Wrestler of the Day: EDDIE GUERRERO

[RIPPA]

I had been thinking about starting this back up awhile ago but never really go around to doing it. And then yesterday, it sorta artificially happened with the Test thread.

The reason I decided to start today is because there is going to be enough Eddie Guerrero memories going around today, we can consolidate them (for the most part) here.

 

My fondest Eddie remains the fact that I got to see him wrestle Ultimo Dragon in an amazing match no more than a 5 minute walk from where I am currently sitting. (And Holy Fuck - that was 16 years ago)

 

 

ULTIMO DRAGON vs EDDY GUERRERRO 

This fucking Kicked Ass.  It starts with a Memphis beginning- Eddy stalling and getting all the cheap heat he would need to keep the crowd on the side of the Dragon.  Dragon does his best Ricky Morton impression getting the crowd behind him and then... it goes totally New Japan.  It starts with a flurry of lucha moves and running of the ropes that build to where Eddy gets the advantage by taking out UD's knee.  Eddy then proceeds to use every cool leg submission from both textbooks of Lucha Libra and Puroresu and UD sells it like a champ.  My fave is when UD blocks the Figure-4 by grabbing Eddy's leg before he can lock it in - just like Hase did against Mutoh back when Mutoh was worth a shit.  Eddy does a couple of those somersault sentons onto UD's leg, he does that lucha standing figure four but stretched UD enough that it actually looked painful, he did one of those Mutoh Indian Deathlocks with a bridge, he did that grounded Romero special, he basically took it to the mat in Fairfax, VA BUT! Since they had used the Memphis stuff at the beginning, the crowd was into UD getting out of the predicament as opposed to being bored by cool matwork, which one would suppose would happen.  "Dragon!" chants replaced the usual "Boring!" chants.  I was digging it the most.  After taking up the middle with cool leg submissions, they reached the ending sequence where NJ highspots and finishers kicked in with Eddy kicking it off by hitting a FANTABULOUS spinning DDT.  UD recovers and does his multiple kicks thing, sending Eddy out of the ring.  UD hits a piscada and they brawl by the safety rail for a while, with Eddy taking a bump into the ringstairs (on the far side of where we were sitting).  UD gets Eddy back in the ring and hits a running LigerBomb, which was vicious as all get-out.  They both work out of toprope Hurricanrana's and Eddy is setting UD up for the final UD-Killer Powerbomb.  UD wriggles out of it by twisting directly into a Dragon Sleeper.  This Match KICKED ASS.  Phil says "homage to Steamboat and Flair" about forty-five times during and after this baby. I agree, but me and Phil tell him to shaddup already anyway.  22 minutes including five minutes of Zbysko-level stalling.  $25 bucks is already well spent.

 

 

[odessasteps]

I got to meet eddy and a bunch of the guys at the pillman show in 2000 at the brian hildebrand fantasy camp the day before.

He seemed gueninely moved when i said that i really like him naming his car on wwf tv after art barr.

[RIPPA]

 

The above image - which we have used on the site forever and was taken by the amazing Dave Layne - was taking during that match

[jaedmc]

As some of you may remember, I was more serious about the brand extension than anybody - including the WWE. Smackdown 4 Life. The moment I really started bleeding blue was when Eddie Guerrero lost his shit on Booker T for insulting the brand:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUCuLMTQSl8 TRANQUILO?!

 

There's not really many people better than Eddie Guerrero at just about anything. Top 10 All-Time for sure.

[Matt D]

I think for a lot of us, and I could be wrong about this, but Eddy's time off from WWE due to the drug issues came as sort of a gift for us. He went around the country doing Indies for what, a year? Let me check Graham's site. I guess from Nov 01 to April 02 or so. 

 

I got to see him in I want to say Quincy, MA in front of a couple hundred people tops, from maybe 25 feet away, in a three way against Timothy McNeany and someone else (I want to say this was the same show that had Slaughter and Quackenbush, but it's been ages). And I got to get a picture with him in the ring. Just seeing Eddy so close, how fluid he was, and how he could work a crowd, even one that small was something special.

[RIPPA]

What was great about that indy run was that he got to have matches with all these people he never would have otherwise.

 

The ROH matches

 

CM Punk in Mid South

 

The Doug Williams match from that FWA tournament.

 

Heck there was even that random Portland match that involved Tonya Harding

[Dolfan in NYC]

Favorite moment...  I got to see this live:

 

And nothing will ever top the silent promo he did before Judgment Day '05.  Everyone in NXT should be forced to watch it and write a 1000 word essay on why it's the best heel promo in the last decade. 

