12 Days of WWE’s Best: Mysterio’s Rumble Return Was A Real Surprise

Today on my list of WWE’s best of 2018, Royal Rumble legend Rey Mysterio shocked us all with a truly surprising return during this year’s Royal Rumble in January.

It’s very, very hard to shock a WWE fan now-a-days. All you need to do is log into Twitter or type someone’s name into a search engine, and you risk the possibility of completely ruining the element of surprise for yourself.

Rarely – heck, less than rarely, seldom ever – does something happen in WWE that we could say genuinely surprised us, something a la the Hardy Boyz return at WrestleMania 33.

This one is a little bit of a personal preference for me, mostly because of the circumstances. I wouldn’t call it a “where were you when” moment if I hadn’t been where I was when Rey Mysterio returned at the Royal Rumble.

That of course was right there at the Wells Fargo Arena, in the first elevated tier, right underneath the Wrestlemania sign.

I had even just spent the entire morning watching old Rumble matches on the WWE Network, including of course the 2016 Royal Rumble, during which Mysterio set then at-the-time record for the longest time ever spent in a Royal Rumble match (it was later broken by Daniel Bryan this year).

I remember it like it was yesterday; when the buzzer rang for number 27, I grabbed onto the friends I came with, I grabbed onto the strangers who sat in our row, and we all looked at each other and genuinely marked. Out. 

On account of his elite statistic, when you think you think of the Royal Rumble, you have to think of Rey Mysterio and his contribution to the Royal Rumble HOF, if you will, and how he overcame the odds to last an hour and two minutes in the Rumble after coming in a number 2 and then went on to win against Triple H, who entered in at number 1.

There’s a lot to take in from that last sentence, and it only bolsters the notion that Mysterio is a Rumble great.

Now, to recap from my little schpeel – Rey Mysterio’s surprise entrance into the 2018 Royal Rumble was a 2018 great for two reason:

Reason one – Rey Mysterio is Royal Rumble Royalty. If there were any event where Mysterio should have returned (or at least teased a return), it was that one, and to see someone in the Rumble who has a phenomenal history with the company and the match itself is always amazing.

Reason two – it was genuinely a complete surprise. Seriously? How often these days does WWE do something that you did not see coming for all the right reasons? Having something like a surprise return is always made better when you don’t read any hints or spoilers on the internet, and these days it’s nearly impossible to avoid them.

It also, if I may get a little nostalgic here, kind of brings you back to when you didn’t have a way to access spoilers, and you just innocently watched the action truly not knowing what to expect. The surprise really made the old joy and excitement of watching wrestling in our younger days come back, and it allowed us to feel an array of emotions – from jump-up-and-down excitement to even just a simple yet impressed, “yo.”

So, Rey Mysterio, thank you for your comeback at the match you helped make great. We can’t wait to see when your comeback to WWE has in store in 2019, but we hope it includes a little more gold.