Rey Mysterio

[AshC]

Junior. Where do you rank him, among the greats? As alluded to in another thread, his longevity has been incredible and he can still go today, 30-odd years after his breakthrough. Perhaps the most synonymous masked wrestler, following more than two decades with WWE.

Obviously his in-ring work was revolutionary for its time and his ability to still hit some of those highs is insane. Add into that his influence and the sheer number of good to great Mysterio matches that must be out there, from TVs, PPVs, fucking ECW fan cams... 

I don't think he has the catalogue of main event matches a Bret Hart or a Shawn Michaels or a Steve Austin has. But his quality of output, week to week, month to month, year to year, decade to decade... who else ever has been that good for that long on a major stage? 

You can argue he didn't really work heel, beyond the WCW 2000 stuff and that may go against him. And he wasn't a promo guy as such. I don't think focusing on either massively suited his persona anyway. He was typically used to his strengths.

Was he involved in enough great programmes, issues, angles? Would he have worked earlier in the time line, even like three years earlier, when it comes to the WWE run?

Was some of his success encouraged by the move to a more in-ring, 'action' style... or was he that good that he drove wrestling towards becoming that style? 

This is a guy you could plug into the opener, the tag title scene or a main event challenge and it'd work. For years and years and years. 

Interested in thoughts about Mysterio and where he sits among the top lads. 

[air_raid]

12 hours ago, AshC said:

Was some of his success encouraged by the move to a more in-ring, 'action' style... or was he that good that he drove wrestling towards becoming that style? 

I think the latter. Technically he wasn’t in the WCW Cruiserweight division from the very start but it only really exploded once he started knocking out a banger every week on Nitro.

[tiger_rick]

His longevity is incredibly impressive, given his knees were fucked in 1998. He was revolutionary in the mid 90s and his style was something you had to see at the time. There's chatter in another thread about the Halloween Havoc match with Eddie and to look back on it now and not consider how it made you feel the first time you saw it is to do it a disservice. Seeing Rey for the first time was mind-blowing.

He's absolutely nowhere near the top tier, for me. I can see why WWE want him to be and push him out but he has several black marks against him. Any time he was put into a position high up the card, it was rubbish. The stuff he was part of in 2006 was, frankly, sick as fuck and he deserved every booing. 

I dunno if he's a big fanny or what, but he's also let himself be part of some truly atrocious stuff. Whether that's losing his mask, losing his "eye", being in horrific factions like the Filthy Animals, being a jobber World Champion, putting his own kid in an angle, and on the line in a match, etc. He's got a catalogue that includes some all-time dirt-worst stuff. 

In terms of Cruiserwight Wrestlers in US promotions, I think he's the best ever for that initial run. On an all-time list, I don't think he'd make my top 50.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I hadn’t seen any Mysterio in WCW, so the first I’d heard of him were the mask-themed vignettes hyping him turning up in WWE in 2002. “Think you’ve seen high flying? You ain’t seen nothing yet” had me immediately buying into this guy.

His debut match against Chavo was good, but it was his run-in during the Cage Match main event (Edge vs Jericho?) that was the real grabber. Rey climbed up that cage with such speed and then just leapt off the top of it with a beautiful cross body onto everyone. Straight away, night 1, you knew this was someone special. They very quickly moved him away from the cruisers and into a feud with Angle after that.

I’m not a huge fan anymore, I think it was that stupid ridiculous pathetic Eye For An Eye match during Covid that made me lose all my interest in Rey.

[Chili]

Revolutionary wrestler, to me in 1996 he was absolutely mind blowing to watch as were many of the cruiserweights, but he stood out so much. He has such an incredible body of work, plus Bret Hart loved and wished he could have worked with him, so you literally can't argue with God. Shut up!

As @tiger_rick says he's a right fanny though. He has the same syndrome Kurt Angle had in that whatever they gave him to do even if it was a fucking weird Vince thing or tasteless, he'd just nod his head and do it when he probably had enough pull to say "actually, nah mate". That skit at the Rumble where he gets No. 1 and looks up to "Eddie" and pulls a face is up there with "I'm sorry, I love you" for overdone WWE cringe. 

Edited Wednesday at 10:15 AM by Chili

[DavidB6937]

I never really bought into Rey Mysterio the person/character which has always kept him away from breaking into a top tier of anything for me. It has to be a whole package for me to be able to really consider someone one of the absolute best. Is he fun to watch? Sure. Has he paved the way for many? Absolutely. But I'd be hard pushed to mention many memorable feuds he's had or anything like that. He's mostly relied on in-ring performances or Eddie related stuff. That's probably being a bit harsh on the guy but in my head that's just how I remember him. Or as others have said - just some really daft shit.

Good. Really good. Great? In some ways for sure, but not great enough.

[Lorne Malvo]

I absolutely hated him back when I was a smark teenager. Thought he was an overrated overpushed little shit. I remember nearly crying when he beat Matt Hardy V1 for the Cruiser title on an episode of Smackdown.

I'm not as stupid as I used to be and now recognise he's great with the right person, very good with most people and very very rarely has a stinker, and his longevity is incredible. The fact he's still going out there and wrestling on a weekly basis now when it looked like he was one match away from a heart attack in 2006 is crazy.

I don't like to hold all the shit angles and storylines he's been in against him, as if we did that then 90% of wrestlers would be guilty too. But in saying that, he really does have more wrestlecrap against his name than most. 

If I had to compile an all-time top wrestlers list he'd be in the upper-card along with someone like Jericho, but doesn't break into the top tier for me. 

