Rey Mysterio Jr. has vowed to go into his “bag of tricks” if he needs to in order to overcome the recent challenge from Logan Paul.
Paul called out the WWE legend on Saturday, after defeating Bellator MMA fighter Dillon Danis in a boxing match where Danis dismally failed to live up to the relentless pre-fight trash talk.
“I was watching the whole fight. Obviously I was expecting more of a fight from Dillon, but we didn’t get to see that. But it was really shocking to hear that he called me out. I was like ‘What? Did he just say that?’ It caught my attention right away,” Mysterio told The Post in a wide-ranging conversation, that included an explanation of how he has utilized stem cell therapy to extend his Hall of Fame career.
“Like I said in my tweet: I’m not hard to find. You can find me every week on ‘Smackdown.'”
This is not the first rodeo between Paul and Mysterio.
At WrestleMania 38 last year, Mysterio teamed up with his son, Dominik, against Paul and The Miz.
The Mysterios lost the match after The Miz tagged himself in, and pushed the son into his father before dropping the latter with his Skull Crushing Finale finishing maneuver.
“He did say, ‘Rey, I’ve beaten you before.’ To my recollection, we had him pinned, and if it wasn’t for The Miz coming in, we would’ve beaten him, so I don’t know where he gets that he had beaten me before.”
While there has not been an official announcement, it is presumable that the renewed conflict between the two will come to a head at WWE’s “Crown Jewel” in Saud Arabia on Nov. 4.
Outside of kayfabe, Mysterio marveled at how rapidly Paul has picked up the professional wrestling genre, which has traditionally taken many years for its stars to master.
“That’s what’s scary,” Mysterio said. “He’s picked it up very fast and has learned so much. You put the amount of years that I have had of experience, and it’s really cost me a lot of time and effort and learning to be able to get where I’m at. He went right to the top, right away. I see that in a way as well with my son. This is a newer generation. But at the end of the day I’ll pull out my bag of tricks and do what I have to do to win.”
Mysterio Jr. has been wrestling since 1989 — and turns 50 next year — and yet he is still in remarkable physical shape, performing athletic feats that make it seem as though he has not lost a step since he was in his 20s.
“I’ve been very smart with time on how to adapt and still keep my style, that has impacted the world, to a level where I can still do some of those moves that I used to do, just in a different variation, or come up with different moves and make them look cool,” he said.
He noted that this has all taken a “toll” on his body, and that he’s used a lot of methods to keep it in condition, including cold plunges, infrared saunas, red light therapy and stem cells.
Mysterio said that over the past decade he has received stem cell injections into his knees, ankles, wrists (for carpal tunnel), biceps, shoulders and his spine, going to Colombia and Mexico to get the procedures done.
The Post also asked Mysterio what it was like to be backstage at one of the seminal events in pro wrestling history, when Hulk Hogan joined Scott Hall and Kevin Nash to form the NWO at the 1996 “Bash at the Beach,” where he’d wrestled Psicosis on the undercard.
“I found out at the same time everybody else did,” Mysterio laughed. “They hid him very well. We did not know.”
It was a truly shocking moment at the time, as evidenced by how much trash the fans were throwing into the ring at the dastardly heels.
“We were all watching on monitors, so it was just crazy to see the reaction that he got,” Mysterio said.
“It brought me back to my days in Tijuana, where in lucha libre the fans throw whatever they have in their hands into the ring at the heels. I’m proud to say I was there. I wish I would have been peeking out through the curtain to see the fans’ reaction, but we got a chance to see it through the monitors in the back and it was a moment that’s never gonna be forgotten.”