Who is that jumping out of the sky? Here is our list of the 10 greatest rivals of Rey Mysterio's career.
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01:03 - 10
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08:19 - 3
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00:00 - Start
01:03 - 10
02:12 - 9
03:13 - 8
04:09 - 7
05:04 - 6
06:07 - 5
07:08 - 4
08:19 - 3
09:14 - 2
10:16 - 1
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
Youtube Channel Comments Policy
We appreciate the comments and opinions our viewers provide. Do note that all comments are subject to YouTube auto-moderation and manual moderation review. We encourage opinions and discussion, but harassment, hate speech, bullying and other abusive posts will not be tolerated. Decisions on comment removal are made by the Community Manager. Please email us at support@wrestletalk.com with any questions or concerns.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Who is that jumping out of the sky?
00:02 R.E.Y.
00:03 Mystere Ryo.
00:04 Here we go.
00:05 Booyakar Booyakar.
00:06 619.
00:07 How WWE's biggest little man can still be cranking out top notch performances in 2023
00:12 at the age of 48 is a question that can only be answered by NASA level scientists, but
00:17 one that can be appreciated by all.
00:19 Considering Rey has been wrestling since he was 13 years old, the amount of high quality
00:23 rivalries he has been a part of is quite plentiful, and so today we will induct him into the ranks
00:28 of great wrestlers who have had their careers analyzed through the lens of greatest rivalries
00:32 lists on PartsFunKnown, the true mark of an all time great wrestler.
00:36 You keep waiting, we'll get to your favorite wrestler someday, and if your favorite wrestler
00:40 is Rey Mysterio, well then you clicked on the right video.
00:42 I'm Tempest Hailing from PartsFunKnown, and these are the 10 greatest rivals of Rey Mysterio's
00:47 career.
00:48 But before we get on with this list, please make sure that you like this video, subscribe,
00:51 and enable notifications to always on so you never miss a fun list just like it, and make
00:55 sure you check out the finals of the Fantasy Booking Warfare Tournament as I take on Oli
00:59 Davis as we book the Shield Triple Threat Match.
01:03 10.
01:04 Edge When I watched my very first wrestling show,
01:07 the January 25th Smackdown in 2008 for those keeping score, Rey Mysterio was feuding with
01:12 Edge over the World Heavyweight Championship.
01:14 So maybe there's a bit of nostalgia talking, but this rivalry sandwiched between two tag
01:19 runs in 2002 and 2022 has always stood out as one of the better main event rivalries
01:24 of Rey's career.
01:25 He didn't get to win the big match in this one, as was unfortunately the case with a
01:30 lot of his WWE rivalries, but he was a great choice to oppose The Edge and Vickie Guerrero's
01:35 snog fest given his relationship with the Guerrero family, especially as Vickie descended
01:40 further and further into unlikability.
01:42 Add in the extra context of Edge and Rey's history as tag champions, and you had an absolute
01:47 metric ton of history to pull from, and they did, resulting in a particularly fun match
01:51 with a great finish at the 2008 Royal Rumble.
01:54 Anytime Edge could spear someone out of mid-air, he would, and it gave us a reason to see Edge
01:59 and Rey cross paths again and again, especially in Elimination Chamber matches in 2009 and
02:04 2011, further proving the excellent chemistry between them could stand the test of time
02:09 and also many, many surgeries.
02:11 9.
02:12 Dominic Mysterio We didn't think it would happen, but the
02:15 chicken-finger-loving adopted son of Rey Mysterio harassed his family enough times and got arrested
02:20 and became an interesting character.
02:22 Rey had spent over a decade saying that one day he wanted to wrestle his son, and when
02:26 Dom turned on his dear old dad at Clash of the Castle, the enthusiasm toward that match
02:32 was fairly low.
02:33 But by WrestleMania 39, you could argue that Dom was the most hated heel in all of WWE.
02:38 While Rey's reluctance to fight his son may have worn thin with some, the amount of
02:42 time we all had to wait for Dom to finally get the spanking he had always been missing
02:46 for his entire life made the moment all the sweeter when Rey finally gave in to the urge
02:50 to beat his son's ass.
02:52 God, I don't like how the storyline sounds reading it back.
02:54 Their match at WrestleMania was pretty gosh-darn great, and you could argue maybe Rey's best
02:59 mania match period, even if there was a rogue serial mascot at ringside.
03:03 For a match as important to the Mysterio family as this clearly was, to see it turn out so
03:08 well is the most heartwarming example of corporal punishment you will probably ever see.
03:13 8.
03:14 Juventud Guerrera Alright, enough about WWE for a bit, because
03:17 it should come as no surprise that many of Rey's best matches and rivalries came before
03:21 his time in the land of the giants.
