever it’s supposed to do.
Wow.
That is quite the getup. It does look familiar though, but I don't know why.
“Is that Matanza?” Yes, Striker.
“Is that an ancient sacrificial headdress?” I don’t know and neither should you, Striker. That’s very specific knowledge and more than a little suspicious that you would bring it up.
Matanza’s new threads get a “Holy Shit!” chant and more impressively, get Mundo to take his sunglasses off.
Johnny is smart and keeps the gauntlet on for the match. It immediately proves how strong it is as Mundo grabs Matanza by the throat and forces him to his knee before throwing him halfway across the ring one handed!
Matanza is also pretty smart as he makes the gauntlet his priority and very quickly removes it from Mundo’s hand and all the way out the ring to the stairs.
Now the question is: How much of a charge did the gauntlet build up in Mundo and can he get the job done before it is drained? Or he could just try and retrieve the gauntlet again, which is what he did at the first opportunity.
I’m not used to wrestlers being so savvy.
Matanza slows things down and now it is his turn to throw his opponent around with ease.
Mundo gets back on offence after countering Wrath of the Gods into a crucifix pin attempt. His flurry ends with End of the World which gets a 2.99999997 count. Well, that didn’t get it done, time to go after the gauntlet again.
Matanza hits a German suplex that sees Mundo flip all the way over and land on his face. Not impressed? How about if I mention that they were both standing on the top rope when it happened?
After that, they both end up outside the ring. Matanza is closer to the Gauntlet but has no interest in it for himself. Would it even work for him? He just wants to stop Mundo from getting it.
Mundo crawls under the ring, so Matanza wanders back to guard the gauntlet. Mundo pops up on the other side from where he entered (the right side from Matanza’s view), so the monster decides to go see if he can grab him.
Mundo heads back under the ring and Matanza spends just long enough looking for him that Mundo is able to crawl out the third side and reach the gauntlet. He does not have quite enough time to put it on though as Matanza tackles him and it flies into the believers.
Matanza picks up the gauntlet… and chucks it on top of the upstairs entrance. If I know anything, Mundo now has to wait until the caretaker can be bothered to go up there and chuck down all the stuff that ended up there, usually at the end of term.
This is really a smart match.
Mundo hasn’t given up on the gauntlet, he tries climbing the ladder before heading up the stairs.
It has become a game of cat and mouse.
I have to say that it’s not at all what I expected, but I am loving this match.
Mundo’s parkour fails him as he is grabbed while hanging from the roof that he needs to get to.
The face of somebody who doesn’t want to be powerbombed from the upper level.
He punches Matanza enough for him to stagger back so that Mundo can reach the edge of the roof and pull himself up. It’s a race to see if Mundo can put a glove on before Matanza can climb a ladder.
Matanza wins, just. He pushes Mundo down, right through the ceiling of the entrance freezer. The Cuetos think that it’s over, but I’m not sure about that. Antonio points Matanza towards the seal in the ring.
As Matanza walks down the stairs, the doors behind him open to reveal a gauntleted Mundo! Matanza races back up with chair in hand, but Mundo punches the chair right into his face, sending the monster tumbling down the stairs!
Matanza is looking scared. He dodges Mundo’s punch and Johnny hits the ringpost… which has no effect on him. Matanza scuttles back into the ring and Mundo follows. Johnny goes for a superman punch, but Matanza catches him and hits wrath of the gods! One! Two! Kickout!
The expression you have after somebody kicks out of wrath of the gods for the first time. Maybe his old outfit had superpowers?
Antonio is not looking too confident.
Mundo is just going with punches now, and going by the sound effects, they are doing the job. After a middle finger to Papa Cueto, Mundo hits a final punch jumping off the top. He turns Matanza over… and pins him!
Mundo can hardly take his eyes off of the gauntlet as he celebrates, but still hasn’t noticed/doesn’t care that Taya isn’t there.
So, Yeah, that’s another top match. It went a different way, which you would struggle to imitate in other places simply because you can’t expect the audience to be okay with a supernaturally powerful doodad in isolation, you have to have that kind of stuff be around all the time.
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Mundo is walking backstage after his victory when there is a bright light behind him. He turns to see Aerostar.
I think we’re about to find out if Mundo can cast the one ring into the fires of Mount Doom.
Oh, ok. Mundo asks if he’s seen Taya, so maybe he's not totally beyond saving yet.
The Spaceman isn’t here for a nice chat, he tells Mundo that they are now even. Johnny, continuing his smartness, knows what’s coming and says he’s going to hang onto the gauntlet for a while.
Aerostar tells Mundo that the power he feels isn’t enhancing him, it’s destroying him.
Mundo thinks that Aerostar would say anything to get it back.
