PWP’s Joshua Gibbs expresses his love for Lucha Underground and proceeds to preview the brand new upcoming Season 2!
My love and admiration for Lucha Underground has been well-documented and I have been aching for my lucha libre fix since Season 1 ended this past August. While WWE is hit or miss each week, LU has the uncanny ability to deliver a fantastic show each and every time. Perhaps it’s because the show isn’t taped live allowing for bad spots or bumps to be edited later or simply because the quality and style of wrestling is so different from WWE. What can I say, I’m a sucker for the underdog. Lucha Underground doesn’t have the big budget or the network power that WWE has (no other promotion does) but it still manages to make more with less. The show is extremely entertaining and more than worth your time when Season 2 airs on the El Rey network in January 2016.
So where did we leave off?
After weeks of taunting, co-host Vampiro finally squared off against Pentagon, Jr. who had been taking orders from a mysterious figure whom he simply called “Master”. The Master had ordered Pentagon, Jr to lay a massive beating on Vampiro and he followed suit. Not only was it a good match, but I enjoyed seeing Vampiro in the ring again after such a prolonged absence.
However, it was all a ruse and quickly revealed that Vampiro was in fact the Master… THE WHOLE TIME! Very soap opera and yet such an entertaining reveal. It will be fun to see how they work this angle into the overall storyline and I love the pairing of the seasoned Vampiro as mentor/master to the younger and extremely talented Pentagon, Jr.
Meanwhile, puppet master Dario Cueto saw his precious temple hijacked by the Mexican Undertaker (Mil Muertes), who now holds the Lucha Underground Championship. In the wake of Muertes’ victory and subsequent takeover by his Disciples of Death and his corpse bride, Catarina, Cueto fled the temple (and presumably the city) along with Black Lotus and his as-yet-to-be-revealed drooling colossus of a brother. His exit had been teased during Ultima Lucha when Cueto stated that “a war has been started.” The apparent death of another luchador (El Dragon Azteca) was the last straw in precipitating Cueto’s hasty retreat from Boyle Heights. For fans, this means that we may see other settings for matches and promos which has discussed during the off-season and could include locations in Texas or Mexico.
King Cuerno currently holds the Gift of the Gods Championship belt, which acts in much the same way as WWE’s Money in the Bank briefcase, except it looks way more badass. Late in Season 1, Dario Cueto announced that he had seven ancient Aztec medallions which represented the seven tribes of the ancient Aztec world. What I find most interesting is that this description isn’t too far from actual Aztec mythology, which plays a major part in LUs identity and helps differentiate it from other wrestling promotions.
Aztec legend says that seven tribes once lived underground in a place called Chicomoztoc (estimated to be modern-day central Mexico) which was also known as “the place of the seven caves”. Each cave represented a different tribe and as they grew, these tribes were forced to leave the caves and settled near a place called Aztlán which would eventually become the Aztec civilization. The actual location of Aztlan is generally placed in northwestern Mexico or the southwest U.S. but has yet to be found. It’s Indiana Jones meets lucha libre wrestling.
As for the GOTG belt, any wrestler who could win all seven medallions would be granted “a gift from the gods”. The belt is unlike anything we’ve seen before, as it has built-in receptacles for each medallion. Holding the belt entitles the champion to a match for the Lucha Underground Championship any time they choose, but the stipulation and biggest difference from the MITB briefcase is that they must give a one week notice in order to properly promote the match. Once the GOTG champion redeems the belt for a championship match, the medallions are removed and redistributed amongst the roster to determine who will compete for the now vacant title.
The first taping for Season 2 took place on November 14th and 15th and while there are spoilers out there, I prefer to wait. The plot will supposedly revolve around Dario Cueto’s absence and how the Temple is being run now that Mil Muertes/Catarina are in charge. Until the new season premieres in January, you can catch up on character bios and episode highlights from Season 1 at the official Lucha Underground website:
http://www.elreynetwork.com/originals/lucha
Thanks for reading!