Dean Malenko Reveals The Surprising Reason WWE Will Never Release His Dark Match With Místico

Recently, WWE began airing rare and overlooked matches on a new YouTube channel , which has excited many longtime wrestling fans. Yet while many matches are proposed, arguably the most sought after is the February 27th, 2007 SmackDown dark match between Dean Malenko and Luis Ignacio Urive Alvirde, who at the time was performing under the name of Místico and later became Sin Cara.

This is considered notable as Malenko had been retired for several years, and Místico was one of the biggest lucha libre stars in the world at the time. However, Malenko has now revealed during an interview with Hey! (EW) that the match will never be seen because it never took place. Seemingly, a fan in attendance believed Jamie Noble was actually Malenko and fed this back to dirt sheets, who reported it as fact.

“That never happened it never happened. That was not me, that was Jamie Noble … He looks a little like me.”

64-year-old Malenko is a second-generation wrestler, who many fans first discovered during his ECW run in the mid-90s. Still, his fame and status within the business transcended to another level in WCW, where he was a multiple-time Cruiserweight Champion, United States Champion, and World Tag Team champion with Chris Benoit.

He would then go on to finish his in-ring career in WWE after jumping from WCW as part of The Radicalz stable alongside Benoit, Perry Saturn, and Eddie Guerrero. And while he is sadly dealing with Parkinson’s disease, he remains active in the business by working as a producer for AEW.