Gone Too Soon: Deaths That Changed Wrestling

by Ian Hamilton

  In the UK, Eddie accepted a booking on a show called “Revival” - an attempt to push British wrestling back into the mainstream, thanks to regular promotion on a national radio station and a leading cable and satellite TV channel in the country. Backed by former children’s television presenter Tommy Boyd (who was, at the time, hosting a call-in show about wrestling on talkSPORT radio in the UK), Guerrero was included in a tournament to crown a “King of England”. Although he went out in the semi-finals, to eventual tournament runner-up Doug Williams, Eddie’s performance and behaviour that weekend earned him rave reviews from fans and those who worked with him.

  Later that month, he went on to appear on the debut show for the Ring of Honor (ROH) promotion, wrestling former ECW alumnus Super Crazy in a match to determine the first Intercontinental champion for the Puerto Rico-based promotion, IWA. Guerrero would lose, before hopping on a plane to Las Vegas to wrestle for another new promotion, the World Wrestling All-stars (WWA). WWA was a company formed using former WCW wrestlers who were largely unable to get work with the WWE for whatever reason, with their first pay-per-view and subsequent tours of Australia and the UK featuring names like Jeff Jarrett, Gangrel, Norman Smiley and Bret Hart (acting as a commissioner for the company).

  Guerrero appeared on WWA’s second pay-per-view, called “The Revolution”, where he would beat former LWO partners Psychosis and Juventud Guerrera to win the WWA’s International Cruiserweight Championship.

  By the time WWA held their next pay-per-view, “The Eruption” in April, Eddie had vacated the title - and for good reason. Ring of Honor would enjoy longevity as the number three promotion in the US, whilst WWA eventually went out of business (and the UK promotion behind Revival lasted for just one show!). Eddie was going back “home”... WWE wanted more Latino Heat.

  After re-signing with WWE, Eddie made a shock return on the April Fool’s Day edition of Monday Night Raw, attacking then-Intercontinental champion Rob Van Dam, initiating a major storyline for the returning Guerrero. Barely three weeks later, Guerrero beat RVD for the title at the Backlash pay-per-view, in a move that was somewhat symptomatic of the high-speeds that WWE was starting to burn through their storylines. Guerrero would go on to defend the title successfully against Van Dam at the UK-only Insurrextion pay-per-view, and at the Judgment Day show, before losing it back to Van Dam in a ladder match on Raw. The end of that storyline was supposed to have set up Guerrero for a run with the biggest name in the business... before it went horribly wrong.

  The storyline with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin started out fairly well, with Guerrero being involved in a slightly controversial segment which saw the now-sober Guerrero checking out bars whilst hunting for Austin. Unfortunately, Austin walked out on the WWE before the storyline could really get going, which forced the writers to change their plans and once again reunite Guerrero with Chris Benoit (who himself had only just returned to the company following surgery to repair a serious neck injury). That tag team with Benoit, although resulting in a brief feud against Ric Flair and a WWE title shot against the Rock, didn’t really do much to push Guerrero out of the mid-card. So, to avoid him falling back into the same role of forgotten mid-card wrestler that he had long endured whilst with WCW, Guerrero was partnered with someone whom he’d had a long-standing association with: his nephew, Chavo.

  Unlike their run in WCW, where the pair played off of a slavery-based storyline, this time the Guerreros were united as a pair, who lived their catchphrase of “Lie, Cheat and Steal”. A series of vignettes were filmed, and broadcast on WWE’s SmackDown show to promote the new team. If anyone thought that the stereotype of being sneaky Mexicans was going to get the fans to boo the Guerreros, they would have been proven wrong when the pair received cheers upon their debut.

  Los Guerreros were inserted into a tournament to claim SmackDown’s first set of tag team champions - at a time when WWE were treating Raw and SmackDown as separate shows with their own tag team and second-level champions. After beating Rikishi and Mark Henry in the first round, the Guerreros lost in the semi-finals to the team of Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit - the eventual winners - despite the Guerreros locking Benoit in a locker room backstage prior to their match. Despite being on the periphery of the tag team title scene, Los Guerreros would have to wait until that year’s Survivor Series, when they won a three-way tag team match for the belts, with then-champions Edge and Rey Mysterio and former champs Angle and Benoit.

