Rey Mysterio Discusses The Changes In The Wrestling Industry

– Rey Mysterio recently spoke with huffingtonpost.com, about how the wrestling industry has changed. Here is what he had to say…

“I think starting from the very beginning, the styles have changed a lot,” Mysterio told me. He continued, “I think that’s due to the fact that you see more lightweights coming around. I didn’t think this would happen at all because for a long time management kind of just pushed us aside. It seems like something that was often talked about in 1996 and 1997—in the early WCW years. Along with Chris Jericho and Dean Malenko, we got that whole Crusiserweight division pumped up and ready to go. It lasted while it was in WCW. When WWE purchased the company, it kind of just went away. I remember Dean pushing for the division’s return for so many years and they never really pursued it, you know? Finally, after all these years it’s out there and that’s the whole evolution of this business. It might be a bad thing to say but the heavyweights don’t rule this world anymore. It’s all about the style and what you can bring to the table—how exciting you can be. The show has to catch your attention. And I think the Cruiserweights know how to do that.” Lucha Underground’s wrestlers are some of the flashiest men and women in the wrestling world. They leave fans begging for more of their insane athleticism that cannot be found in any other company. The majority of Lucha Underground’s professional wrestlers have often cited Mysterio as a personal source of inspiration. Mysterio was one of the very few smaller athletes who was able to live out his dream of becoming a World Champion. His road to superstardom wasn’t easy. “I remember we would all grab minivans and we would jump into four or five of them. Sometimes even more. That was our lifestyle back then,” Mysterio recalled while discussing memories of riding with his fellow luchadores. He followed up by saying, “None of the bigger guys wanted to work with the smaller guys. I got lucky at the end because I had a good relationship with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. They kind of took me under their wing. Eventually, we came down to that match with me and Nash on Nitro with me beating him. At that point in time for a guy like me—it was incredible. But Eddie and Jericho—none of them had a good relationship with Nash. I wasn’t so mixed up with the politics back then because I was only 21 at the time. I was just enjoying life. I was doing whatever they asked me to do and I would do it with a smile on my face. Always. But I do remember that Jericho started to do his own thing because they weren’t taking him into consideration with the big storylines. Eddie then started doing his own thing with the Latino World Order. We worked against each other because we had the best matches. So if we weren’t going to get the push that we deserved, we were at least going to put on the best matches and then have the bigger guys follow us.” Hardcore fans of the product were drawn to the high-flying theatrics of Mysterio. They gravitated toward his never-say-die attitude and will to win. “We were getting away with certain things that normally we couldn’t get away with. We were doing more things together. If it was going to be complicated working with top talent, we were at least going to have fun among ourselves. That’s what we did every night.”