Aerostar insists that he’s only telling Mundo the truth. The truth is the Gauntlet of the Gods helped him defeat Matanza. But if he wears it much longer, he’ll be nothing but a shell… as a god inhabits his body!
The spaceman and the Dragonman may have handed the gauntlet over a week or so too early
The face of somebody who doesn’t want to give up their new toy.
Mundo snaps out of it a bit as he points out that nobody inhabits that perfect body but him. Aerostar begs Mundo to give up the gauntlet before it’s too late… and he does! Wow, Mundo’s own vanity was stronger than the influence of an ancient god.
Johnny leaves to find Taya so that they can… “celebrate”.
Ooh, sudden random thought: Aerostar knows a whole lot about what’s going on. He’s been jumping around time at least as far back as 1,000 years ago. He has soul sucking (and replacing) powers. He now has Piedre Immortal AND the Gauntlet of the Gods. Is he secretly a super villain?
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Panes of glass and barbed wire bats. It must be that time. I was thinking that this might not be as crazy as last time, but seeing what they’ve got set up, I’ve changed my mind.
Ciero Miedo – Lucha Underground Championship: Pentagon Dark vs Marty “The Moth” Martinez(c)Aw, this is the last time we get to hear this theme. Oh, wait, I have the technology to play it any time I want!
Both come out with chairs in hand. Marty does not have Reklusa with him… yet.
Penta starts things off by lobbing his chair at Marty’s head before he can get in the ring. The chair looked like it might have continued into the crowd, judging by the ref’s reaction.
Striker brings up how Marty won the title, by getting the GOTG one week notice rule changed. Oh no, that doesn’t bode well.
Marty has not had any sort of chance to get going in this one, he’s just getting thrown into various things outside the ring.
That is a significant amount of blood, and the match hasn’t even made it into the ring yet.
I had to redo that pic three times. I took a screenshot of him bleeding, then they showed him again and it looked worse, so I replaced the original. Then they had that third shot which is even, even worse.
Uh oh, as Vamp is saying about how Marty needs to survive this initial onslaught, he is looking like he is doing just that. Penta’s punches don’t really seem to be having much effect on him anymore, and he’s smiling.
Marty gets his first proper offence of the match by hiptossing Penta through a table that’s leaning against the wall.
You can actually see tiny rivers of blood flowing down Marty’s face. He might need to get this done before all his red stuff ends up on the outside.
We finally head into the ring. Marty pauses to retrieve his lunchbox from under the ring. After opening up Penta’s mask, Marty opens up his lunchbox. In between wiping his face with his shirt so that he can actually see something, Marty pulls out… his lunch! Oh, and a fork.
He’s never getting that T-shirt clean.
To chants of “Fork you!”, Marty goes to work, gouging at Penta’s head with the cutlery.
Back on the outside, As Penta lies in front of commentary, he continues the smartness from the earlier match by holding a chair up as a shield when Marty starts chucking more chairs at him.
Penta fights back. From an elevated position, he throws one of the many, many available chairs at Marty. Then, after getting over the dizzy spell (he’s bleeding a fair bit too, now), he does this:
We make our way back into the ring, which probably isn’t any safer at this point.
This match is adding to my ‘
blood for the blood god’ theory.
They keep coming back to a camera shot that is at mat level with the barbed wire bat right in the foreground. Y’know, just in case you forgot it was there.
Marty, after a low blow, puts Penta in a tree of woe with his top half in a bin. Remember that bat? Marty does. He starts swinging at the bin, denting and crumpling the metal, and even splits it at the join.
Another thing that Marty remembers, and you might too, is how he threatened to set Penta alight and actually doused him in gas the other week. Guess what he found under the ring?
Cero Miedo? Or algo de miedo? (Thank you google translate.) We may have found something that Penta is scared of.
Marty pours quite a bit of gas over Penta, and then chucks the can away and brings out the trusty zippo. Hope he’s kept that in a bag or something because I’m pretty sure that blood isn’t flammable, so he might have drowned it into uselessness.
The smartest wrestling in the world continues as, while Marty has his back turned taunting the crowd, Penta gets up and kicks the lighter away out of Marty’s hand and it flies out the ring.
Oh, wow. I love this next spot, but I’ve never seen it done quite this way.
I think of The Rock when I think of that spot, but I doubt he’d do it with a barbed wire bat. There wasn't the loud noise of a chair, but there was audible contact.
For me, it’s just one of those weird little spots that are completely stupid, but make you laugh every time.
Marty gets hiptossed out the ring and through one of the tables that is set up at ringside.
I’ve not forgotten about the glass panel that is still lurking nearby… and that is the direction that they are heading in.