  With the established singles wrestlers from that match heading off into their own feuds, the Guerreros found a new challenge in the form of Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas - Kurt Angle’s lackeys as “Team Angle”, later to become the “World’s Greatest Tag Team”. After dropping the title to Team Angle at WrestleMania 19, Eddie was forced to find a new partner when Chavo tore his bicep in a non-televised match against independent wrestler J.R. Ryder. To make matters worse, Eddie and his new partner would have to try and regain the titles in a ladder match... so who would Eddie get as a replacement for his nephew? Step forward another former ECW alumnus: Tajiri.

  The team of “Latino Heat” and the “Japanese Buzz-saw” didn’t last too long, despite their tag title success in their first match together, the make-shift tandem lost the belts back to Haas and Benjamin in July 2003; a defeat that became a turning point as Eddie was transformed from a tag team specialist to a bona fide superstar in his own right.

  Okay, so perhaps throwing Tajiri through the glass windshield of a low-rider wasn’t the best way to turn heel when you’re giving the excuse that you did it because your opponent “hit your car”. This wasn’t the reason why the crowd was reluctant to boo Guerrero, whose “lie, cheat and steal” character was more suited to a babyface with heel tendencies, as opposed to a full-blown heel. However, Eddie’s turn on Tajiri paved the way for him to take part in a tournament to crown the first WWE United States champion - a title that was being revived, barely two years after its WCW counterpart was retired following the wrapping-up of the WCW Invasion storyline back in 2001.

  After defeating Ultimo Dragon (who’d joined WWE for a brief run for a little over a year starting in the spring of 2003) and Billy Gunn, Guerrero had qualified for the tournament final against his former Radical, Chris Benoit. The final would take place at that year’s Vengeance pay-per-view, and would see Guerrero win the title, capitalising on Rhyno’s spear on Benoit - a move that split up that team - before claiming the pinfall victory. Shortly after retaining the title in a four-way match at SummerSlam, beating Benoit, Rhyno and Tajiri, Guerrero entered a feud with a relative newcomer in John Cena. The highlight of that particular feud was an intense “Parking Lot Brawl” for Guerrero’s United States title, a match fought in amongst a variety of parked cars, which saw both combatants take bumps into cars. Guerrero retained the title thanks to the help of the returning Chavo Guerrero - a return that led to a brief reunion of Los Guerreros... and would pave the way for greater glories for Eddie.

  Whilst Los Guerreros had another run with the WWE tag team titles, beating the World’s Greatest Tag Team and dropping the belts to the Basham Brothers, Eddie’s run as US champion lasted barely three months, dropping the belt to the Big Show, as he briefly focussed again on tag team gold. The Guerrero clan failed to recapture the tag titles, and their frustrations at missing out on the gold turned into hatred between the pair. This led Chavo to attack his uncle, prompting a match at 2004’s Royal Rumble - a match that Eddie would decisively win.

  Although he did not take part in the Rumble match itself, Guerrero found himself inserted into a SmackDown-only Rumble that was held days after the pay-per-view, with the winner getting a WWE title shot (the winner of the pay-per-view version, Chris Benoit, jumped from SmackDown to Raw to challenge for Triple H’s World Heavyweight Championship). Guerrero, replacing Benoit from the list of SmackDown wrestlers in the initial Rumble, eventually won, and got his title shot against Brock Lesnar at the No Way Out pay-per-view at California’s famed Cow Palace arena. This
match would become the pinnacle of Eddie’s career.

  With his family watching from the front row, Guerrero went into the match against the future UFC champion Lesnar as quite the underdog. However, Lesnar could not quite overcome Guerrero, and after the referee was knocked to the mat, Lesnar went to grab his WWE title belt, so that he could strike Eddie with it and get one step closer to victory. Earlier in the night, Bill Goldberg - the former WCW champion who was coming towards the end of his first (and only) year in WWE - had appeared at the show, before being escorted out of the arena by police after getting into a confrontation and attacking Lesnar. Goldberg would return to the show, running in and hitting the Spear on Lesnar, allowing Eddie Guerrero to ultimately land his frog splash finisher for the pinfall to win the WWE title.

