Rey Mysterio recently appeared on the Rasslin With Brandon F. Walker podcast, where he touched on the subject of his retirement.
The legend said that the ideal moment will come when his son Dominik is ready to be completely on his own: “I think I’ll step back once I feel like my son is ready just to take off on his own, that would be really helpful for him. I’m hoping that it happens within this year. For him to branch out and take care of things on his own. I’ve had the opportunity to be on the same house shows as him, with me wrestling in a completely separate match and him wrestling by himself. A couple of times he’s wrestled Chad Gable, other times he’s wrestled Otis one on one. I can see the difference when I’m not in there with him and when we’re in there together. He tends to do a lot better and it’s less stressful and not that much pressure when he’s in there by himself. He enjoys it.”
Rey explained how he and other veterans are important for the development of younger talents: “There’s a lot of talking to the boys, the younger talent, the new generation, making them feel at home and giving them advice, whether it’s good advice when they do good, or if they do something bad you can tell them ‘you know what? You can possibly do this better. Try it. See if it works, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll find another way.’ You see a lot of that from the Randy Ortons, the Edges. My son Dominik has been getting a lot advice from Randy, from Edge, from the guys that have been around there. Guys like us that have been there since the early 2000’s.”
Mysterio also admitted that he’s hard on Dominik with the intention of making him improve in an old school way, and also mentioned that his son should get bigger: “In a sense, I like to be hard on him, I don’t want him to take the easy way. I like to point the finger a lot, whether it’s him doing good or him doing bad. Obviously different times growing up for my son and myself. I had it very, very rough. I was raised the old school way and I was taught the old school way, which I really enjoyed. It makes me appreciate what I do now, because of all the grinding I went through. I try to put my son through the same thing, even though he’s had it much easier than I had it. But that’s what we do. As a parent, we try to open up the doors for our children to eventually make it to the top in whatever it is they want to do. But I’m hard on my son. And he’ll tell you that I’m probably his worst critic. But again, he’s been given a very special opportunity, and he’s taken advantage of it. He still has a lot to learn, but on top of everything, he’s doing a really incredible job. And now it’s time for him to step it up, and we’ve talked about that. We have these talks constantly about what he needs to look forward to, what he wants as part of his career, the time he invests in himself working out, eating, supplements, getting bigger. He is thin, but he’s tall, he just needs to put some weight on. He’s just been in the business for a year, so to see the evolution of him in less than a year has been amazing. I can’t think of anybody else, not because he’s my son, but I can’t think of any other son of (a wrestler) that has had one year of wrestling and has accomplished what he has. I know opportunities have been given to him, but I think he’s been able to grab them and make the best out of them.”
H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
