Early in his career Oscar Gutierrez may have been better known as Super Niño or Colibri, but when he turned 18 the name Rey Misterio Jr. became his calling card. The nombre paid tribute to his trainer, famed lucha libre star Rey Misterio (The King of Mystery). The name has morphed slightly over the years, but no matter how you spell it or whether you add the "Junior" at the end Rey Mysterio is one of the most recognized wrestlers in the entire world. His popularity spans an amazing range of wrestling fans young and old alike, from Mexico to Japan to the United States and beyond. Although his life and times were previously chronicled in the "Rey Mysterio: 619" DVD, WWE had barely begun to scratch the surface of his fabulous pro wrestling career in one disc.
Actually let's be realistic about this - one disc would hardly do ANY wrestler with a career spanning two decades or more justice. Rey Mysterio's popularity is the sole reason for "The Biggest Little Man" to exist - it's another chance for WWE to cash in on a very loyal and devoted base of niños and gringos who can't get enough of his charismatic personality and high-flying wrestling moves. If Rey Mysterio's merchandise didn't outsell other wrestlers in WWE by a 3 to 1 margin, there'd be no reason to offer a three-disc set as opposed to just one. The Best Buy Limited Edition takes this money making opportunity to the logical extreme by offering you an oversized box that looks big enough to hold the entire WrestleMania Anthology. Within this box are a plethora of items which are described as "exclusive" but which seemingly appear to be the same Mysterio goods one could order from WWE Shopzone. Nonetheless when you consider the DVD set and t-shirt would sell for $25 each by themselves, $49.99 for all the contents inside would be a bargain to his biggest fans - especially since you don't have to pay for shipping! The merchandise enclosed is as follows:
* Rey Mysterio arm bands
* Rey Mysterio t-shirt (size XL)
* Rey Mysterio pendant chain
* Rey Mysterio "Biggest Little Man" three-disc set
The spread of the DVD's is impressive once the set itself is opened. Even when their television programming fails, the WWE Home Video department always manages to impress with the high quality of their product. Not many DVD sets have this much attenton to style and detail, and having a Mysterio insert in the left pocket is a touch of class that could have otherwise been skipped in production to save money. The first disc opens with Rey standing on a bridge overlooking bright blue waters lapping a sandy beach, as the diminutive wrestler welcomes us to his hometown of San Diego. Rey describes this set as a collaboration with WWE to put together a set of matches "for the wrestling fan" that they will enjoy. Rey tells us he never let his stature get in the way of achieving his goals through "passion, determination, and the will to make it to the top." This takes us to Tijuana, where Rey talks about being trained by his uncle and how his first name Colibri meant hummingbird. One could say Rey was pigeonholed as a high-flyer right from the start. Ha ha! By the time this DVD's first match is shown, from November 1994's "When Worlds Collide," he had already been given the more familiar name of Rey Misterio Jr. The event itself was remarkable as it was the first time a Mexican wrestling promotion offered a pay per view event in the United States. The match featured the rudo (heel) team of Fuerza Guerrera, Madonna's Boyfriend, and Psicosis, and they were defeated by the tecnico (babyface) team of Mysterio, Heavy Metal, and Latin Lover. For those not familiar with Mysterio's roots in Mexican lucha libre, this is a fine introduction to this lengthy three disc set.
The first disc goes on to cover an impressive span of matches. We move to his debut in ECW in 1995, where he continued a feud from Mexico against the crazed lucha libre star Psicosis. His early career in the U.S. was largely a continuation of what his lucha career would have been like South of the border, except that those stars had been imported by ECW and WCW to enhance their rosters. Ironically it was those stars who ended up stealing the show, often having better matches than the respective bigger and bulkier main eventers. Mysterio's tenure in WCW, which starts on disc one and continues through disc two, has many examples of pure lucha matches - fights with Juventud Guerrera, Super Calo, Ultimo Dragon and so on. That's not to say his U.S. born competitors are ignored though - his long rivalry with Dean Malenko is featured in three different matches on disc one.
The insert from the lefthand side of the DVD has a startling typo repeated far too many times to be an accident. The set notes Rey's matches on disc two and three against Eddie and Chavo but they are listed as Guerrera, not Guerrero. One might say that the fact checker made an understandable error given the similar spelling of Juventud Guerrera and Eddie Guerrero's last names, the truth of the matter is that only three matches feature an actual Guerrera (Fuerza or his son Juventud) while NINE matches on this three disc set feature Eddie or his nephew Chavo. It would make more sense for the fact checker to have gotten Guerrera wrong 3 times than for Eddie & Chavo to be uncorrected on three times as many matches. This is the kind of error that may infuriate a lot of lucha libre fans, but since the names are right on the DVD's themselves and I'm not likely to look at this insert more than once, I can for the most part let it slide. For what it's worth you'll also note they got the name of the "Halloween Havoc" PPV wrong and called it "Halloween House." Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
The third disc may be of the least importance to the wrestling fan, as it focuses entirely on his modern day WWE career. As much as I like both Rey and Eddie, the whole "Dominic" storyline was very distasteful and I couldn't wait for it to end. Quite honestly I can't imagine even a diehard wrestling fan wants to relive Rey Mysterio going up against the tall Texas toerag Bradshaw. His World Title win at WrestleMania 22 was a great moment, but just like many of the purchasers will have seen his big WWE matches, even MORE of them will have seen WrestleMania on PPV or DVD. Nevertheless for historical purposes the matches do show the evolution from where he has come to where he is today, as well as how his style has evolved from the earlier high flying risks to a modern style that's still flashy while saving the more spectacular (and knee smashing) moves to have greater psychological impact in a match. As the final chapter of disc three promises, "The Best of Rey Mysterio is Still to Come." Realistically only the die-hard Mysterio fan will want to shell out $50 for the limited edition set with all the bonus merchandise, but I can easily recommend the DVD portion alone for $25 when sold seperately. Rey Mysterio is an exciting, colorful, fast moving and often surprisingly technical wrestler whose matches almost always tell a great story in the ring and very rarely dissapoint. **** out of 5 for "The Biggest Little Man." Look for this DVD set at a store near you.