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Welcome back to the Fun House Mirror, where we look at a reality television show that wants to look like a MMA show but often looks like a bad pro wrestling show, and American wrestling companies who think that they are Mexican wrestling companies.
The anticipation is high as the first episode of Lucha Libre USA is here. For those who aren't familiar with "authentic" lucha libre product, here is a list of things that you are likely to find at a "real" lucha libre show:
* Bikini clad ring girls who line the ramp way as the luchadors come to the ring. They are NPC's who do not get involved in any way in the story lines.
* Short people who dress up like the larger luchadors who act as mascots.
* All matches being two out of three fall trio matches with captains and lieutenants. You win a fall by beating both lieutenants or beating the captain.
* All matches having two referees, one heel, one baby face. The referees show obvious bias, but do count pin falls impartially.
* Many (but not all) of the luchadors wear masks. If a luchador is unmasked during a match he is thought to lose some of his masculinity. If a luchador loses a mask in a challenge match then he may never wear a mask again (hey Rey Mysterio!) and must give his name and years experience. Most people who lose their masks this way are twenty year veterans who are doing it to move their careers to a new stage.
* The other huge topper match to feuds is hair versus hair. While you can lose your mask once, you can lose your hair as many times as you can grow it. In Chikara, Icarus has lost his hair twice. One Mexican luchador has lost his hair over half a dozen times.
So, can Lucha Libre USA bring the authentic flava? VTR come on!
We start with all of the wrestlers in a stage ring, like at the start of NXT, only these guys look scarier because their dressed up like gang members from the movie Warriors. The background music sounds suspiciously like the UFC PPV background music.
Well, well, bikini clan ring girls! Check.
Small people wrestlers! Check.
Not bad so far.
Traditional trios match! Check.
The first match is a trios match: El Oriental (c), El Limon, and Neutronic (rudos) taking on the technicho team of PR Powers (PR Flyer and San Juan Kid), and Mascara Purpura (c).
The back story to the match is that the rudos are upset that the much younger techinco team thinks that they are on the rudos team's level.
I'm not going to try to describe all of the action, but a couple of details to stand out. While the high flying is usually pretty good and crisp, the transitions are usually not. Also, there is a tendency to do moves that make little sense, like doing as top rope front flip into the ring just so you can do an arm drag.
However, crisp logical wrestling is not the point of lucha. The point is for the technicos to look good until the rudos do dastardly things the gain the advantage and then do beat downs.
The match ends when the rudos get a double pin on the two lieutenants after they missed a couple of top rope moves. There was only one referee, so it looked kind of clumsy. Why not two refs guys? Also, no two out of three falls? Well, one step at a time.
RJ Brewer then does a pre-recorded promo saying that he's from Arizona and he feels that the luchadors are a disgrace to "real" professional wrestling and might not even deserve to be here. He gets heat.
Tag team action is next as technicos Mini Park and Mascarita Dorada (who come out to cheesy cover music) take on rudo Pequeno Halloween and San Francisco native "exotico" Chi Chi. Apparently exotico means eighties disco gay stereotype. But, to combat this, Chi Chi is accompanied by Tigressa Caliente an imposing looking female. Adrian Street would be proud.
Chi Chi is referred to as "she".
Mascarita Dorada for a one hundred pounder is one hundred times more fluid in the ring than the first group of technicos.
After many shenanigans Chi Chi (who loses her wig in the match to show that she is a huge buff bald guy) distracts the ref so that Tigressa Caliente can power bomb Mini Park so that Chi Chi can pick up the win.
We get highlights next and I got to admit, Mascarita Dorada doing six freaking revolutions on Pequeno Halloween's shoulders is a total win.
We next get a promo package for Lujo Esquire, international man of luxury. Unlike the NXT promo packages, this promo package does not suck and is eighties-tastic.
We then get a back stage confrontation between Marco Corleone and his opponent Tineablas Junior seconded by El Limon. The segment is all in Spanish but subtitled, which worked big time. The purpose of the segment was to show that Marco wasn't some gringo who was a fish out of water in Mexican culture but a veteran of lucha libre who could talk smack right back to Tineablas Junior.
Marco is with some fat wrestler who isn't Super Porky but wasn't too bad.
Time for the main event as rudo Tineablas Junior accompanied to the ring by Neutronic takes on techinco Marco Corleone who is accompanied by Solid which must be the name of the heavy guy in the backstage segment.
Solid is totally doing the "fat guy" gimmick, eating on the way to the ring.
The story of the match is that Neutronic interferes freely on Marco allowing Tineablas to gain an advantage until Solid attacks Neutronic on the outside (because Solid is too fat to make it into the six sided ring). Marco is then able to gain a victory by a roll up.
However, there is no time to celebrate as Lizmark Junior and a mystery masked luchador hit the ring and leave Solid and Marco laying.
Next week, a tag tournament starts.
So, how did they do? There was lots of lucha flying as you would expect. The wrestling was kind of lax with the exception of the work by Mascarita Dorada. The promo packages were genius, straight out of the eighties.
So, can it survive? I hope so.
How will Chikara counter this?
Well, according to one report on Pro Wrestling Insider, Chikara is countering by supplying Lucha Libre USA with enhancement talent. That Mike Quackenbush is a smart luchador!
As for the Chikara podcast, they just did their usual thing because they can. This week they start their coverage of their King Of Trios tournament, a 16 team single round elimination tournament featuring one fall matches. The clips were from Team Frightening (Mike Quackenbush, Hallowicked and Frightmare) against Team Big Japan and Minnesota's First Family and BDK 2 (Tim Dunst, Pinky Sanchez and Lince Dorado). The Big Japan guys aren't very tall but they are monsters, outstanding examples of muscular conformation and definition. They not only dish out some stiff action, they also take multiple high spots. The second clip is more spot heavy, but ends with Lince doing a corkscrew moonsault off the top turn buckle to the floor to a crowd of people so how can we complain?