  What happened next probably wasn’t the best idea, especially for the working security guards, as Guerrero dove into the crowd and celebrated with his newly-won title and a flag of Mexico. The following week’s SmackDown was the scene for a massive celebration as Eddie paraded his newly-won championship, but as things turned out, becoming WWE champion would not be a form of redemption, but rather a whole new way to crank up the pressure on Guerrero. His first major title defence would come at WrestleMania 20, where a victory over Kurt Angle paved the way for a triumphant end-of-show scene with Guerrero and his long-time Chris Benoit embraced, with the pair holding their respective WWE title belts.

  After WrestleMania, Kurt Angle was forced to take time off to deal with a neck injury, which opened the door for a rather unfamiliar challenger. Enter John “Bradshaw” Layfield. Formerly known as Bradshaw, “JBL” was repackaged as a singles wrestler after his long-time tag team partner Faarooq was “fired” the week after WrestleMania. Having been known as a tag team wrestler for years, seeing JBL as a credible contender for any title was quite the stretch. Taking him serious as a threat to the WWE seemed to be impossible.

  To Guerrero’s credit, the feud with the former Bradshaw accomplished the impossible. With a mixture of hard-hitting matches and teetering-on-the-edge-of-being-blatantly-racist promos, Guerrero not only established JBL as a threat, but ended up putting him to the level of someone whom he would need to overcome the odds to beat, hence Guerrero “needing” to hit JBL with a low blow to escape with a disqualification loss at the Judgment Day pay-per-view. The rematch at the Great American Bash event saw Guerrero screwed out of the title in a Texas Bullrope match. With the winner being the first person to touch all four turnbuckles in a row (without being cut-off), the match headed to a dramatic finale with both men tied on three apiece. In a desperate bid to grab the victory, Eddie grabbed the rope and attempted to leapfrog over JBL en route to the final turnbuckle pad... in the process, pushing the challenger’s back into the corner. Eddie’s celebrations were short-lived, as Kurt Angle - by now playing the role of a heel General Manager for SmackDown - came out and stated that JBL’s back had touched the turnbuckle first, and as a result, the New York loudmouth was ruled to be the winner and new WWE Champion.

  Eddie’s brief attempts to regain the title ended when he lost a cage match to JBL on SmackDown, thanks to the interference of a masked generic wrestler known as “El Gran Luchadore”. Confusingly, Eddie had publicly assumed that character a week before on SmackDown, so when “El Gran Luchadore” came out and subdued Guerrero enough for JBL to take the victory, everyone was wondering just who the mystery Mexican was. After the match, “El Gran Luchadore” was unmasked as Kurt Angle - now healed up - setting up a storyline that would take Guerrero to the end of 2004. In truth, the move to take the title off of Guerrero had as much to do with establishing a new character as it did to ease some pressure. Behind the scenes, Guerrero was convincing himself that he wasn’t worthy of being champion, and all of this self-inflicted pressure led those in charge to take the decision to take Eddie out of the firing line whilst still keeping him in a high profile storyline.

  Having lost the initial match to Kurt Angle at SummerSlam, Guerrero gained a tag team partner - The Big Show - in an ongoing war with Angle, who had been joined by his two latest associates in the form of Luther Reigns and Mark Jindrak. That storyline ended up splintering out, resulting in Big Show being “harpooned” and getting his head shaved - a look he sports to this very day. But for Guerrero, the storyline did little, and it wasn’t until the start of 2005 that Guerrero’s spark returned.

  Coming off the back of an unsuccessful attempt to win the WWE tag team titles with Booker T, Guerrero formed an alliance with a man who he was extremely familiar with - Rey Mysterio. The pair won the tag team titles at the No Way Out pay-per-view in 2005, beating the Basham Brothers for what would turn out to be the final championship that Eddie would win. Instead of defending the titles at WrestleMania 21, the champions instead wrestled each other in an entertaining match which Mysterio eventually won. That prompted some rather unfriendly rivalry between the champions, which quickly culminated barely three in the duo losing the titles to the debuting team of MNM (Joey Mercury and Johnny Nitro - later John Morrison - managed by Melina, hence MNM). A rematch the following week only served to confirm the split between Guerrero and Mysterio, with Eddie leaving his former partner bloodied and motionless after suplexing him onto the steel ring steps following their defeat.

