Johnny Mundo pulls a Mistico missed tornillo dive – but goes on to win!

the matches

  • Johnny Mundo [O] & Prince Puma [O] b Cortez Castro [X] & Mr. Cisco [X] – (9:21, top rope 450 splashes on both men) – GOOD
  • Chavo Guerrero Jr. & Sexy Star [O] b Ivelisse Vélez & Son of Havoc [X] (2846-3421, casadora cradle) – OK
  • Mil Muertes b Blue Demon Jr. (4:22, flatliner) – OK

the developments

  • Castro, Cisco and Big Ryck all got names. Mundo rushed them, ran them off, they teased coming back with weapons, and Puma evened the odds. Cueto made it a tag match. Mundo & Puma won, but Konnan disauded Puma from getting involved with Mundo and his battles. Konnan wants Puma just to list to him. Puma remains mute.
  • Big Ryck watched his partner’s match from the crowd, smoking a cigar, and walked off with after the loss.
  • Sexy Star beat Son of Havoc to get revenge for last week’s tights pull. Chavo had the match won with the frog splash but tagged in Sexy to allow her to try to the ring.
  • Mil Muertes was introduced. He’s got Catrina, who licks Muerte’s opponents before he faces them. She’s got a mysterious object that’s important to him. He won clean in his debut.
  • Chavo ran in post match as if to save Demon from more of an attack, but instead hit Demon with a chair. Chavo took out two referees, two unidentified wrestlers and was temporary stopped by Sexy. Commentators invented a story about Chavo being Sexy’s hero/mentor. Chavo hit her with a chair shot too. Demon was stretechered out as if seriously injured.

Thoughts

don’t even know what I’m meant to be calling this.
Opening tag match was good. It was less a total move exhibition than last week, but they worked basic tag team forumla and so they had more of a story than last week’s show. Mundo & especially Puma seemed way out of Castro/Cisco’s league in this match. Maybe Cisco & Castro shouldn’t lose in their debuts, but they definitely should not have beaten those guys – and Big Ryck is being treated as the important guy.
Mixed tag match was better than I thought it would be. Sexy’s figured out enough things to do as a tecnica to make it work. Ivellise was given a minimal introduction, no more than Son of Havoc really. There was one really noticable miscommunication spot near the end that they couldn’t edit out, but otherwise it was okay. It served it’s purporse.
stereo 450 splashes
Main event didn’t do much for me. I’m okay with not seeing Demon for a while, but not-Mesias was not so great either. This match was more about getting over the character than having a good match and making Muertes look like a threat via clean win, but it was all kind of blah. It also totally got overshadowed by the post match angle, which an unexplained swerve.
Commentary was worse than last week and more what I was concenred about. Striker was all over place and hitting the “we’re not the WWE!” talking more frequently and more explicity than last week. Vampiro was saving absurd things. They tried to sell the seriousness of the show ending angle but it was hard to be with them at that point. Though the story of Sexy and Chavo having a meaningful relationship came out of nowhere and would’ve been a hard sell for anyone – the sudden of it all and the expectation we’d care cracked me up.
tecnicos win the segunda
The two patterns so far are ending the show with a big angle to try and get people to come back for week two, and the show being broken down into three long segments. They had a long segement to start and a long one to end, which left a lot of commerical time in the middle half of the show. El Rey is airing a lot of house ads and probably cuodl afford to give Lucha Underground a few more minutes. It may be a Unimas issue, but it definitely breaks up the flow of watching the show live.
Things changed between tapings. We’ll see what that means for next week. They have edited things – there’s now way those matches were that short live – but they ending pushing the Chavo turn and the Demon injury angle big and didn’t hint towards the three guys starting next week.
lick
flatliner for the win
and this also happened