Was Mistico a Mistake?

Was Mistico fated from start to fail?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

When Triple H signed Mistico to a contract, most people who knew who he was were excited. He was one of the biggest standout wrestlers South of the Border, worked an exciting style and seemed to be a perfect fit for a company that seemed to take to high flying wrestlers very well. The fans loved him as Sin Cara too. He sold merchandise and got wows from the live audiences for all his acrobatic moves. The botches didn't seem to matter too much either.

The untold story to most fans was that Mistico was a headcase. There was a steady stream of reports from dirtsheets and C&P sites that noted he had a huge ego and brought down the brunt of management and the locker room for everything from those aforementioned botches to claiming that his matches in Mexico were shoot fights. Granted, none of these reports came from primary sources, so it's unclear how much of them were true. Still, the steadiness of said stream was troubling at the very least. That being said, his problems reared a more public head when he was suspended for violating the Wellness Policy.

One would assume that he'd sit out his thirty days, come back and feud with Sheamus, the guy who put him out in storyline with a vicious powerbomb through a ladder at Money in the Bank. That wasn't the case, as again, nebulous reports without primary sources surfaced that Mistico would not be back. More gas was thrown on that fire when the Sin Cara character was brought back two weeks before Mistico's suspension was up, only with masked FCW wrestler Hunico in the rule. A fake/real Sin Cara angle was teased, but ultimately it was dropped when Mistico took over the role again on house shows.

Then, the biggest kicker, Mistico was apparently sent home last Tuesday, with Hunico being placed back in the Sin Cara mask (which, oddly enough, got off to an inauspicious restart when he had to redo a match with Heath Slater twice before it was fit to air). Honestly, I'm not sure what the deal is here. Again, the reports say that he was sent home because of a combination of ego, sloppiness and frustration with the man himself. I'm not going to rule out this being the beginning of that aforementioned dueling Sin Caras angle, but then again, who knows at this point. I'm not sure who's getting the right information, but as of right now, it does seem plausible that the Mistico experiment was poisoned from the start.

The premise behind bringing him up to America was simple. He'd be a guy who'd wow the Anglo audiences, while providing a hometown hero for Mexican fans, a base that is a major growth sector for WWE (growth sector... shit, I feel so dirty for typing that, my apologies). Honestly, the former didn't need to be filled by a Mexican at all. Evan Bourne, for example, is a guy who is massively over with crowds despite being limited to bumping his ass off for bigger guys and doing the Air Bourne for a huge crowd reaction. If they'd turned him loose earlier, maybe he's the guy who'd have made it possible for Rey Mysterio to get his surgery before it became necessary thanks to injuries exacerbated by holding out.

But then again, he didn't fill the other void. You could argue Alberto del Rio did, but at the same time, would Mexican crowds cheer for a rudo in a company of gringos if he was the only one? It's a very good possibility he could have. I mean, WWE may try to keep heels heel in their hometowns through dastardly actions, but money spent on merchandise and tickets is a neutral language. CM Punk proved that at Money in the Bank. Bret Hart proved it in Canada in 1996-97. My guess is the fact that del Rio was crowned Champion so close to their next big tour of Mexico leads me to believe that they didn't necessarily need to have Mistico to have a Mexican draw.

That being said, it'd be nice to be able to have one on the RAW tour and one on the Smackdown tour as well. Again, the WWE could really expand in Mexico, so I guess you can't blame them for wanting to have as many. But why Mistico? Why couldn't they have put Hunico in the Sin Cara mask all along? It would have cost them less from the get go, and he would have been well-adjusted from start having been "broken" by FCW so to speak. It's easy to say that in retrospect, but the truth is, the Sin Cara role was created for Mistico. It wouldn't have existed if the Mexican superstar wasn't signed up in the first place.

The truth is, I really can't blame WWE for trying to sign the guy in the first place. They hit a home run with Dos Caras, Jr. Maybe they thought they could do better by having an established name come in and do business for them. However, what worked for the middling-to-struggling Caras wasn't just his heritage. It was a year in FCW, vignettes heralding his arrival as Alberto del Rio and working a generally less risky style that made him a success.

It's easy to look at this whole ordeal in retrospect and say what a terrible idea it was, but the fact is that it wasn't so much a mistake as it was a gamble. Triple H, in his first move, swung for the fences and yeah, he may have apparently struck out (remember, no one knows Mistico's status now), he's thinking enough outside of the box that his father-in-law has built that he's going to bring in new and eclectic guys. You live, and you learn, but you won't know if Mistico will be the guy for you unless you sign him (and really, if you divorce his ego from his in-ring, he was looking to be really huge).

