– Rey Mysterio recently spoke with Aaron Oster of Rolling Stone to promote Sunday’s AAA TripleMania pay-per-view. The full interview is at this link. Below are highlights:
Triplemania XXIII will be the first AAA pay-per-view shown in America since your breakout at When Worlds Collide more than 20 years ago. Does it feel like your career has come full circle?
It does. It almost feels surreal. It’s something that I would imagine AAA would have always wanted, and now that it’s taking place, I haven’t been able to talk to the rest of the locker room about it, but I’m extremely excited. This is a very big step to promoting AAA worldwide.
You left WWE about five months ago. What have these past five months been like for you?
I don’t regret any steps that I take in life. This is something that I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I really wanted to have some time off, without feeling any sort of commitment to be on a certain schedule. Now, I’m doing things my way, under my terms. I’m dictating my pace towards retirement. I’m not on the grind. I was constantly competing. This is a good thing for me. This is something that my wife and I thought would be best for my body and for myself. I get to be a husband and a father again. I get to enjoy time with my kids now. I was a workaholic for so many years. I’ve missed so many birthdays and anniversaries. Now that my kids are a bit older, I want to be around and I want to enjoy it. I want to send my kids off to college if that’s what they want to do. I want to do all the family things I’ve missed over the years.
Would you say that was the biggest reason you left WWE?
Family was the biggest reason. If anything, I’ll probably do appearances. I’m not trying to stay busy. I’m trying to enjoy my time at home and be around my kids. I want to vacation. I’m a big family guy. I want to do more with them. That was the primary reason that I stepped away. Opportunities are starting to arise. After 15 years, I didn’t know what was out there. I had been wrestling with WWE all that time and wasn’t focusing on anything outside of that. I’m realizing that there’s a lot of opportunities there. The question is just whether I want to take them.
Looking back on your WWE career, is there anything you wished you had accomplished?
No, I accomplished so much that I never thought I’d be able to accomplish. Of course, I won the World Heavyweight title. I enjoyed being there, and getting to wrestle the people that I wrestled. I cherish every moment that I was there. When I wrestled Shawn Michaels for the first time, my first match with The Undertaker – I never thought I’d be in that position. I’ve done more than I could have ever imagined. I’m blessed that I’ve had the career that I have.
You’ve wrestled with such a high-energy, high-impact style throughout your career, and you’ve had your share of injures. People wonder just how much you have left. What do you say to them?
It’s really hard for me to answer that. A year ago or so, I probably would have said that I didn’t have more than three years left. After being at home for some time, and being able to train and rehab and strengthen my quads, I really feel rejuvenated. I feel great physically. I think that sometimes, you just have to give your body time to heal. Sometimes wrestlers are stubborn about doing that; we’re on the road constantly. I think this rest has extended my career another couple years. At the pace I’m going right now, I’m not on the road four days a week, [and] that definitely helps heal all my injuries even more. I will leave my career up to God, but I definitely think I can go longer than I would’ve expected a couple years ago.