[Pete]

What was great about that indy run was that he got to have matches with all these people he never would have otherwise.

 

The ROH matches

 

CM Punk in Mid South

 

The Doug Williams match from that FWA tournament.

 

Heck there was even that random Portland match that involved Tonya Harding

 

The Tonya Harding deal was during his AAA heyday in the early 90s.

 

We also got Eddy vs Low Ki which was tremendous since you could see how much respect Ki had for him. It wasn't his usual MUST-DESTROY-OPPONENT setup... he worked light as a feather by his standards.

[RIPPA]

I think what threw me off was that we didn't get tape of that Tanya Harding show until around like 2000 or so.

 

Obviously it's not Great Sasuke vs. Lenny Lane in a barn but still

[S.K.o.S.]

Speaking of working light as a feather - there was that time he squashed Jimmy Jacobs on Smackdown during the Mysterio feud.  He put a Rey mask on him and gave him a brainbuster post-match.  After Guerrero's death, Jacobs wrote something about it that went like "The agents said to me "You know this is gonna be a stiff match, right?" and I was like "Yeah."  And it looked brutal on tv.  But he never touched me."

[Matt D]

There's a lot of 05 I haven't seen, but I did see the Smackdown where he had the skit in the playground with Dominic the other day and then the tag match with him and Rey vs MNM where he utterly heeled it up on Rey. I remember when they tried to turn him heel on Tajiri a year or two before and it just wouldn't take because the fans utterly refused to boo him. This stuff was just so dickish and masterful in getting him over as a heel. Even then, I don't think it stuck and he was a face again shortly before his death just by osmosis. 

[The Man Known as Dan]

Didn't Jacobs say Eddie also came up to him before the match and said that he was sorry he wasn't going to get much offense in the match?

 

Eddie Guerrero is my favorite wrestler of all time due to, imo, being the most versatile performer I have ever seen in a wrestling ring. A lot of the best wrestlers in the world, if you watch their best matches, all feel kinda alike. But all of Eddie's best stuff is so completely different to his other best stuff. His stuff teaming with Barr, his matches with Malenko, the best match of the 90's with Rey, his moment against Brock which still to this day I cannot watch without crying, the brutal brawls with JBL that completely made him. All so completely different from one another. Add in that he's one of the most charismatic people I've ever seen in a ring, and it's just game over for the discussion.

[ebbie]

Holy Hell, it's been 8 years already?!

 

I remember seeing the news on WWE.com and I was utterly shocked. I remember the Raw tribute show. The guy that stood out the most with Chris Benoit. Say what you want now, but the pain he was feeling. Goddamn, I will never forget that face. Spoiler tags for those who don't want to cry:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DIu_umCThM

 

 

 

Also, the WWE youtube channel as a bunch of full matches of Eddie. I watched the No Way Out match with Brock a few minutes ago. He shouted something after the first two failed lockups. In my head, he called Brock an asshole before Brock proceeded to kick the shit out him. That is how you start a little man vs big man match, damn it.

[Matt D]

I watch wrestling much differently than I did in 2007. I look for different things. I care about different things. Since that time, I've revisited very few Eddy matches. I'm kind of curious what I'd think now, though maybe not curious enough to dive back in.

[The Man Known as Dan]

God damn it, that video still makes me sob like a toddler.

[RIPPA]

[The Man Known as Dan]

Has anyone, anywhere, managed to replicate that move?

[MADCAP]

To this day, that first 10 minutes of RAW was emotionally, one of the hardest things things I ever watched on tv.  I hate seeing grown men cry and just the hurt on alot of their faces....damn.

[The Natural]

Long post alert...

 

Eddie Guerrero was a tremendous all-rounder, one of the best ever for versatility. Eddie could do it all.

 

My favourite match of the Eddie Guerrero/Dean Malenko feud from ECW is also my favourite ever ECW match and that’s the 2 out of 3 falls match they had (9/26/95). I always preferred that match to the Hostile City Showdown 1995 match.

 

Another of my favourite Eddie Guerrero matches is his ECW World Television Championship winning match against 2 Cold Scorpio in Guerrero’s ECW debut.

 

Eddie Guerrero’s WCW Cruiserweight Championship versus Rey Mysterio’s mask at WCW Halloween Havoc 1997 is one of my favourite cruiserweight matches, hell it might be my favourite. Years later and it’s still amazing to watch, to see how crisp everything is hit. There are two spots in it which are unreal, the moonsault DDT and Mysterio’s somersault plancha into a head scissor takedown. I wonder why Dave Meltzer stopped giving it the full *****. I gave it the full five.

