WWE Legend Rey Mysterio Recalls A Time Eric Bischoff Threatened To Sue Him Over Not Wanting To Unmask

When it comes to the world of WCW, we all know the inmates ran the asylum. It was clearly a bad promotion after a while due to this, but the biggest issue for many might have been the management or mismanagement the company had. Eric Bishoff had some terrible ideas cross by him that he allowed to cross through, while others were fantastic such as the NWO plan, which many believe he stole from New Japan Pro-Wrestling. One of the bad ideas in most minds had to do with Rey Mysterio.

Rey was told that he had to remove his mask after a match at Halloween Havoc in 1997, which was considered horrific for a luchador to do. Rey Mysterio was known as a company guy, but he hated the idea of removing his mask as it was part of his tradition to keep it on and the fact that the match made no sense for him to remove it only made things worse. So Rey Mysterio fought the decision and the results were not promising. Rey spoke about this on MLW Radio.

“I remember getting in there a day or two early before the pay-per-view and we saw Eric [Bischoff] at the Betty Boop Bar, at the MGM Grand [Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada], which is right there at the entrance and I remember I wanted to talk to him. And it was very brief, but I told him that I wasn’t comfortable doing that match, especially, well, I wasn’t comfortable losing my mask. And he was like, ‘Rey, you have to do what you’re told [because] you’re under contract or else you’ll be in breach of contract,’ so he was really getting at me that day. That whole week was a nightmare, man.”

Bischoff caught wind that Rey Mysterio was considering no-showing the event, so he decided to call him about it. Rey explained.

“He called my house and I picked up. And I guess he had heard that I wasn’t going to show up and he said, ‘Rey, you’d better show up’ and again he mentioned the same thing, ‘or else you’ll be in breach of contract and it’s going to get really ugly,’ so I did show up on the night at the bar and the next day, of course, showtime, we set up the match and we were good to go. Eddie [Guerrero] did tell me, ‘if you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to,’ so he was backing me up 100%. I said, ‘naw, lets just go with it. Lets just do it.’ I want to say a match before ours, the decision was changed, and, again, they were just messing with me.”

Of course the match Rey Mysterio was part of with Eddie Guerrero was, to many, one of the greatest matches in WCW history of which Rey won. He won the WCW Cruiserweight Championship that night with the win. While WCW and Bischoff did not make Rey remove his mask that night, even though Eddie attempted to remove the mask the entire match, he did have to remove it a few years later.

In 1999, during the LWO angle, Rey Mysterio and LWO partner Konnan would face Kevin Nash and Scott Hall of the NWO in a hair versus mask match at SuperBrawl IX. The match concept was fine up to a point, but due to WCW being internally run by people other than wrestlers, seeing a booker in Kevin Nash go over was by no means surprising. This was especially not surprising when it forced Rey to remove his mask in favor of a Nash win. Rey spoke about the removal of his mask.

“I was strongly against it! I don’t think WCW understood what the mask meant to me, to my fans and to my family. It was a very bad move on their behalf. The fans wanted Rey Mysterio with the mask and losing it hurt me a lot. It was also frustrating that it didn’t come as the climax to a feud with another masked wrestler, but in a throwaway match. The same thing happened to Juventud and Psicosis and psychologically-wise it was a bad move by Eric Bischoff. I think the fans understand that I was in a position where I had no option. I either had to lose my mask or lose my job.”

Clearly Rey Mysterio was a good soldier and realized WCW gave him the best opportunity for success at the time, as Mexico was paying no where near what WCW offered and WWE at the time was not featuring people at his size in a good way at all. It made sense that Rey would remove his mask as asked.

When he went to WWE, the company would tease the removal and even put his mask on the line. They would actually remove it on a few occasions but Rey’s face would never be shown out of respect on television. However, some in the audience were able to get quick shots. WWE seemed to have respect for the lucha tradition while WCW didn’t respect them at all. It just goes to show that everything was mismanaged there and anyone with a brain knew what they did to Rey Mysterio was wrong.

[Image via WWE]