Eddie Guerrero - 20 years on

[Chico Torres]

First time I saw him would have been in AAA on Galavision Europe as the far less charismatic half of Los Gringos Locos but at the time it wasn’t something I was watching very regularly. As @wandshogun09 mentioned as Black Tiger he was in the first match in the first episode of New Japan showing Eurosport against Liger, the same episode featured an eclectic cast of characters including Scott Norton and Hercules as the Jurassic Powers, Lethal Larry Cameron, The Nasty Boys and Keiji Muto. I left most impressed with Norton.

Truth be told I was never a huge fan, I thought the Malenko matches in ECW were a massively negative influence on American wrestling and he was a terrible face when he first came to WCW but entertaining as the sleazy heel later on. By the time he hit his peak I had stopped watching WWE for the most part but my hot take is that a match he had with Rey on Smackdown was far better than the overrated Havoc 97 match.

[TheBurningRed]

I loved Eddie. Only Bryan Danielson has pipped him as the greatest to do it in my opinion. Both had that special connection with the audience and always looked flawless in the ring. Wrestling has only made me cry twice, Eddie’s death and Danielson’s first retirement.

It’s a shame he was so broken down in his last couple of years. You wouldn’t have known it. But we were running out of time watching him anyway, I believe.

A loveable face and a dickhead heel. He also made Chavo more interesting with their tag team and those absolute bangers during the Smackdown Six days. 

[air_raid]

My first exposure to Eddy was on Nitro after Cartoon Network on Friday nights ; it was around Spring Stampede 97 and he was hanging around with his arm in a sling trying to rebuff overtures from the Dungeon, for some reason. It was hardly any time before he cost Deano Machino the US title in a full fledged heel turn. When I saw, later on, some of his face work in WCW, I thought he’d been badly miscast ; how could this guy ever NOT have been the baddie? He excelled at it. His matches were bangers, and he was one of the many reasons why the WCW midcard captured my imagination. It took a couple of years to shift my perception that “Eddy should never work face” but even when he was drawing laughs and warmth during the Mamacita stuff, I always thought the value should have been in his undoing ; laughing at him, rather than with him, and Chyna throwing him around and ultimately pinning him at Mania 16 is more like how their story should have ended rather than begun.

It was during Los Guerreros and “Lie, Cheat, Steal” that I, like many others, came around. He’d become so good at cheating that the “lovable rogue” appeal became impossible to shake off. I felt pretty bad for Tajiri during Eddy G’s first failed heel turn, if you remember it, but Latino Heat had become undeniable in his likability. Two events over the course of a five month period live in my mind forever, in regards to Eddy - firstly, I went to Passport to Pain at the NEC with occasional keffer tsve and four others. Eddy opened with Rhino and was wildly popular in victory, then three matches later came back out to more rapturous support to help Chavito beat Charlie Haas, and as uncle and nephew were heading towards the curtain, one of the casual fans in our group asked me “Do you think they’d ever make Eddy the champion?” My immediate reaction was to laugh and say “Of course not” because I knew how Vince would see his imaginary shortcomings. But I paused, pondered his burgeoning popularity and softened my answer to “I’m not sure - if he stays this popular, never say never.” A few months later, I didn’t give Eddy any chance at No Way Out, convinced Lesnar vs Goldberg simply couldn’t happen without one title or the other… when he won, watching the Friday teatime thereafter on a tape posted to me days after in my uni digs, tsve and me immediately ran out to buy tequila to toast Guerrero properly (you’d call it pre-drinks these days) ahead of going for a proper night out. We were jubilant.

Fast forward to his final heel turn and as sinister and creepy as he tried to be, “I’m Your Papi” damn near turned him back because of how entertaining he was. You couldn’t help but root for him. As popular as Batista was, we all secretly longed for Eddy to betray him, especially if it meant he could get another title run, even if as I aluded to earlier in the thread, it wasn’t actually on the cards. I can’t actually remember how I found out he’d died, but I remember the week thereafter quite well, because how surreal it all seemed, and how unfair that he’d conquered his addictions but died so young anyway. He was a gifted wrestler and his personality lit up the screen. Even thinking about how the first few bars to “Here Without You” sound always threatens to make me well up.

