Ask 411 Wrestling: Is CM Punk Wrestling’s Ultimate Hometown Babyface?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals . . . through Hel Stryer and brimstone, it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Before we get into this week’s questions, I want to start with something a bit different. In the October 7 edition of Ask 411, I published a book review for Red Equals Green, the debut novel of Ask 411 reader Christopher Regal.

Today, I’m going to plug another new book on the market, but this time it’s got nothing to do with professional wrestling.

Earlier this month, author Christopher Wilson (no relation to Christopher Regal – that’s not how names work) released his new nonfiction book The Complete History of the Crestwood House Monster Books. For those not familiar, from the late 1970s through the late 1980s, publisher Crestwood House released a series of books aimed at elementary school students which told the stories of many movie monsters, including the classic Universal monsters, Godzilla, King Kong, and many more. The Crestwood books were very influential on a certain demographic of young readers who couldn’t get enough monster mayhem, and Wilson’s new release provides the history of how these tomes came to be and their impact on a generation.

He also compiled memories of the Crestwood books written by over fifty different people who grew up with them as youngsters, who Wilson refers to as “Monster Kids.”

So, why am I taking the time to plug this book in a pro wrestling column that at first blush has nothing to do with the ghouls that haunted the silver screen?

You see, gentle readers, I am one of those Monster Kids.

If you want to read my remembrance of finding and devouring the Crestwood Monster Series, all thanks to my grandmother, you can buy your own copy of Wilson’s Complete History here.

When you do, tell ’em Ask 411 sent you.

With that, let’s get on to the pro graps.

APinOZ is everybody’s homeboy:

Has there been any wrestler from the United States who has more direct affinity with their hometown than CM Punk? Is there anyone else who gets the kind of insane hometown reactions that Punk does, because I’m struggling to think of anyone outside of perhaps Eddie Guerrero in El Paso.

No, I think he’s pretty much the top of the list.

If you were willing to expand this to North America and not just the United States, I think that Bret Hart in Calgary would rival Punk, but otherwise I don’t think anybody comes close.

The next guys on the list might be John Cena in Boston and Dave Batista in Washington, D.C., but they don’t approach rivaling Punk in Chicago – they’re just the next closest thing.

Bryan‘s Halloween costume this year is Eric Bischoff dressed as Dracula:

First I want to extend my gratitude, because when you posted my question about El Dandy last time, I wanted you to introduce me as a “jam up guy” but I would never tell you how to run your own column. You read my mind. Thanks.

My question is: When WCW was bought why didn’t the WWE make Halloween Havoc an October PPV. Or any horror themed PPV. Something to do with Halloween. Halloween Havoc had great and terrible matches but the marketing was great. Even if they called it something else like I don’t know “Graveyard Smash” and had interviewers and hosts in costume it would be awesome.

Actually, WWE has used the Halloween Havoc branding. NXT has run Halloween Havoc specials every year since 2020, and at least as of this writing there is another installment scheduled for Halloween 2026.

If what you meant by the question is why it took so long for WWE to do this, I don’t know that this question has ever been definitively answered, but I strongly suspect that one of the reason WWE didn’t use a lot of WCW events names or similar intellectual property in the years immediately after they acquired it is that they just didn’t see the value in doing so.

After all, WCW lost the war, and an invasion of the company’s roster failed to capture fans’ imagination. (The extent to which that is a branding failure versus A booking failure is beyond the scope of this question and has already been litigated many, many times.) With that being the case, why would WWE want to use WCW branding when it was doing just fine with its own?

WWE did start using WCW’s Great American Bash as an event name in 2004, but in 2005 there were some competing claims to the ownership of the Halloween Havoc trademark, which was a further reason to keep it on ice for a while.

Greg H wants to do some Scooby-Doo style unmasking:

Who portrayed Monster Solider 001 in HUSTLE?

Longtime readers may recall that for several years now I have periodically gone back to a long list of masked wrestlers from various promotions that Greg H has asked me to try to identify. Though his list consists of many, many names, I’ve typically only been able to tackle one at a time because, believe it or not, these unmaskings take a fair amount of digging.

For those of you unfamiliar with HUSTLE, it was a Japanese promotion active from 2004 through 2009 that, rather than traditional puroresu, embraced a wacky form of sports entertainment that they called “Fighting Opera.” If you want more backstory on HUSTLE, you can read this column from 2019 in which I answered one of Greg’s questions for the first time and started with a fair amount of background on the group.

Also in the archives, you can see me unmask other HUSTLE gimmicks such as Piranha Monster Z (here) and Flying Vampire #17 (here). Though not HUSTLE gimmicks, I also helped Greg identify several masked wrestlers from All Japan Pro Wrestling here.

With all that backstory out of the way, let’s go to the subject of this unmasking, as Greg’s list (not to be confused with craigslist) included a HUSTLE wrestler called Monster Solider 001. Let’s see if we can’t find out who that is.

From looking at results, Monster Soldier 001 had four HUSTLE matches. He was part of a six-man tag on a HUSTLE Christmas special on December 23, 2004. The very next night, December 24, 2004, he was part of a six-on-five handicap match on the second half of the same Christmas special. On March 18, 2005, he was part of a five-on-four handicap match at HUSTLE 8. Finally, on March 19, 2005, he lost a singles match to Wataru Sakata on HUSTLE House Volume 6.

Some of you may think you already know who Monster Solider 001 is. Several sources online say that this masked character was portrayed by veteran wrestler Ricky Reyes, formerly half of the Havana Pitbulls with Rocky Romero and also known as Cortez Castro in Lucha Underground.

