Rey Calitri likes to add a little spice to his wrestling character.
WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard recently spoke with ISPW Tri-State Champion Rey Calitri, who retained his title against Crowbar at ISPW 25. Before his title defense, Calitri provided an overview of his four-year professional wrestling career, including the origins of his ring name, which took inspiration from the 2000 action film Gone In 60 Seconds.
“That’s where I got my name from. In my four-year career, you are the second person to ever guess that correctly,” he proclaimed. “Because they’re like, ‘But wait, you’re Latino, right? So you’re from Puerto Rico, but you have like this stage name or your wrestling name is Russian.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, how did you go about doing that or whatever?’
“It was because my first show ever, the guy wanted to use my real name, and I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to use my real name.’ So he’s like, ‘All right, you have one day to think about it.’ And I was just watching Gone in 60 Seconds and everyone calls me Rey, and the villain of the movie, the guy’s name is Ray Calitri. And I’m like, ‘Oh, let me just use Rey Calitri.’ Ever since then, that’s what everybody calls me,” Calitri said.
Character Influences
When asked if he had any other character influences, Calitri named Ric Flair, Gino Hernandez, and Nick Bockwinkel as three of the wrestlers he utilizes as study material.
“If most people don’t see the transition within me. They’re about to know,” Calitri said. “Because when I got hurt about three years ago with a broken ankle, I actually broke my ankle twice in one year, which completely sucked. So when I first started wrestling, I was coming out as Mr. Puerto Rico. mister come out with the flag and do the whole [parade] whatever. So I got hurt and I really took that year upon myself to find my inner voice, I guess, or whatever it is that you want to call it, your inner character — that character that you have to tune up to ten and that’s who you’re supposed to be.”
“I sat down, I’m like, ‘Yo, what is it that I like?’ And I’m like, okay, I like nice cars. I like traveling, I like money, I like looking nice. So I started portraying a lot of Ric Flair, Gino Hernandez, and Nick Bockwinkel. A lot of those guys I studied a lot of their stuff over that course of the year. Then when I started coming out, I sort of just added my little twist to it so that not everyone would be like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re a complete copycat of Ric Flair. You’re a complete copycat of Gino Hernandez.’ So I just try to add my Latin little spice to it, try to make it my own. But those are pretty much my influences right now going into the career and everything that you see.”
The Shining Star
Outside of his role as ISPW Tri-State Champion, Rey Calitri has also claimed the title of “The Shining Star,” which he has adopted as his nickname. In further explaining who “The Shining Star” is, Calitri reiterated that he enjoys traveling, especially for pleasure and leisure.
“‘Shining Star’ is an independent guy who just basically travels a lot for pleasure or leisure, I should say. And then in doing so, I do my best to reach out to the promotions wherever it is that I am traveling to, to see if I could get on the shows. If not a show, maybe I could just train with the guys and everything, just having fun with it, man. That’s all,” Calitri said.
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Watch our full interview with Rey Calitri below:
