WCW took Rey Mysterio's mask

The hook

February 21, 1999. Rey Mysterio and Konnan lose a Hair vs. Mask match to Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. In lucha libre the mask is the identity. Rey takes it off, and wrestles barefaced for the rest of his WCW run.

The Mask

He guarded it on the road too. "You never saw me without a mask," he said later. "I would always move away from the group when we all traveled together, so they wouldn't recognize me."

"I really protected my face." — Rey Mysterio

What was happening

The ads wanted a face

Kevin Nash says it was his call. WCW was running a big ad campaign, and the ad people had seen Rey without his hood. In Nash's telling, they wanted a handsome face on a billboard, not a luchador mask.

The detail people forgot

The mask was the merch

Rey's own read: WCW left money on the table. When he arrived in WWE in 2002, he came back masked, and the mask became one of the company's top-selling pieces of merchandise. "That is something WCW never took advantage of."

Why it matters now

He has worn dozens of designs since, and each one ends up as a replica on a fan's head. The face was supposed to sell. The mask sold for two decades instead.

The mask outlasted the decision.