Yeah, he lied, he cheated, he stole our hearts.

Edited November 14, 2025 by air_raid
I’m just a love machine.

[wandshogun09]

Didn’t one of the Smackdown games come out right around the time he died? I just remember playing one of the games loads for a few days after, going through Career Mode as Eddie etc, and feeling shit in a way I don’t think I’d ever felt over a wrestler’s death before. Even Owen, shocking as it was, I was 13 at the time and it didn’t even feel real, I don’t think that one fully sunk in for a while. With Eddie I was 20 by then, more mature (well, a bit) and it was an instant gut punch. Can’t even remember how I found out either. But that feeling in the days after, playing that game for hours, I remember clearly. It sounds overly dramatic when it’s someone you didn’t actually know personally but it was the first wrestler death that properly effected me to where I guess I was kind of mourning the loss. 

[TheScarlettChad]

The game out a week after he died I think? And featured a storyline in which Undertaker throws him into a coffin.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

If I’m having a bad day, I’ll always look up a compilation on YouTube of any time Eddie pulled one of his tricks in the ring, wether it be loosening his boot to break out of the ankle lock to beat Kurt Angle at Mania, whipping Nick Patrick with Shaniqua’s whip and blaming it on Danny Basham or any time he feigned getting hit by an object to get someone DQ’d and it will always make me smile 

[air_raid]

To fill in some gaps ;

20 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

It’s a shame he had that car crash in 98/99 whenever it was. I don’t think it stopped some big push or anything. At the time of the crash I think he’d been pissing about with the LWO or Filthy Animals or something hadn’t he?

It was LWO. He was deep into simultaneously trying to force Rey to join, and for someone in the group to win the CWT back from Kidman. Starrcade had Kidman vs Rey vs Juvi and immediately after Billy retained, Eddy challenged him himself and also lost. The crash was New Years just days later. He returned in June 99 beating Juvi on Nitro, essentially the same surly heel character but getting cheered by fans glad to see him back. The Filthy Animals formed soon afterwards.

20 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Without checking, I can’t even recall what Eddie was doing at the end of ‘03. My latest memory is him arsing about with Big Show for the US belt at No Mercy. If you held a gun to my head I couldn’t tell you what he was doing between November 2003 and February 2004.

He and Chavo lost the tag belts to the green as grass and dull as ditchwater Bashams then after failing to win them back the simmering tension finally caused Chavito to turn on Uncle Eddy. They wrestled at the Rumble and at the time I was shocked both how short it was (I think it was 8 minutes) and how convincingly Eddy won, effectively putting a lid on the feud. I’d assumed Chavo would win the first match if he had anything to gain by them splitting but he got flicked away like it was a 96 Superstars main - little did I know they were short of time before Uncle was getting thrust into the main event scene. Chavo landed on his feet, virtually immediately being positioned as new end of game baddie in the CWT division.

As an aside I felt bad for Eddy as champ, in no time at all due to injuries, brand switches, departures and shite booking, the main event scene on Fridays transformed from Angle, Lesnar, Taker and Benoit & Cena both knocking on the door, to “Takers a bored zombie again, we’re going to make Cena waste time with losers for a year… here’s an Acolyte.” Real “let’s have a look at what you could have won” stuff.

[wandshogun09]

Christ. The Bashams. No wonder I forgot that end of ‘03 period. I forgot Doug and Danny and their bin bag trousers even existed until now. 

[BomberPat]

Eddie was a huge part of the growth of my wrestling fandom, and my understanding of wrestling. 

I got back into wrestling in mid-2000, thanks to the first Smackdown game, and it took me a while to warm to anyone who wasn't in that game. The Radicalz were knocking about, but weren't really much of a coherent faction any more. I knew nothing of their history, but they just seemed different and more exciting than most people in the WWF, though I'd be lying if I said that Eddy stood out in that regard - in hindsight, that's because he more perfectly adjusted to WWF style sports entertainment. The first wrestlers I really loved were Mick Foley and Raven, so the hardcore division was my jam, so Perry Saturn probably fit my tastes more, and Benoit was my brother's favourite wrestler.

