At fourteen years old, Rey Mysterio was an unlicensed wrestler.
On E & C's Pod of Awesomeness, Rey Mysterio Jr was asked about the early days of his career. The hosts of the podcast Edge and Christian said when they began their training in the early 1990s, Mysterio was already getting attention at promotions like ECW. Mysterio told the two fellow wrestlers about his humble beginnings of becoming a professional wrestler.
"I was actually going through my album the other day, actually right around Christmas time. I was flipping though the pages and I saw on one of the pages I saw I had my envelope with my first pay date which I saved. It was something like 150 Pesos back then maybe the equivalent to fifteen dollars. I put the date on there and it said '1989'. I was fourteen years old at the time," said Mysterio.
When he was young, Mysterio said he was getting to train three or four times a week with some of the best wrestlers in Mexico. But, eventually he had to complete some paperwork with the Mexican Government to be able to compete in the ring.
"In order to become a wrestler in Mexico, you had to take a test like taking a driver's test. I had to prepare myself to take my test at the age of fifteen. The first show I did when I was fourteen, I kind of got away with it. It wasn't an official show at a big auditorium so they didn't give me beef about me wrestling without a license," said Mysterio.
The commission also asked Mysterio's mother to sign papers waiving the commission or promoter's liability for allowing Mysterio to wrestle at such a young age. Also mentioned in the podcast was Mysterio living in Tijuana, Mexico but traveling to the United States for school in San Diego while he was training full time and competing in matches.
E & C's Pod of Awesomeness is available on iTunes and other podcast platforms.