Thursday, December 1, 2016

Motherfuckin' Lucha Underground! (Breaker Of Bones)

MORE KICKASS NINJA LADIES PLEASE!
The entire episode of Lucha Undergournd this week featured Pentagon Dark vs. the Black Lotus Triad, which made for great proper debuts for the memebers of the Triad, and a showcase for Pentagon Dark that also exposes the constant problem of Pentagon Dark.

Pentagon Dark is a "tweener", which is named for being "between" a face and a heel, but usually works out to mean "a wrestler who gets cheered despite using heel tactics". Smackdown-era Eddie Guerrero was a tweener. Stone Cold in his rise to legendary status was a tweener. And Pentagon Dark is the ultimate tweener. He BREAKS WRESTLERS ARMS. He beat the shit out of his master Vampiro at the end of Season 2 and licked Vampiro's blood off his hand.

But the Temple loves him. Matt Striker can pretend the chants of Cero Miedo are "almost taunting" him, but they're not. Pentagon Dark has earned the audience's respect and love for being consistently awesome, looking great, and creating lots of memorable moments, and THEY WILL NOT BOO HIM. Which makes the moral dynamics of this episode very strange.

The matches are excellent, though. The Black Lotus Triad are booked increasingly strongly. Doku gets some offense in, but loses fairly quickly and gets her arm "broken". Yurei takes things to the outside, does a lot more damage, but eventually gets her arm broken too. And then comes Hitokiri, and holy shit, thigs go nuts. HItokiri is what you'd get if Asuka and a high flyer had a love child. She and Pentagon go the fuck at it, and she reverses the package piledriver into a sick Destroyer for the win.

Black Lotus herself doesn't really wrestle, which is a good choice, because she can't match at least two of the performances that preceded her. Instead, she kicks the referee out of the ring and takes advantage of a downed Pentagon to BREAK HIS ARM. Now, Black Lotus is a heel. She's Dario's bodyguard and she killed El Dragon Azteca. She's a bit nuanced, because she's been led down the wrong path, but still. Heel. But she breaks Pentagon's arm for revenge against one of PD's most heelish actions ever, interrupting the Ultima Lucha Dos match between Lotus and Dragon Azteca Jr. and breaking both their arms.

And on top of it all, after this happens, DAJr. returns, Lotus leaves him the ring, and in revenge, he breaks Pentagon's OTHER arm! And DAJr. is one of the faciest faces in the company. There's a fine line between nuance and confusing, and I hope Lucha Underground navigates it going forward.

In other news, we learned three things from vignettes this week. First, that Catrina and Crane (Ivelisse's scummy boyfriend) used to be an item, and that Crane's necklace may have a chunk of Catrina's magic rock. Second, that Matanza can speak, doesn't give a shit about the championship, wants Rey Mysterio, and has been using something living or formerly living as a punching bag in his cell.

And finally, Vampiro has found Prince Puma, possibly in the underworld after his Grave Consequences match. Which could be fascinating.

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