After a little bit of teasing about who is going through it, Marty ends up being the one playing stuntman (anybody remember that game? It was great) tonight.
I can’t even bring myself to make a 'coward jumping through the window to escape' joke.
After Penta gets who I assume is Marty under all the blood back in the ring, he wants to finish things off with something that he’s used before. The package piledriver while atop chairs that have been set up in two rows facing each other to create a platform.
He hits it and… gets the three! Was… was that the only pin attempt in the entire match? There definitely weren’t many, but I’m struggling to think of any others at all.
New Lucha Underground Champion – Pentagon Dark!
Ooh, one final arm break? No, here’s Reklusa to prevent it. So, she was nearby, but maybe Marty wanted to go it alone. She keeps him down long enough for Marty to roll out of the ring, and then follows him as he is helped away by multiple refs.
Vampiro gets in the ring. There are ten minutes left.
Vamp walks around, clearing the ring of debris. He has the LU title, so the ref that did have it has no reason to stay in ring and also leaves.
Vamp motions Penta to stand up and come join him in the …middle of the ring… where the seal is… I don’t trust this.
Nope, Vamp doesn’t have a giant beard, that’s somebody’s arm.
Vamp bows to Penta as he hands the title over to the new champ.
That was a great way to end the show and series. Now let’s all just.. damn it, there’s more.
Penta holds the belt up to the crowd as Vamp looks… I dunno, but it’s not how he should be looking at this time. Penta turns back to Vamp and gets kicked between the legs! I knew you couldn’t trust him! Didn’t I say it?!
Ha! Penta manages to get back to his feet… and returns the kick! Right, now we’re just having a fight.
And here comes…
Somebody! Skeletor runs in and smacks Penta with the chair. He then turns to face a fallen Penta and removes his skull… mask… to reveal…
Another mask! Very Penta like.
1,2,3,4,5,6! It’s Hexagon! It may actually be for all I know, I’m pretty sure there is (was?) an Octagon wrestling in Mexico.
Vamp wants to introduce Pentagon to HIS master (I swear he looked a lot bigger in the clip we saw him in, guess he was standing on a box). We don’t get a name, because Vamp is out of practice at intros, but we do get Hexa showing off what he can do.
Surely, having more sides means he should be bigger than Penta, right? If he’s smaller, he should be square, or triangle. Oh yeah, the showing off that I mentioned before getting distracted:
Hexa then tells Vamp to put Penta back in the ring and goes to the top rope to hit a… well, he just jumped off and did all the spins. It was a corkscrew SSP, like Neville/PAC’s Red Arrow, but somehow more spinny.
Oh god, it gets worse. Here’s Jake Strong. Vamp and his master leave the ring and the destroyed champ to the GOTG holder.
Jake grabs the semi-conscious Penta and tells him that Cueto made it clear that he can cash in whenever he wants. He gets growly as he makes sure that Penta understands him. Jake hands the Gift of the Gods over to the ref and…
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Lucha Underground Championship: “The Savage” Jake Strong vs Pentagon Dark(C)Shaul is really slacking off on this ring announcing stuff.
Not much hope for the ninja skeleton here. Several seconds into the match:
C’mon Penta, where’s
your new master to save you? Where is Nonagon?
Jake snaps Penta’s ankle. I did say way back that this was where we would end up, but I didn’t see us getting here like this.
Penta does not tap out. He passes out. That is still a loss though.
To loud “Bullshit” chants, Jake holds up the title as the credits role and Striker bids us farewell from the Temple...
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Of course there’s a post credit thing.
It’s a super secret meeting:
Dragon, Cuerno, and Aerostar.
Cuerno says that it is too dangerous, the gauntlet must go back into hiding.
Dragon disagrees, he says that the gods are already too strong, but if they strike now it may give them the advantage they need.
Aerostar makes his decision and hands the gauntlet to Dragon, telling him to make it quick. Dragon replies, “She plans to.”
Cuerno checks something that has caught his eye with the floor grate after Dragon leaves.
Meeting number two.
Matanza is pacing in the dark after his loss, when somebody enters the room.
She says that she now knows that El Dragon Azteca didn’t kill her parents, he did! Hey, it’s Black Lotus!
Ah, that’s who the gauntlet went to.
She says she is going to finish the job that she came here to do.
Matanza approaches and with her fancy new lightning fist she fights him off and… rips his heart out!?
That's shocking. Who would have thought that Matanza would go out like that? I guess the gauntlet was his kryptonite. Wonder if it's as effective against the other gods?
Dragon pops up next to Lotus, telling her that her parents can finally be at peace. She says that so can his master, as she casually gives the gauntlet back.