[BomberPat]

the amount of bollocks Rey has been involved in is baffling for a bloke who seems to have a pretty good sense of his worth, and hitched his wagon to Konnan for as long as he did - there should be no one better at cynically navigating the wrestling business and milking it for all it's worth. I'm left to assume that he genuinely trusts that they were all good ideas.

I don't know where he would sit as an all-timer. I try to shy away from that kind of categorising of wrestlers and wrestling. But he did more than anyone to bring elements of Lucha Libre into American wrestling, and was easily the most successful at adapting from Lucha to the American TV style, and that counts for something - not only that, but he arguably achieved it multiple times over his career; in ECW, in WCW, in WWE, and arguably in Lucha Underground and again in WWE when he returned.

There's a handful of wrestlers who were so good at what they did that they forced WWE to bend around them. Rey, Kurt Angle, and Bryan Danielson are the three that really come to mind - I remember William Regal saying that Danielson getting over in WWE meant that everyone else had to up their game to be able to match him in the ring, and Rey had a lot of that to him too, that he became a bit of a measuring stick for whether you could have a "good match" or not. It's hard to picture another 5'3" luchadore getting to a point in his career where The Undertaker is happy to have a competitive match with them.

[Supremo]

Seeing Danielson and Rey Mysterio mentioned in the same sentence sent me down a cagematch rabbit hole, checking if they’d had matches together. The fact that they had a bunch of matches together in WWE I can’t remember a single one of them probably speaks to the biggest problem with Rey. Why his longevity is both a blessing and a curse.

To be wrestling at the top level longer than the UKFF has existed is amazing, but the majority of it happening in WWE means it all blends together and nothing stands out. I know he’s had great matches as recently as the last few months, but fucked if I could name them. By contrast, a Rey Mysterio vs. Bryan Danielson or a Rey Mysterio vs. Darby Allin match on a random Dynamite would probably stay with me for the rest of my life.

Interestingly, this appeared on my Timeline recently…

It’s a funny factoid that Rey is one of the rare wrestlers who main-evented an, “All In,” show.

I understand why he went back to WWE in order to kickstart Dirty Dom’s carer, but everything that’s happened since feels like a huge, “what if?”

You wonder how Rey feels watching Dynamite these days. Seeing the New Level having a career renaissance. Seeing the Stephen Borden project begin to take shape. That could have been Dirty Dom. Rey could have been Sting. He could have had the ultimate retirement run, having memorable matches, ending his career on a high rather than a fog of nothingness.

Can’t knock him too much, though. Incredible that he’s managed to come back and still perform at such a high level off the back of that horrific injury where his eyeball fell out of its socket.

Edited Wednesday at 11:07 AM by Supremo

[The Gaffer]

31 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

the amount of bollocks Rey has been involved in is baffling for a bloke who seems to have a pretty good sense of his worth

I think that last part might be the key. Rey probably clocked that no matter how many dodgy angles WWE threw his way, he was always likely to be rolling in it with merch sales and would always have kids to boop heads with on the way down to the ring, which seems to be his happy place in terms of how he wants to show up in the business. 

I think there's very little you could have done to kill him off once he became a WWE regular. He's a bit like Orton in that sense, who by his own admission never causes a fuss about scripts because it's not his wheelhouse and no matter what tripe you write for him, he's always going to be Randy Orton. 

[BomberPat]

thing is, I don't think Rey looks to AEW and other people's success there with any jealousy. I think he's completely WWE-pilled, and sees it as the pinnacle of the industry. There's a reason Dominik was fast-tracked to WWE without getting any experience elsewhere, and that Aaliyah is set to do the same. I've heard Rey talk about Randy Orton as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, and one of the best to study and learn from. I think he's like Cody Rhodes - he had that independent run between WWE runs, went and worked AAA, NJPW, the first All In, was making sweet money (he was quoting around $20,000 a booking at one point), but deep down it was only ever about proving his worth to WWE, showing them what they were missing. 

It's weird thinking of this guy who was absolutely revolutionary in ECW, was a big part of AAA feeling exciting and fresh, and then a cornerstone of one of the best parts of WCW, that he just a WWE guy inside and out now. Sort of like AJ Styles ending up being a company man. 

[DCW]

I only know his WWE run. He was one of the few ex WCW lads brought in properly and treated like a star by WWE, which singled him out as already a cut above most of the SD roster in 2002. I enjoyed his first year or so and the Matt Hardy feud, and Big Show swinging him for the fences, but he became very stale very quickly with the same matches, crap promos/no personality and becoming increasingly muscular and less mobile. His 06 main event run was in such poor taste with all the Eddie stuff that I'm surprised he managed to escape from it pretty much unscathed, except for the crowd shitting on him at One Night Stand. He did very well to become a WWE lifer considering their traditional aversion to the smaller lads, though I imagine all the merch money for the masks helped with that so fair play I suppose.

[mim731]

3 hours ago, Supremo said:

Seeing Danielson and Rey Mysterio mentioned in the same sentence sent me down a cagematch rabbit hole, checking if they’d had matches together. The fact that they had a bunch of matches together in WWE I can’t remember a single one of them probably speaks to the biggest problem with Rey. Why his longevity is both a blessing and a curse.

You're not wrong, and it being in WWE is part of the problem, but those matches I would imagine would have been in the pre stem cell years for Rey where he could seemingly barely even do a springboard any more, and his body was falling apart. Those stem cells 100% seem to have given him an extra decade and more. 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I think I was the only Filthy Animals fan in existence.

[AshC]

I quite liked them as well, would typically pump out good TV matches. The 'Bottom'-style silhouette entrance was fun as well.

Here's another cool gang o' lads.