4 Ups And 4 Downs From WWE Hall Of Fame 2023

by Scott Carlson

1. Rey Soaks It In

Throughout his legendary career, Rey Mysterio has never been regarded as one of the better promos in the business. He’s a magician between the ropes, but on the mic, he’s had his share of ups and downs.

And despite a Hall of Fame induction speech that ran too long, Rey still delivered a nice retrospective of his career, talking about his uncle Rey Mysterio Sr. trained him at 8 years old, how he had to have his parents sign a waiver to allow him to get a wrestling license because he was only 15, and how his wife Angie had to quite her medical school studies and get a job to send him money when he was starting out.

All of those personal touches made for a memorable speech that added more depth to Rey’s remarkable career, far beyond the usual shortened and sanitized version we hear about. Consider that the video package that played when Mysterio was announced for the Hall only included footage from the WWE portion of his career, despite the company owning WCW footage. Not even a clip of Rey’s Halloween Havoc match against Eddie Guerrero.

Rey focusing mainly on the earlier days of his career – the parts many fans would know nothing about – was a bold choice, but it certainly paid off.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.