03:23 There were many settings and locations and promotions responsible for Rey Mysterio becoming
03:27 a household name in wrestling, and the further back in history you look, the more frequently
03:31 you will see the name Juventud Guerrera paired with Rey's.
03:34 There were a lot of reasons why Hoovy didn't reach the same level of success of his luchador
03:38 peers, but it wasn't for his lack of talent.
03:41 Talent that was on full display any time he and Rey got in the ring together, whether
03:45 it was in ECW, WCW, or AAA.
03:48 There are literally dozens of matches one could point to to highlight Rey and Hoovy's
03:52 chemistry, but I will take the easy way out and say if you haven't seen their match from
03:56 ECW's big-ass Extreme Bash, you are missing out on possibly the best match of Mysterio's
04:02 career.
04:03 It's only a 5-star match, if you care about that sort of thing, but my god does it ever
04:07 earn that distinction.
04:09 7.
04:10 Prince Puma Oh, Lucha Underground, you magical, mystical
04:13 wrestling unicorn of a promotion.
04:15 We didn't quite know how short-lived the golden years of Lucha Underground were going
04:18 to be when we were watching it, but my god, they sure were golden, weren't they?
04:23 Rey Mysterio has spoken very highly of his time in the promotion and the ovations he
04:26 received from the more intimate audience in attendance, and there may be no match Rey
04:31 had in the promotion that received a greater ovation than the culmination of his story
04:35 with Prince Puma in the Season 2 finale.
04:38 Puma was the golden boy of the promotion, one who may or may not have gone on to great
04:42 success after embracing his secret identity, but at this point, facing Mysterio was a dream
04:47 match of epic proportions that most certainly delivered on that status and a proper example
04:52 of Rey being portrayed as the legend he is.
04:55 If wrestling as a whole ever adopted a seasonal format, we should all hope that the season
04:59 finale would be even nearly as fantastic as this match was.
05:04 6.
05:05 CM Punk
05:06 And back to WWE We Go for the storyline so good that it made Childe Tempest like CM Punk
05:12 again after he cashed in Money in the Bank on Jeff Hardy.
05:14 The straight edge society run of CM Punk was maybe the best character work of his WWE career,
05:20 and after the group's formation, the best rivalry Punk had was with Rey Mysterio.
05:25 Unhappy with being eliminated in the Elimination Chamber, Punk ruined young Aaliyah Mysterio's
05:30 birthday by creepily singing to her, the kind of behavior that gets your ass beat at WrestleMania,
05:34 and so began the run of three straight pay-per-views in 2010 with very good CM Punk vs. Rey Mysterio
05:40 matches, all with varying stakes until Mysterio finally came out on top and shaved Punk's
05:45 head at Over the Limit.
05:46 This all was a brilliant piece of business with heavy input from Punk himself, but I
05:50 also want to highlight their one-off match at Capital Punishment a year later.
05:54 More or less story to it, but maybe the best match the two had together in WWE.
05:59 A hidden gem on a largely forgettable pay-per-view, but a fantastic stamp to put on one of Mysterio's
06:04 best WWE rivalries to date.
06:07 5.
06:08 Dean Malenko It was virtually impossible to have a bad
06:11 match with Dean Malenko if you were a cruiserweight in the 90s.
06:14 Dean may be more closely linked to the likes of Chris Jericho because of Jericho's iconic
06:18 promos, or Eddie Guerrero because of their famous ECW matches, but in the case of Rey
06:22 Mysterio, Dean gets bonus points for introducing the world of WCW to Rey Mysterio as his first
06:28 opponent.
06:29 At the Great American Bash in 1996, Mysterio made his WCW debut in a cruiserweight championship
06:34 match, and after showing off the kind of chemistry that they had in that match, WCW was forced
06:38 to run that s*** back the very next night so even more people could witness such a performance
06:43 on Nitro before Dean and Rey would go on to have four more matches together before the
06:48 end of 1996, including two more on pay-per-view.
06:51 Rey Mysterio in the 90s was an anomaly, and it is a marvel to see what he was able to
06:55 do before countless surgeries took a toll on his body.
06:58 And if you want to see him the same way that US audiences saw him for the very first time,
07:02 you have to study his matches with Dean Malenko, one of the most important wrestlers in all
07:06 of Mysterio's career.
07:08 4.
07:09 Chris Jericho You may think that in the era of WCW that
07:12 saw Chris Jericho mixing it up over the cruiserweight title with the likes of the names already
07:16 on this list, that we may have seen more of Jericho and Mysterio in the ring together
07:20 at that time, but truth be told, audiences had to wait until 2009 for a proper rivalry
07:25 between the two, but thankfully, it was absolutely worth waiting for.
