It is fair to say that Mistico, real name Luis Ignacio Urive Alvirde, also known as the original Sin Cara, failed to live up to WWE’s lofty expectations when he arrived in the company in 2011. The Lucha Libre star would quietly leave the company just three years later, but not before getting on the wrong side of AEW Executive Vice President Cody Rhodes.
Speaking on a recent episode of his ARN podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Arn Anderson has revealed how a match between Sin Cara and Cody Rhodes turned into a “half ass shoot.”
Prior to a match in South Africa, Anderson explained how he told Rhodes to “show him what we do” as a way to combat Sin Cara’s uncooperativeness.
“This guy was booked with Cody, Cody was one of the young guys that was trying to make his way in the business and this dip s–t made it difficult, in previous matches, every way he possibly could. Cody wasn’t advanced enough, I thought, to be able to deal with this guy who’s not selling his stuff and wanting to put up and run high spots. I told Cody, go out there and show him what we do.”
“I’m getting reports, Cody beat the piss out of this guy and made him fight him and all the high spots went away and it turned into a real good scuffle. I guess it was the best match that guy had had to that point and the best match Cody had had, but it was a half ass shoot. He was gone after that pretty quickly.”
During the episode Anderson spoke at length about Sin Cara, explaining how his lack of selling especially in comparison with the man he was signed to replace, Rey Mysterio let him down.
“I liked Rey Mysterio because of several reasons. He is small, but he figured out a way to work his matches where he used every bit of his body to knock you down or chip away at you and get you in a position where he could do a springboard or whatever it was and knock you down.”
“At the end of the day, he spent most match selling. He had one flurry that made sense. That was able to get him almost to winning or winning, but in a way that made sense.”
However, Anderson detailed how he was less than impressed with this aspect of Sin Cara’s game, adding that he “had heat with everybody.”
“None of that reasoning was in this guy. He thought he would just bounce guys around twice his size, very little selling. Just pop up out of nowhere. Everything I had been taught about this business and everything that the audience loves, the storytelling, the selling, the underdog, all that stuff was lost on him. But it came from the top. We had to have a star. Those of us that had these feelings and relayed these feeling just got heat. Just like everything else, when you point out the obvious, they don’t like the fact; when they hear it, they go, ‘You know, he’s right.”
“This guy had heat with everybody. His selling was terrible. His everything was terrible.”
The ‘original’ Sin Cara departed WWE in 2014, returning to Mexico where he would find success as Carístico. Although the Sin Cara gimmick would live on in WWE with Jose Jorge Arriaga Rodrigue assuming the name.
H/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.