Take up thy wrestling boots and walk - For Eddie
Submitted by Pt2 on Monday, November 14, 2005 at 5:40 PM EST





There many physical things that can knock the wind right out of you, but a much smaller number of emotional ones. Yesterday, when I heard that Eddie Guerrero had died, I felt like I’d just been spear tackled by a New Zealand Rugby player. I’d try and describe the emotions that ran through me, but I’m guess it’s the same mixture of shock and sadness that everyone felt.

There will doubtless be a lot of columns written about Eddie in the coming days, and I don’t see them stopping for some time. There will be people who accuse us, then, of jumping on the bandwagon when we write our columns about Eddie, but to be perfectly blunt I could care less about their cynicism. Eddie Guerrero entertained me, more often than not on free TV without me having to pay anything for the privilege, and since I was a fan and Eddie gave so much of his life to a business that I love, I feel I would be remiss if I did not use this forum I have to share my own personal tribute to Eddie.

Also, I hope you will bear in mind one thing when reading this column – I’m not going to change things I’ve said before because of this tragedy, because frankly I think Eddie’s achievements are impressive enough without my having to talk them up. As a columnist having your own opinion is essential, and sometimes even the best can become a target for constructive criticism, and Eddie was no exception. However, my memories of Eddie will mostly be positive.

There is a small group of wrestlers in wrestling that you know will always make the best of whatever they are given. Whether that means making an average segment in a show slightly enjoyable or making a very solid piece of booking into a great feud, they have that unique capability, in the wrestling world, to entertain. Eddie Guerrero was one of those wrestlers.

The first time I remember seeing Eddie Guerrero was in WCW, as one of several talented Cruiserweights. As time went on, his role in WCW expanded, and as I grew I began to realise that Eddie was a little more special than the rest, and I have several fond memories of Eddie in WCW – I was just the right age and had been watching wrestling for long enough to find the LWO hilarious, enjoyed his role as “Uncle Eddie” in his work with Chavo, and perhaps the strongest memories I have of him are battling over the WCW Cruiserweight championship with two personal favourites of mine, Dean Malenko and Chris Jericho, not to mention long running opponent Rey Mysterio jnr.

Predictably, as we get closer to the current date my memory becomes less hazy. His defection, along with Malenko, Saturn and Benoit, still stands out in my mind as one of the key turning points of the Monday Night War, signing the death warrant of WCW, and with the far superior way he was utilised by the WWE, we saw more of Eddie Guerrero than WCW ever allowed him to show, and much like Chris Benoit, I’m sure that Eddie’s continual entertaining presence as “Latino Heat” was one of the factors that allowed the WWE to pull away from WCW in the ratings by such a large margin that they were able to purchase it early the next year.

Of course, we all know of Eddie’s personal problems and the hiatus from the WWE that exists because of them. I have no doubts in my mind at all, as to the veracity of people who say that Eddie Guerrero’s getting clean and making success of his career and life again inspired them, either to get themselves off drugs or to do the things that they feel they need to do in his own life. Eddie’s truly was an inspirational story of a man who had it all, lost it all through a rapacious substance abuse, but was strong enough to win it all back. There will be people who have such a negative conception of wrestlers that they will be unable to look past a relapse and see what I am about to say as nothing but hopeless optimism – but I am convinced from the limited information available to me that Eddie Guerrero kept himself clean. For an addict (especially one who was as far under the influence as Eddie had been) to be back on the drugs would mean people would notice before something like this, especially in a business like wrestling where you are being watched constantly and judged on physical performance. I do honestly believe that Eddie was clean to the end, and his story of beating the drugs remains as inspirational as ever, and I’m sure the autopsy results will bear that out.

In recent years, I think Eddie’s stock and profile had only continued to grow. Becoming one of the most entertaining members of the roster on his return to the WWE, Eddie’s “we lie, we cheat, we steal” became so popular that it become impossible to turn him heel at one point. Following that botched heel turn, a couple of months later, Eddie did his family name proud once again – this time by becoming the first Mexican American to win the WWE championship, and the WWE champions club is not a particularly big one. That Eddie is one of the more deserving WWE champions, even if his reign was not the most successful, is an indication of how talented Eddie was – there will be people who argue the merits of Kevin Nash and Jim Warrior through the night, and you will even get people questioning some of the decisions surrounding Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan, but no one questions Eddie Guerrero’s right to be called the man.

In his recent run as a heel, Eddie was electric. In fact, most of what Eddie had done in his most recent WWE spell had been damn near electric. I’ve said I’m not going to talk up Eddie anymore than I have in the past, I’m going to recount it as I always did because it is impressive enough; I’d always been an Eddie Guerrero fan, but there was always a contingent on the Internet that talked of Guerrero in far more flattering terms than I understood. At the time, I think I disagreed. But slowly but surely, in the days of the Smackdown! Six and and los Guerreros, through the botched heel turn, and the huge wave of popularity that accompanied him to his title win…. I don’t know exactly when, but somewhere in all that, I saw it. I don’t know whether Eddie upped his game or whether my eyes were opened to something, but at some point during all that, he did become one of the must see performers on WWE TV. And he remained that way, until an unfortunate morning in November 2005.

The WWE has lost a great talent. We fans have lost a great entertainer. His family have lost immeasurably more, and I hope that everyone reading this will join me in wishing them the best in this difficult time. The wrestling world has lost a legend, yet another, far too soon.

RIP Eddie.









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