  Naturally, that served to turn Eddie heel once more, albeit with a more methodical character which morphed into a summer-long feud with Mysterio. The storyline included both the Guerrero and the “Mysterio” families, as Eddie held a family secret over the head of his former tag team partner. Instead of acting as Guerrero’s slave - which would have echoed the Eddie & Chavo storyline from back in WCW - the pair had a match in which Eddie swore not to reveal the secret if he lost. Eddie lost the match, but just like an old-school heel should have done, he let the cat out of the bag anyway, revealing to the world that Rey’s son Dominick was actually... Eddie’s. Of course, in real life, none of this was true, but the storyline captivated fans, with SmackDown drawing its highest numbers in years amongst Latino fans, who compared the storyline to “telenovellas” (daytime soap operas). Although the feud ultimately ended when Eddie lost a ladder match, in which the custody of Dominick was laughably at stake, Guerrero somehow ended up being named the number one contender for the World Heavyweight Championship - a title held by Batista.

  Still acting as a heel, Eddie subtly modified his character as he pretended to be Batista’s friend - supposedly to save himself from a beating he would have gotten had he been Batista’s full-blown enemy. Despite losing to Batista at 2005’s No Mercy pay-per-view, and “respecting” the champion after the match, Eddie still continued to chase for the title. When Batista suffered a torn latissimus (back muscle) in mid November, WWE quickly chose to give the champion some time off to recover from the muscle tear, writing in a three-way match on the following week’s SmackDown between Batista, Randy Orton and Eddie Guerrero as a way to change the title on Batista’s way out. Sadly, Eddie never got that match.

  Although Raw and SmackDown were usually held on Monday (live for Raw) and Tuesday (taped for SmackDown), an impending tour of Europe meant that WWE had decided to record both Raw and SmackDown on the same evening in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After having caught a flight to Minneapolis with his cousin Chavo, Eddie had been staying in a Marriott hotel prior to that evening’s television tapings. When Eddie didn’t answer his wake-up call on the morning of November 13, Chavo called security, who entered the room, only to find Eddie slumped across the bathroom sink. Despite Chavo’s attempts at CPR, it was too late - another loss had been inflicted on the wrestling world.

  The news was quickly broken by WWE on their website, with a candid story later providing quotes from his widow Vickie (who had been with Eddie for most of his adult life, having dated him as a youngster) stating that the autopsy had revealed that Eddie’s past abuse of drink and drugs had been his downfall. Whilst Eddie had reportedly been clean for four years, the damage had already been done - the years of steroid and painkill
er use, and the lingering effects of the 1999 car accident had caught up with him.

  That same day, business had to be done as WWE still had television shows to produce. Much like they had done with Owen Hart in 1999, the script for Raw and SmackDown were thrown out of the window. Instead, both shows became tributes to Eddie Guerrero, in the same vein as the “Raw is Owen” show, with no wrestler being forced to work, but all invited to record their own tributes to Eddie, which would be played on Raw, SmackDown... or dumped onto WWE.com if you weren’t a big enough star. Among the tributes was a virtual confirmation by Stephanie McMahon (by that point, a leading figure in WWE’s creative department) that Eddie was to have won Batista’s World Heavyweight title during that evening’s tapings, and an angst-ridden tribute by a tearful Chris Benoit - a video that became all the more haunting following Benoit’s passing less than two years later.

  In the days after Eddie’s death, with the wrestling world still reeling, WWE nearly had another tragedy on its hands, after Nick Dinsmore (who wrestled at the time as Eugene) was found passed out in the lobby of a hotel in Manchester, England, just days into the company’s European tour. Bizarrely, given the company’s history, WWE again acknowledged this on their website, and even confirmed that Dinsmore had passed out due to an overdose of the muscle relaxant carisoprodol, also known as “somas”. Dinsmore was quickly flown back to the US, where he was signed up into a rehabilitation facility. On the same day, WWE would also announce another major change to their infrastructure - they would bring back drug testing.