Eddy back then was always a reliably good match, and as Foley's book and wrestling magazines led me back to ECW, I started to get more of a sense of who he was and where he had been. Playing WCW games, and seeing Chavo Guerrero Jr as an option, led me to a better understanding of who the Guerrero family were, and then Eddy leaving the WWF was a real watershed moment for me - it was him wrestling in the UK that led me to discover the FWA and British wrestling in general, and that short indie run introduced me to ROH and IWA: Mid-South; neither were promotions I ever followed closely, but just learning of their existence helped open up my understanding of the world of wrestling, and how much more of it there was out there. When I started digging into older wrestling stuff, my two avenues were Japanese deathmatches and '90s lucha, with Eddy and Los Gringos Locos being a huge part of that.

I never really thought, when Eddy returned to WWE, that he was a main event prospect, but I never cared - most of my favourites in the WWF were midcard acts anyway. He came back in for a feud with Rob Van Dam, which seemed very cool - battling over who had the best version of a move felt like the kind of thing people would constantly fantasy book, but which WWE rarely ever actually did - and being back in the mix around the Intercontinental Title felt like the logical place for him.

But then he cut this incredible promo for a one-night programme with The Rock, about how he wanted to be his daughters' favourite wrestler, but came home to find they had a poster of The Rock on their wall and he tore it down and shouted at them - it was really impassioned, tapped into a kind of pettiness that's perfect for the sort of heel he was, and implied the possibility of a far darker behaviour underpinning it all, kind of prefiguring the creepier angles he did with Dominik. There was just something intense there that nobody else was doing.

By the time of the Smackdown Six, I was a full-blown workrate mark, and Smackdown felt tailor made for my tastes, with Los Guerreros being a big part of it. When be fought Brock Lesnar for the belt, it never occurred to me that he might win - Brock was going to fight Goldberg, so why would they have him lose, and to Eddy Guerrero of all people? It was a rare PPV that I stayed up late to watch, rather than taping, and like others have said in this thread, despite thinking myself the smartest of smart fans, I remember literally jumping off the sofa cheering when it became clear that Eddy was winning.

 

I was devastated when I found out that he had died. It just seemed so unfair. Other wrestlers had died young, but they were big muscleheads from the '80s, so they never felt as young to me as a guy I was just watching on TV. I'm the same age now that Eddie was when he died, which feels almost incomprehensible. I remember editing together a tribute video, which I'm sure was horrifically cringe. Thankfully, this was the very early days of YouTube, so I doubt I even uploaded it there. 

 

Years later, when I got involved in wrestling, I started to appreciate the little ways in which Eddy was truly special. Realising how, as a babyface, the Three Amigos was this smooth and beautiful flashy move, but as a heel he slowed it down and made the focus the impact of each suplex, making it a sadistic move to keep repeating that impact. How, in the finish of his Wrestlemania match with Kurt Angle, he manages to get so much snap on an inside cradle that it feels like an offensive move more than a roll-up.

Joe E. Legend told me a story of how he watched Eddy work, and how on his way to the ring he would take in what he could see of the audience, and listen to the pitch of the crowd noise, and from that - in the amount of time it took him to walk to the ring - come up with a working estimate of the demographic balance, in terms of age and gender, and of the general mood of the crowd, and would tailor how he worked to fit. And how he pretty much always got it right. I did a refereeing seminar with Scott Armstrong, and he talked about how when he refereed Los Guerreros matches, Eddy would tell him that if he ever caught them cheating he was to disqualify them, yet across dozens of matches he never did. Stuff like that stands out to me as how truly brilliant he was. He seems to have really bridged the gap between today's more elaborately planned matches and the previous generation calling everything in the ring, and come out with the best of both worlds.

I am always really reluctant to talk of "Mount Rushmores" or best ever. I think you risk casting a certain wrestler, style or era in amber and saying it's untouchable. And how do you compare a great '80s brawler with a 2020s luchadore, or a World of Sport comedy act, and say one is definitively better than the rest? To me, the deciding factors have to be longevity, diversity, and adaptability - can a wrestler work equally well in totally different locations, eras, and styles, and with a diverse range of opponents? I have always pointed to Terry Funk as the gold standard in that respect, but you could make the same case for Eddy Guerrero - who else could do the NJPW Best Of The Super Juniors, WWF midcard comedy, play a pro-American AAA rudo and a cocky Mexican WCW heel, and have a bloodbath of a main event brawl with JBL as easily as a technical masterclass with Angle, Benoit or Malenko?

