The use of little people in WWE segments has been around as long as I can remember in my almost 30ish years of watching professional wrestling, but we hadn’t seen the use of a person with dwarfism in this manner in forever, as it just hasn’t been common since the days of Vince McMahon booking. Tonight, I felt like I was back in the 2000s again, and I was really surprised that WWE actually did the segment with Dominik Mysterio bringing out two little people, one to pose as John Cena, Mysterio’s Survivor Series opponent for his Intercontinental Championship rematch, and even another playing Stu, the cameraman.

I’m not entirely sure what they were trying to accomplish with this. Mysterio usually gets plenty of heel heat. In addition to his feud with Cena over the IC title, he’s also back to feuding with his recently returned father, Rey Mysterio. Maybe this segment was inspired by the cheers Mysterio got over his father a few weeks ago when Rey returned, but if you were looking to get actual heel heat on the younger Mysterio, this wasn’t it. It absolutely killed the crowd, who were dead for the first half of Rey’s match against Judgment Day’s JD McDonagh, and they were thankfully entirely won back with Rey’s win.

And, honestly? I can’t blame them at all for dying out a bit there. Outside of the entire thought process of “how is WWE doing a segment using little people as the butt of a joke” angle and WHY, in 2025, nearly 2026, the fact that Mysterio even teased a Cena appearance was outright cruel. While, of course, Cena’s final “Raw” appearance was promoted like crazy that it was 100% going to be last week and that was final, I’m sure a lot of these people, especially the little kids in the crowd, had some hope there. If you’re sitting in that audience, hyped up, you’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars at this point on tickets to see your favorite WWE stars, and you hear “The Time is Now” hit after someone has called him out, you’re going to get your hopes up, only to be let down by whatever this segment was.

If WWE really wanted to get the heat on Mysterio with Cena’s music, it could have easily been McDonagh and Finn Balor to walk out to it, like “Haha, we got you guys! Losers!” But no, WWE decided to go back to its questionable roots with little people. That’s certainly not something I saw happening tonight, and I can’t say I liked it in the slightest.

Written by Daisy Ruth