25 Crazy WCW Facts (That Get Progressively More Ridiculous)

24. WCW Sold Rey Mysterio, Jr. Masks…

…months and months after he no longer wore one himself. 

At SuperBrawl 1999, Rey Mysterio and Konnan lost a Mask Vs. Hair tag team match against Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. 

As per the stipulation, and the real-life instruction of Eric Bischoff, Rey was forced to unmask. This is always a moving scene, because the mask is sacred in lucha libre. The loser need not sell; the gravity of the situation is very real, which is why the tradition is so lucrative and longstanding. With Rey, it was different. He didn’t want to do it, but he also didn’t want to lose his spot, or even his job. He was distraught but also visibly hated the ordeal. This was WCW in the first quarter of 1999, too; to put it as generously as possible, there was no guarantee that the promotion would maximise anything. 

Rey’s mask obscured his incredibly cherubic face. At his size, he was always an underdog, but with this new look, at a time when size mattered far more than it does nowadays, it was harder to take him seriously. As a result, he was recast as a little brat of a heel, which was a disgrace. Rey was a generational babyface talent forced into the role of prelim bump and feed fodder. This didn’t just kill Rey’s WCW career; WCW lost a potential fortune in merchandise sales because they could not sell the replica masks that proved so popular in WWE that even Vince McMahon relented and pushed him to a level he didn’t want to. 

Except, well into 2000, WCW actually did sell replica masks for an unmasked wrestler. By April, they were still collecting dust on merch desks with increasingly shorter lines.