It's your typical fun podcast, not meant to compete with Lucha Libre USA but it's free on YouTube.
Which brings us to WWE NXT. Last week the season two hopefuls were bit players on their own show as the show was all about putting over Nexus.
Can the season two rookies bounce back?
Click that VCR play button:
We start out with a pre-recorded segment where Matt Striker runs an obstacle course. Fortunately, no drinking soda in this one. His time is 41.5 seconds.
If this seems familiar, that is because Johnathon Coachman ran the obstacle course before the Divas when he was hosting the Diva challenge. His time was way faster than the fastest Diva time so this was probably a bad idea.
And, Striker (former Northeast Independent Wrestler) is in terrific shape so even if he was taking it easy, don't expect him to finish last.
This week it's for immunity because someone is going home next week!
But, before the elimination challenge we get The VIP lounge with M.V.P. I would guess that he wasn't too happy with his rookie Percy Watson ambushing him on Percy's talk show last week.
And, as predicted, M.V.P. calls Percy out to be his guest. Percy apologizes and M.V.P. accepts it because M.V.P. would have done the exact same thing if he was a rookie.
But, before they can party, Striker comes out and asks M.V.P. why Percy should be ranked number one on next week's poll. Both M.V.P. and Percy cut promos.
Striker cuts Percy off and Rhodes and Harris come out. Striker gives them sixty seconds to explain why Harris should be number one.
Rhodes takes most of his time insulting the crowd. Harris stumbles over his words but at least finishes with a catch phrase "I'm real".
To which M.V.P. responds "real fat".
We then get some MITB spam and a promo package of Lucky Cannon where the pros give their opinions. The Miz labels him forgettable.
The pros are out in force to judge our next match and The Miz is keeping his MITB briefcase close to him at all times. Lay Cool is dressed to impress as always.
It's Team South Beach versus Team Family Feud. This is a rematch. The first time these to teams have tussled Team South Beach won when Percy pinned Harris after a float over DDT.
The obstacle course is set up around the ring. Will they run any spots off of it?
Team family feud avenge their earlier loss when Husky Harris does the fat man's running back senton slash on MVP to set up the three count. Both Harris and Watson looked okay in the match.
Mike McGillicutty gets the "pros talk about me" package next. Cody points out that Mike talks about ruthless aggression but wrestles with arm drags and drop kicks.
The recap last week's RAW where Wade Barrett dropped Mark Henry rudely on his head.
Because of this, Canon will not have his pro with him at ringside.
But, before the match, sixty seconds of promos on why Canon and A-Ri should be number one. Instead of pleading his case, Canon thanks the fans for helping him live his dream so far. Alex and The Miz cut heal promos.
A-Ri squashes Canon, so it's clear that the WWE realizes that heels are at a disadvantage in the fan voting. After the match The Miz fakes hitting Canon with the briefcase, but then walks off to show that Canon wasn't even worth it.
But, then The Miz changes his mind again and gives Canon the stroke on the briefcase. What a heel.
Will this affect Canon's ability to run the obstacle course?
We then get the NXT season one rebound where Wade Barrett offers to let John Cena join the Nexus, to be the Hulk Hogan to his Outsiders if you will. Cena tells them no, and then introduces his team that he has recruited to take out the Nexus at Summer Slam. Chris Jericho on Cena's team? I smell a rat.
He then get sixty seconds from Cottonwood and Kaval. Eli intimidates Striker into saying that he will vote for him (even though Striker can't vote). Lay Cool cut a Lay Cool promo and Kaval says that if the Universe wants to see a Kaval versus Mysterio match, they have the power to vote for him and make it happen.
The Elimination course is next. I think this is there attempt to throw A-Ri a softball since Canon is "hurt", Kaval will have trouble scaling some of the hurdles, Eli is clumsy, and Husky is fat.
But first, sixty seconds with Michael McGillicutty and Kofi Kingston. Kofi renames the universe as the McGilli-buddies.
Michael runs the course in 26.7 seconds but does some awful looking pushup and jumps across the last three quarters of the balance beam.
A-Ri is second. He totally blows his spot, having to do the balance beam twice. His time is just slightly faster than Striker's at 40.3 seconds.
Eli goes third. He gets disqualified for not doing ten push ups in the box and not properly completing the balance beam. And, his time of 37.3 seconds was slow as well.
Canon is fourth, and he is still selling the stroke. Canon's time is 28.2 seconds. Close, but not good enough.
Kaval is fifth. He astonishes by jumping over hurdles that are as big as he is. However, his is slowed up slightly at the end by pushing the crate up the ramp and comes in at 29.1 seconds.
Percy Watson is sixth. Percy doesn't have much intensity though and finishes at 31.5.
So far, only Kaval's pushups haven't looked like poo.
They save the best for last as Husky Harris, perhaps realizing that he has no chance of winning immunity, decides to shoulder tackle the third barricade and knocks it down. He gets disqualified and his time is 50.3.
As predicted, Striker does not have the slowest time.
So, next week, Michael has immunity and someone is going home.
Well, for better or worse, they squeezed a lot into this episode. A VIP lounge, seven promos, two matches and a challenge.
However, I would give this week to Lucha Libre USA just for the Lujo Esquire promo which was everything a promo package should be and everything a WWE promo package is not.