However, this is only partially true.

All four of the HUSTLE shows on which Monster Solider 001 wrestled are, at least as of this writing, available to watch on archive.org. When I went to answer this question, I watched them out of chronological order, starting with HUSTLE 8.

Why did I start with HUSTLE 8? It was the first one that popped up in the search results.

On HUSTLE 8, it is pretty easy to identify that Monster Solider 001 is, in fact, Ricky Reyes. Reyes has long had a tattoo on the back of his right arm which reads “NUNEZ” in a Gothic font. (Nunez, for those wondering, is his legitimate last name.) That same tattoo is present on the right arm of the MS001 who is on HUSTLE 8.

But wait! That’s not the full story . . .

I then watched nights one and two of the 2004 HUSTLE Christmas special. In the multi-person tag team matches in which Monster Solider 001 wrestles on those shows, he is joined by Monster Soldier 002. The two Monster Soldiers are dressed identically, except they have Roman numerals on the back of their masks to help identify them, I appearing on the mask of 001 and II appearing on the mask of 002.

The “NUNEZ” tattoo is present during the Christmas matches as well, but, if we go by the masks, it is on the right arm of . . . Monster Soldier 002.

At this point, I went back to HUSTLE 8 to see if there was any Roman numeral on the back of the Monster Solider mask used in that match. There was, and it was the Roman numeral corresponding to Monster Solider 001.

Thus, even though several resources currently online, including Cagematch, identify Monster Solider 001 as Ricky Reyes on both Christmas specials and HUSTLE 8, it appears that Reyes was initially Monster Solider 002 on the 2004 Christmas specials and switched to being Monster Solider 001 at 2005’s HUSTLE 8. Presumably, his change occurred because the Monster Solider 002 gimmick was not used on HUSTLE 8, bumping Reyes to the 001 slot.

Then we get to HUSTLE House Volume 6, which mind you was just the day after HUSTLE 8. Monster Solider 001’s sole singles match occurs on that card, and during that match, he is decidedly NOT Ricky Reyes. Not only is the “NUNEZ” tattoo missing, but for this to be the same guy, Reyes would have to have lost a volume of muscle mass and definition the likes of which has not been seen since Chris Masters met the WWE Wellness Policy. It’s not entirely clear to me why this change was made, either, because records available don’t show that Reyes would have been unavailable for HUSTLE House Volume 6 as it occurred on March 19, 2005 and not only did he not have another match that day, he appears to have not wrestled again until March 25.

So there you go. It’s not a complete resolution of who played Monster Solider 001 in all instances, but it is confirmation that Reyes was in the role for one night but that, despite what other sources online may say as of this writing, he was not MS001 but rather MS002 on other occasions.

It should also be noted that there was another “Monster Solider” gimmick, without a number, that started appearing on HUSTLE shows in 2008, and available footage shows us that was not Reyes, either.

Jake‘s name always reminds me of the old Flash game Booty Call:

What are they weekly wrestling shows you usually watch if your schedule permits?

None of the above.

I haven’t watched a weekly wrestling show on a regular basis in years.

I’ll watch things online after the fact if they generate enough buzz when they first air, but weekly wrestling shows lost my interest a long time ago. That’s probably why so much of this column focuses on topics like, I don’t know, obscure masked gimmicks from Japanese wrestling promotions that died almost twenty years ago.

Mikey Too Hotty apparently doesn’t want to push the cruiserweights:

My question is regarding the cruiserweight division from the WCW Nitro days. Sure, they all put on excellent matches, and all the guys from Mexico were great talents. BUT in the long run it all meant nothing. They never had FEUDS, never crossed over to wrestle any meaningful matches with anyone else on the card. Each week it was just this luchador vs another luchadore for 4 to 8 minutes. Good match but nothing mattered. Why was this all so well received? To me it seemed like a waste of talent and TV time.

Thoughts?!

There’s quite a bit to unpack here.

First off, saying there were no feuds or meaningful matches in the WCW cruiserweight division just isn’t true.

Chris Jericho vs. Dean Malenko. Eddy Guerrero vs. Rey Misterio Jr. Chris Jericho vs. Rey Misterio Jr. Eddy Guerrero vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenko. Chris Jericho vs. Juventud Guerrera. Eddy Guerrero vs. Syxx.

And I could go on.

That being said, even though the question references the WCW cruiserweight division, it doesn’t seem to be about the whole of the cruiserweight division. It seems to be about the luchadors in the cruiserweight division.

Again, it’s not correct to say that there were no significant matches or crossover stars among those guys. See above regarding Misterio, Guerrero, Guerrera, and Ultimo. (Ultimo is Japanese, but he was a lucha style wrestler.) Even La Parka became a bit of a cult star.

Yes, there were several matches involving other luchdors who were not pushed as big stars, including Damian, Silver King, Los Villanos, Lizmark Jr., and more that didn’t serve to push any of them or advance any storylines.

People didn’t rave about the division just because of those matches, though. They raved about the division because of the strong feuds and stars I mentioned at the top of the question.

Also, here’s an odd tidbit for the youngsters out there:

People used to watch wrestling shows to see wrestling matches.

Seriously.

Pre-Vince Russo and Crash TV, fans actually just liked watching guys wrestle each other. Not every match had to be part of an ongoing storyline. The athleticism and the story told by the performers in the ring was enough to entertain everyone. It wasn’t a “waste.”

That does it for this week. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.