Kevin Nash says he booked Rey Mysterio’s unmasking in WCW, and he still stands by the call because he believes it was the face under the hood that WCW wanted to sell.
Nash was asked about the angle during the Ask Nash segment of the latest episode of Kliq This. Mysterio lost his mask at SuperBrawl IX on February 21, 1999, when he and Konnan lost to Nash and Scott Hall in a hair versus mask match. Had Mysterio and Konnan won, Miss Elizabeth would have had her head shaved. Lex Luger was originally booked as Nash’s partner but was written out three days earlier on Thunder with a storyline arm injury, and Hall took his place.
“I think I booked that,” Nash said.
Nash said the decision was tied to a marketing push the company had in the works at the time.
“WCW was doing a huge ad campaign, and the ad people had seen Rey without his hood on,” Nash said. “You’re not going to be in Times Square with a luchador mask on in an ad. So I looked at it as, I’ll take his mask off so everybody can see this motherf*****.”
Nash said he heard the objections about lucha libre tradition and did not buy them.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh my God, you don’t understand the luchador.’ I’m like, yeah, hair versus mask. Like nobody’s ever lost their mask before,” Nash said. “Come on, man.”
The objection Nash is dismissing is the one Mysterio himself raised. In lucha libre, a mask is traditionally lost in a wager match settling a personal feud, usually against another masked wrestler, and losing it in a tag match against two unmasked Americans broke that convention. Mysterio has said in past interviews that WCW first wanted to unmask him at Halloween Havoc in 1997 after Juventud Guerrera lost his mask to Chris Jericho, and that he fought it off that time.
He credited Mysterio with making the most of it, pointing to how Mysterio carried himself unmasked for years afterward, often pictured with sunglasses on and a hand held up by his face.
“He did a great job with it,” Nash said.
Nash said his view is that the mask was never the source of Mysterio’s appeal, only his earning power.
“To me, the mask doesn’t make Rey Mysterio. The mask makes Rey Mysterio money, because he can sell a new one every day that he wears on TV,” Nash said. “So from a merchandising standpoint, I’m sure it killed him. But it didn’t, because WCW didn’t have the wherewithal or the machine to make that money for him.”
With that in mind, Nash said his aim was simple.
“I looked at it as, let me get this handsome motherf*****’s face out there,” he said.
Nash also said he made a point of having Mysterio beat him clean around the time he started taking on booking duties, to send a message to the rest of the roster.
“I was the first guy of size that he beat in the middle of the ring, 1-2-3. That was when I just started getting the pencil, and I put him over. I think it was in Sacramento,” Nash said. “I wanted it to be a clear message in the locker room that we’re going to do clean finishes. It’s like baseball. The pitchers do hit home runs.”
Mysterio’s own view has softened over time in a direction Nash would recognise. He has said that while he was uncomfortable wrestling without the mask, the unmasked years pushed him into a giant killer role against much bigger opponents, and that the run may have helped convince WWE a wrestler his size could work at the top of the card.
He wrestled unmasked through the end of WCW in 2001 and put the mask back on when he debuted in WWE in 2002. He has worn it ever since, through a career that included a Royal Rumble win, world championships and a Hall of Fame induction in 2023.
Nash’s account is his own, and he hedged it himself with “I think.” WCW’s booking in early 1999 involved several people, and credit for the decision has been assigned differently in other retellings over the years.