That’s one way of going on the quick attack. One god down…
Dragon stands over Matanza… and is sneak attacked by Jake Strong! He says that the gauntlet doesn’t belong to Dragon, and then snaps his ankle. He picks up the gauntlet and says, in growly voice, “It belongs to us!”
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Taya is checking herself out in the mirror when Johnny jumps scares into frame and wraps around her. He asks if she saw it? And also that he thought she was going to be in his corner tonight?
He’s not picking up that things are not right with her, but works it out and comes to the conclusion that she wanted him to do it himself.
Johnny suggests that now that they’ve got revenge, they finally go on that honeymoon that they didn’t get.
Taya says sorry, but she’s not his wife! She grabs him by the throat and starts slamming him against the lockers and walls as we hear Rosa’s giggle.
She is.. a god. (with glowing red eyes and a creepy giggle)
We don't get any definitive proof of Johnny's fate before we leave the scene.
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After a city shot so that we can see the ominous lighting, we jump into the limo.
Winter is there and he tells Antonio that everything is coming together, just as prophesised. The descension is complete:
OOOOOHHHHHH! Ok. Right. Vamp is with The Order, his assignment was this god. The commentary around Penta will be interesting to listen back to knowing this. I'm thinking that Penta was Vamp's original nomination for a host, but it was turned down due to Penta's lack of focus or commitment, which is why Vamp has such a go at him when he plays to the crowd during his matches.
Antonio says that all of the gods have take human form. Guess he doesn’t know about Matanza yet.
Winter confirms that the LU title is back in their control.
Hexagon says that now they will destroy all seven tribes… I think, he’s not got the easiest voice to understand.
Also in the limo is the shadowy, cigar smoking guy, the "employer"
I swear this ten minutes is lasting at least an hour.
Jake enters with the gauntlet and is asked whose blood is on it and his shirt. Now Antonio knows about Matanza.
Shadowy guy says that Antonio’s son was a worthy host and the Order will never forget his sacrifice.
But now they must find a new host.
Cigar smoker leans forward and… HOLY SHIT!
He asks if any one else has any bad news.
Wow. I am so pleased, and more than a little shocked that I didn’t get that reveal spoiled for me. No idea that he was any part of LU. Man, that would have been sooo good to see play out!
He leans back after saying that he guesses it’s time to take over the world.
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*Gasp* Is it happening? We are going back to one year ago.
Antonio removes the key from around Dario’s neck and closes the casket on his son. After he leaves, there is a flash of light.
Didn’t you learn anything from last time?
Aerostar replaces the key with Piedre Immortal and utters the immortal phrase: “Come with me.”
Dario opens his eyes, sees Aerostar, sits up and asks, “What the Fu” TO BE CONTINUED…
I was vaguely aware that Dario as a character is about and involved in something wrestling, MLW I think? So it's not hugely shocking that he got resurrected, but it's also not one of those things I was thinking about and waiting for.
--------------------------
The episode itself was fantastic, thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a little odd to say but I think the 2/3 falls match was probably the weakest part of it. But if you can say that was the weak part, you know it’s a good show.
I was thinking pre-watch that maybe it will be that LU becomes much more loved because it didn’t overstay it’s welcome… but after the episode, I just want more.
I am so, so glad that I watched this series. It was a joy, it introduced me to some new wrestlers and showed what some others are capable of. On top of that, it really was unique, nothing else like it.
Definitely will be getting rewatches, which will give me a new perspective with the knowledge of where things are heading.
Next time:
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After 2¾ years, 127 episodes, almost 100 hours of footage, somewhere around a quarter of a million words, and too many images to be bothered counting... the series is done.
But there will be more to come.
More overall thoughts from me once I have a little bit for it all to settle in my brain, and I guess (and hope) more discussions about all the behind the scenes stuff, things that didn’t make it, the dramas, and all sorts that I've not been allowed to know about before now.
As a starting point if anybody wants to get things going before me, I am interested in more details and info about the human form gods.
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And one last time I have to thank everybody for coming with me on this journey. Extra thanks goes to those that threw in any extra input or info for me. Hopefully at some point in the future we get somebody else doing this and I can join in on the other side.
And now I'm just sitting here trying to find stuff to type so that I don't have to hit the post button, cause that means I am at the end.
) and so regular talents while being able to stagger him should not be able to bring him down not yet...and this was the same with Matanza I always go back to powerscaling on this show and this isn't all that different it took a good chunk of time for the rest of the roster to in story be able to start bring Matanza down and it took Pentagon a whole transformation in story but again the caviat here is that this reveal came way too late in the game and that is the biggest mistake IMO about this entire push.
, I figured I'd take a crack at guessing how it ends. After much thought... well, some thought... OK, I had two or three random ideas and now I'm going to cobble something together using them, along with whatever other nonsense comes to me as I type.
