The ghost of Sin Cara hasn't left the building yet

Jeff Jarrett is currently enjoying a career renaissance in AEW that absolutely nobody had on their 2024 bingo card. The man who broke a million acoustic guitars over a million heads is now the voice of reason. But we need to talk about what he just said on his podcast.

Double J recently went on the record calling AEW's newest signee, Mistico, the "LeBron James of lucha libre."

I had to read that sentence three times. We're skipping right past the Michael Jordan comparisons and going straight to LeBron? It's the kind of hyperbole that makes wrestling promoters sound like used car salesmen.

The Arena Mexico reality distortion field

Here's the thing: Jarrett isn't entirely wrong when it comes to raw, unfiltered star power in Mexico. If you've ever seen a CMLL show at Arena Mexico, Mistico isn't just a wrestler. He's a religious experience.

The guy moves merch like he's printing his own currency. When he points to the sky, 15,000 people lose their collective minds. In terms of drawing money south of the border, yes, he is absolute royalty.

But we also have to address the 300-pound gorilla in the room wearing a blue and gold mask. We all remember the WWE run. We all remember Sin Cara.

You can't erase 2011 from our collective memory

You can't just ignore the trampoline entrances that ended in disaster, the mood lighting that made every match look like a laser tag arena, and the botches. Oh, the botches. It was like watching a beautiful sports car repeatedly parallel park into a fire hydrant.

So now he's in AEW, a company that treats lucha libre like a holy sacrament. AEW is the place where Rey Fenix and Penta El Zero Miedo turned tag team wrestling into an Avengers movie. Will Mistico fit in? The roster is practically designed to catch him when he jumps off the top rope.

The official prediction

Here is my iron-clad prediction for the Mistico AEW era: It's going to be a spectacular, chaotic, five-star rollercoaster.

We are going to get matches against Will Ospreay, Pac, and Darby Allin that will melt our faces off. He's going to do things in the ring that defy the laws of physics. But there will also be at least one moment—just one—where a miscommunication happens, someone slips on the top rope, and we all get a terrifying flashback to a 2011 episode of SmackDown.

Is he the LeBron James of lucha libre? Maybe. If LeBron spent three years playing for the Miami Heat while wearing a mask that completely blinded him and occasionally forgot how to dribble.