07:29 2009 was a banner year for the Intercontinental Championship in WWE with loads of great matches
07:33 on pay-per-view, but it was made that way by established top stars fighting over it
07:38 like their lives depended on it.
07:40 This was the peak of Chris Jericho's career as a character, as his "Honest Man" persona
07:44 won him back-to-back Wrestler of the Year awards in 2008 and 2009, but this feud somehow
07:49 followed Jericho's legendary rivalry with Shawn Michaels and improved upon his character.
07:54 Now just a bully that wanted to take Rey's mask from him just for the sake of taking
07:58 it, Jericho and Mysterio had brilliant matches at Judgment Day, Extreme Rules, and finally
08:02 and most legendarily, The Bash, where Rey won back the IC title in one of the best matches
08:07 of the year, duping Jericho by wearing a second mask in one of the best finishes of one of
08:12 the best matches of the whole year.
08:14 It may have been a decade and a half long wait, but my god, was it worth it.
08:19 3.
08:20 Kurt Angle
08:21 Prior to SummerSlam 2002, Kurt Angle was approached by Creative with three options
08:24 for who he would like to work with.
08:26 Fresh out of OVW, John Cena, fresh out of WCW, Ric Flair, or Rey Mysterio.
08:31 Thankfully, for all our sakes, Kurt picked Rey.
08:34 Considering just a few years earlier, the folks in WCW avoided working with cruiserweights
08:38 like touching them would give them smallpox, the pox that makes you small, Kurt saw what
08:43 a tremendous talent Rey Mysterio was and it gave us one of the best opening matches in
08:47 WWE history.
08:48 In addition to their spot in the SummerSlam Hall of Fame, Angle and Mysterio were integral
08:52 members of the Smackdown 6, having maybe the best WWE tag team match ever at No Mercy before
08:58 they would become intertwined again years later in Rey's first ever world title win
09:02 at WrestleMania 22.
09:03 Rey Mysterio has always been an undeniable talent, but would he have been able to make
09:07 it to the heights that he was at in WWE without Kurt Angle's endorsement?
09:10 We'll never know, but we'll always be grateful.
09:14 2.
09:15 Psychosis
09:16 When people think of Bash at the Beach '96, they think of the formation of the NWO, as
09:20 they should, one of the biggest and most successful Angles of all time.
09:24 But when we went back and watched it for WrestleTalk Extra, the thing we were most blown away by
09:28 was the opening match between Rey Mysterio and Psychosis.
09:32 This was the best in-ring match in North America in 1996, and it would be the best match on
09:36 most episodes of AEW Dynamite today, even with Bobby Heenan impatiently waiting for the
09:41 quote-unquote "real wrestling" to start.
09:43 That was what Rey Mysterio and Psychosis were bringing to the table in the mid-90s, even
09:47 if the people in the crowd and behind the announce desk didn't quite know what they
09:50 were seeing in WCW.
09:52 Wherever Rey Mysterio was in the 90s, Psychosis wasn't far behind, whether it was the United
09:57 States, Mexico, or Japan, and no matter what country they were in, they were having the
10:01 best matches of each other's careers.
10:03 Psychosis was a perfect base for the even smaller Mysterio to fly around, and together
10:08 they created magic.
10:09 But while they may have been the best possible opponents for one another, the title of Mysterio's
10:13 greatest rival has to go to...
10:16 1.
10:17 Eddie Guerrero
10:18 Not only did Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio have arguably the best match in WCW history
10:23 at Halloween Havoc 1997, not only did Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio have one of the
10:28 best WrestleMania opening matches ever in 2005, not only did they have the SmackDown
10:34 6 connection and a tag title reign as partners, but they also had a match over the custody
10:37 of a child.
10:38 If that doesn't say greatest rival, I don't know what does.
10:41 The 2005 rivalry of Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero is one of the most legendary in WWE
10:46 history, due in no small part to the WrestleMania opener and the Dirty Dom Ladder match, but
10:51 the rivalry that spanned over six months was one of the biggest highlights of SmackDown
10:55 that year.
10:56 It was the most soap opera nonsense storyline WWE may have ever done, but sometimes that's
11:02 okay, especially when it's interspliced with fabulous matches.
11:06 In a perfect world, Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio would have inducted one another into
11:09 the WWE Hall of Fame, where they could continue to be intertwined for the rest of history
11:13 as the greatest rivals either man had ever, ever had.
11:17 And that's our list!
11:19 Please make sure that you like this video, subscribe and check out this clip from the
11:22 finals of Fantasy Booking Warfare.