Going forward, Hunico being in the Sin Cara mask is probably the right call, as long as nights like last Tuesday are aberrations rather than the norm. That being said, even if it didn't turn out as planned for WWE, bringing in Mistico was the right call. Sometimes though, the right call can turn out bad.

Our First Look at Dean Ambrose

Jon Moxley signed a deal with WWE earlier this year, and as with nearly everyone not named Mistico, he has to get seasoning in FCW. Here's his debut promo, in which he calls out Seth Rollins. Two years ago, Jon Moxley vs. Tyler Black would have been an indie dream match. Today, it could very well be the next step in programming for a select group of fans in Tampa. Then again, if I lived in Tampa, I'd be disappointed, because I hate Black/Rollins. But that's just me. Moxley, or Dean Ambrose as he's now known, is just fine with me. Check this out and try not to get goosebumps.



PS, Norman Smiley's the FCW General Manager? What, was Alex Wright busy?

The Experience Experience

Aries: About as old as Macho Man at his WWF debut age

When "Macho Man" Randy Savage showed up for duty at the newly-expanded-to-national World Wrestling Federation, he was a fresh-faced newcomer who was making his first REAL impact in the United States outside of Kentucky and Memphis.

He was also 32 years old with nine years experience as a pro wrestler.

If the WWF had the same standards then that the WWE today has now, then we may never have had the pleasure of watching Savage. It's rumored that WWE doesn't take on new signees over the age of 30. Whether that was a ploy by Gabe Sapolsky, who broke that news on his site, to garner more sympathy for the indie stars like Chris Hero and Austin Aries who for whatever reason aren't on WWE's radar or if it's true that it's policy is irrelevant, given that the company has trended towards recruiting guys at very young ages, sending them to FCW for however long they feel necessary and then debuting them on the big stage. From an institutional standpoint, that's a great plan. You want someone indoctrinated into the style your company purveys, then by all means, you should do it from the time they really start to learn how to become a "superstar" in their parlance.

But there does seem to be something missing from a lot of the NXT alums (Daniel Bryan excluded, obviously) and FCW call-ups that even the "new blood" of five years ago had in spades. Is the downturn in the wrestling business to blame? Or is it that maybe FCW isn't exactly the best environment in which to gain experience on how to break into WWE as a ready-to-go entity?

Really, a guy like Savage, or even folks like Bret Hart, Hulk Hogan (who coincidentally got part of his seasoning as part of the regional-era WWWF), Ricky Steamboat, King Kong Bundy, Ted DiBiase and other mainstays of the early national-expansion-era WWF got their experience from the territory system. It's a system that was struck a critical blow by the rise of WCW as an answer to the WWF, and it's something that we will probably never see again in terms of how important it was back in those days. How do you replicate that, a system where guys learn how to work, promo and do all the things that pro wrestlers do in order to manipulate crowds?

Maybe the answer does lie in the indies. Notice that the people who are really making splashes in WWE in terms of character, work or both, are all on the older side and have that experience. Dolph Ziggler was a throwback from the old developmental territories, where guys like Jim Cornette and Paul Heyman were calling the shots (making it feel like more of an indie fed rather than a precursor to WWE?). Daniel Bryan, Kharma and CM Punk all made their bones in the indies, especially in ROH. Wade Barrett, Sheamus and to a very limited extent in terms of character polish, Drew McIntyre, all came from Europe, where things work a bit differently. The only one that I can see that has risen up and really been given faith from the front office (even intermittently) that came from FCW was Jack Swagger, and even then, he feels way more polarizing to the smart fans I converse with than others.

It might seem that the point I'm making is that FCW BAD INDIES GOOD, but that's not really the case. I don't think that FCW in and of itself is bad, but I do think that maybe there's too much of an emphasis on rushing guys up from the fed and putting them into the spotlight at too early an age. I think that having Brock Lesnar and Randy Orton work out the way they did at young ages maybe turned the WWE front offices away from the fact that those guys were the exceptions, not the rules.

Maybe there should be more of an incubation time in FCW for these guys, unless an obvious exception to the rule comes along and deserves to get shunted up to the main roster. Maybe the indies should be scoured more and guys like Aries, Hero, Claudio Castagnoli and even Jimmy Jacobs (a guy of whom I'm not a fan but has appeal) should be considered. Maybe more experience is needed for guys coming in so that they have a handle on how to do things rather than needing to learn them on the fly on camera, which to me is too late.

Does it take shelf-life away from wrestlers when they start later? Maybe, but at the same time, look at how long guys from "back then" stayed around and were effective at playing crowds and drawing money. Either way, experience isn't a bad thing, and really, the WWE should be looking at getting as many good years as they can from guys, not as many years, no matter what the quality.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

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