Rey Mysterio's WrestleMania career is roundly considered to be an assemblage of bad luck and poor creative decisions. Despite a hot opener with Matt Hardy at WrestleMania XIX, he was largely wasted in a cruiserweight open at XX, and problems with his mask hurt his performance against Eddie Guerrero at 21. Even his World Heavyweight Championship win at WrestleMania 22 was marred by the fact that the bout was cut to just nine minutes. Still, after WrestleMania 22, Mysterio was pretty much a made man. He headlined shows as World Heavyweight Champion and scored victories over the likes of Randy Orton and JBL. Even after losing the title to Booker T, Mysterio was one of the top performers on the Smackdown brand. He soon entered into a blood feud with Chavo Guerrero, taking his former friend on at SummerSlam. Undoubtedly, Mysterio would have played a major role at WrestleMania 23, but the star's knee - which had caused him trouble earlier in his career - once again required major surgery. Following a loss to Guerrero in October, Mysterio was put on the shelf, not to return until SummerSlam 2007.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
