Rey Mysterio Talks Constantly Losing During World Heavyweight Championship Reign In WWE
As much as Rey Mysterio's WWE run was a huge success, with him becoming a new level of worldwide star in the process, there's one part of it that's always left a bad taste in the mouths of fans. It's a time that we should see as the pinnacle of his career, his reign as World Heavyweight Champion in 2006.
It started off well enough. His first title defense was even better: A long, excellent, pay-per-view main event quality match with Orton on the post-WrestleMania edition of SmackDown where he got an impressive, clean win. It turned out Orton was doing a job on his way out for a disciplinary suspension, and the reign went downhill from there: In consecutive, increasingly short non-title matches on SmackDown, Rey lost cleanly to Kurt Angle, Mark Henry, and The Great Khali. Khali even pinned him with one foot on his chest. It picked up after that, but the early weeks left a bad taste in fans' mouths.
Yesterday, I interviewed Rey Mysterio, who was promoting AAA TripleMania XXII, as AAA's biggest annual event is making its American pay-per-view (also available as an internet PPV) debut, live and in English, a week from this Sunday night (August 9th). I asked him how he felt about the infamous title reign.
"To a certain extent I did [bother me], but I wasn't too concerned about it," he explained. "I knew that whether I was the champion or I was not, whether I was going to win or I was going to lose, every time they were going to see Rey Mysterio in the ring, they were gonna see the best of Rey Mysterio. Not worrying about where my career was going at the time or where my storyline was going at the time. I think I've always had that type of mindset, I've always been very professional. I didn't like to politic much, or at all. I just like to go out there and perform, and try to be the best at it."
The one aspect of the situation that did cause some concern for him was how it much it upset his fans.
"I think it was probably frustrating to the fans a bit more, that I could go out there and put on great shows but at the end of the match, there was no arm raised. You go back and think about what you did during that time that I was champion...and being champion? That was just a big barrier that was in front of me that I thought I'd never cross, and I did."
So at the end of the day, was it his self-belief that he would be able to stay over with the fans that kept him from getting too worried?
"Yeah, pretty much. At the end of the day, the fans are the ones that put you in the position that you're in, so throughout the years of my WWE career, the fans were the ones who were buying my t-shirts. They were buying my dolls. They were buying my video games. Again, because I was delivering every time I stepped into the ring."
Check back here on Monday for our interview with Rey Mysterio. You'll hear his thoughts on the dream match with Myzteziz (original Sin Cara) that's main eventing TripleMania, his departure from WWE, his thoughts on Lucha Underground and much more.