[wandshogun09]

4 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Eddy Guerrero - who else could do the NJPW Best Of The Super Juniors, WWF midcard comedy, play a pro-American AAA rudo and a cocky Mexican WCW heel, and have a bloodbath of a main event brawl with JBL as easily as a technical masterclass with Angle, Benoit or Malenko?

Perfect way to put it. And I’m genuinely not sure there’s another wrestler who could have not only done all that but done it so well. He really was a one-off.

While I’m here, couple of fun little Eddie matches I watched this morning.

Eddie vs Lex Luger from Saturday Night in Feb 96…

Really fun match. Enjoyed it a lot. Probably better than anything Lex did in his two year stint in the WWF and it’s a different kind of match than what we usually see out of him because of the fast pace Eddie brings. It’s more like the Lex we saw against Pillman in their 1989 matches and I loved that stuff as well. Eddie brings out the best in him here but it’s not like he’s ’carrying’ Lex either. They both seemed to be having fun out there.

Also, Eddie vs his brother Hector the Gobbledy Gooker from Nitro in July 97…

Watched this just for the novelty of seeing brother vs brother. Not Eddie’s best but it was a decent enough little match in the early days of his heel run. Hector’s screams and his face here while Eddie’s biting him are hilarious…

[Rossman]

On 11/15/2025 at 6:10 AM, air_raid said:

He and Chavo lost the tag belts to the green as grass and dull as ditchwater Bashams then after failing to win them back the simmering tension finally caused Chavito to turn on Uncle Eddy. 

Going off on a tangent here.

The crazy thing about the Basham's was that they were both pretty seasoned wrestlers by the time they got called up.They were both stalwarts of OVW and had worked against and tag teamed together for quite a while. Wrestling pretty much everyone coming through the development. Damaja aka Danny Basham was seen as the most potential and could have easily fitted in the WWE midcard scene. It was when they were both individually called up for tryouts. Doug Basham was known as The Machine in OVW and had shoulder length hair.  They wanted to see what he would look like with Danny, so got him to shave his head bald.  When he returned to OVW, Corny blew a gasket as they had shaved one of his top stars bald. But this inevitably got them 4 years of WWE employment. Which I don't think WWE would have taken them on as singles wrestlers.

But I agree, a plain piece of paper had more personality than them. It's one of those strange conundrums, like being told, everything you've done in developmental. Forget that and do this instead. The whole gimmick was just wrong, two bald brothers in leather trousers who had a dominatrix manager.

[Chili]

Bumping this because I didn't clock a few months back the vault uploaded a big comp of Eddie and Chyna in 2000. A BRILLIANT double act, it's the most you'll ever see Chyna clearly enjoying herself, such good chemistry and like Dusty Rhodes wearing polkadots, an elite performer will really drag an angle or anything designed as a rib, kicking and screaming to something tolerable and entertaining, which Eddie absolutely does here.

I completely forgot how funny the actual turn was. Chyna just actually found his skeezy act a bit of kink so after beating him just fancied him more and aligned. It makes me laugh that Eddie, in character, actually pulled.

 

Edited January 27 by Chili

[LaGoosh]

The Eddie/Chyna angle gets overlooked a lot because it happened at the same time as the Steph/Triple H/Kurt love triangle but watching it back the Eddie/Chyna stuff is way better. It#s easily Chyna's best work.

[SaitoRyo]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

The Eddie/Chyna angle gets overlooked a lot because it happened at the same time as the Steph/Triple H/Kurt love triangle but watching it back the Eddie/Chyna stuff is way better. It#s easily Chyna's best work.

Yeah, that was the sweet spot for Chyna, I think. She was never going to be a main eventer getting booked as an equal to Steve Austin and The Rock (like she'd hoped), but her trouncing the rest of the women's division did nobody any favours, either. 

All signs suggested they were going to go back to this dynamic or at least do something similar in May of '01, but Eddie was sent to rehab and then the whole Stephanie/HHH affair (along with her contract demands) led to Chyna being shown the door around the same time.