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What's the story?
A lot has been made about Justin Barasso's report that Rey Mysterio was backstage at the most recent SmackDown Live to negotiate a potential WrestleMania match, possibly against John Cena. Many sites then seemed to confirm that to the best of their knowledge Mysterio wasn't backstage and that Barasso's report was false. However, there's been a few updates since then.
In case you didn't know...
On Monday Night RAW John Cena teased a match with Undertaker but said it wouldn't happen because it was impossible. He then moved over to SmackDown Live and challenged WWE Champion AJ Styles for a spot in the Fastlane main event, which he won.
This is all part of an ongoing storyline where John Cena is trying to get a spot at WrestleMania because he's no longer the top star of the company and doesn't have a guaranteed match at the show. The long-standing belief was that Undertaker was going to be Cena's opponent, but now Rey Mysterio has been thrown into the mix.
The heart of the matter
So, we've seen Rey Mysterio reported as backstage and we've seen Rey Mysterio reported as not backstage. Now it seems that the truth is somewhere in between. Whether or not that's because WWE is trying to blur the lines to make the 'Taker reveal more exciting, or because they're trying to cover the accurate Mysterio news up is unclear.
First David Bixenspan revealed that he'd reached out to two separate sources and received two contradicting reports from those sources, one confirming Rey wasn't there, and one saying he was but was just visiting.
Ringside News also reported comments Mike Johnson made on PWInsider Elite Audio where Johnson seems to suggest that Mysterio may not have been backstage at SmackDown but that Mysterio was expected in Los Angeles, but went on to reiterate that they could not confirm this rumor.
"I did hear over the course of the day that Rey was expected in Los Angeles. So it was possible he was going to go but didn’t go or it was possible that the rumor was unfounded to begin with. There is a reason we didn’t write about it yesterday. We couldn’t prove it was correct.”
What's next?
Rey Mysterio's status at SmackDown Live remains unclear, although the general consensus amongst most of the credible wrestling sites seems to be that he wasn't there. However, the amount of uncertainty that seems to be surrounding this story could indicate that there may be some truth behind Barasso's claims.
Author's take
The only thing that we can all be sure of regardless of whatever is going on with Mysterio.is that Rey Mysterio back in the WWE would be a great thing