 

Eddie Guerrero’s WWE Championship win over Brock Lesnar at No Way Out 2004 was one of the last decade’s best matches for the story it told and the emotion it caused. In the match Brock Lesnar dominated the early outset before Eddie Guerrero came back to Lesnar’s shock and I remember how tenacious it made Eddie look not by quitting in the match but summing up Eddie Guerrero’s second WWE spell up overcoming the odds, the height disadvantage etc. The post match celebration is one of my favorite in wrestling history with Eddie jumping into the crowd and greeting his mother.

 

Eddie Guerrero also had a brilliant match with John Bradshaw Layfield at Judgment Day 2004. People remember it rightly for the tremendous blood loss Eddie suffered (it’s the worst I’ve ever seen) but the match was more than that, it was a hate filled match with Guerrero looking to get revenge for his mother in the storyline who had a heart attack because of JBL threatening her.

 

Eddie Guerrero’s gimmick proved constantly entertaining with the “lie, cheat and steal” motto. I loved how Eddie Guerrero blatantly cheated usually by making a sound with a chair or tossing the object to his opponent and the ref would see Eddie Guerrero feigning like he was the one who got hit. Just terrific. One of my favourite Eddie Guerrero skits was with Ric Flair at the 2005 Royal Rumble when Eddie Guerrero drew a bad number and swapped that number for Ric Flair’s good number. This led later on the night to Flair with Evolution and Teddy Long telling Guerrero to give Flair his number back which he did…and the wallet he swiped without Flair knowing.

 

On the mike Eddie Guerrero gave one of the creepiest promos I've seen, the week after he turned heel on Rey Mysterio in 2005. The promo had Eddie Guerrero sitting down on a chair with an overhead spotlight on him talking to Rey Mysterio’s mask. The promo ended with Eddie Guerrero telling Rey not to come back: “don’t make me hurt their papa”. Superb intense promo.

 

A legend.

[The Green Meanie]

God damn it, that video still makes me sob like a toddler.

 

Just thinking about that video brings tears to the eyes.

 

I never really watched him when he was in WCW, but my eyes were opened once he jumped ship. You could always tell he was something special, even during his dark days when his demons were taking over. I think the big thing about his death that hit all of us so hard was the fact that they had toted he had beaten his past and was on the up and up, and it finally just caught up to him.

 

I was never fortunate enough to see him wrestle in person, but I do have a good story about meeting him. During his huge SD run, some friends and I ran into him at a local Mexican restruant in Houston. Those lowriders he would bring to the ring? He got to drive those around town. They didn't recognize him as a wrestler, and just as some dude that had a nice car. I remember he was eating a gigantic burrito. We had a good conversation about everything other then wrestling, but I knew he could tell that I was a wrestling fan, and seemed to appreciate me not drawing attention to him.

[Brian Fowler]

Eddy Guerrero (and to this day, I insist on spelling it Eddy instead of Eddie, and I don't even really know why) is the greatest wrestler I ever saw.  I'm pretty on the record on this.

 

I was in a Barnes and Noble when my former college roommate Gavin called me and asked me what had happened.  I had literally no clue, and I immediately left the store, drove home, got online, and just...  froze.  A lot of celebrities I've been a big fan of have died, but none of them came close to affecting me on the same level as Eddy.  I ended up calling my sister and just rambling to her for a couple of hours about things.  Just trying to find some level of logic and sense in it.

 

I've told this story before, but after the Eddy Guerrero Indie Redemption Tour ended with him coming back to the WWF in 2002, I and that aforementioned roommate went to see Vengeance in Detroit, and the reason I wanted to go is because I had never gotten to see Eddy wrestle live.  He teamed with Benoit in a fairly unimportant tables tag match against the Dudleys.  We talked about maybe getting tickets for RAW in Grand Rapids the next night, but ended up not doing it.

 

Naturally, Eddy had a 15 or 20 minute main event against The Rock that night.  Motherfuck. 

 

When he beat Brock to win the belt, I was watching all alone, having decided to spend the 35 or 40 bucks just to see that moment.  And I cried. 

 

When we had a thread a bit back (was it this board? or the dead one?) about favorite wrestler, I posted the HH '97 match with Rey and the title win over Brock as the first two reasons why Eddy is #1 and best to me.  But there are so many other great matches.  Great promos.  Great...  Everything.  He was the best there ever was.

[Craig H]

I've said it before, but Eddy is tied with Austin for my all time favorite. Back when I was a giant mark, and the WCW title was vacated and put up for grabs in the absurd WW3 match, Eddy was my pick to win it. Why? Who the hell knows, but man, he LASTED in that match. I started to really think he was going to go all the way, despite my ridiculous prediction. He was eventually eliminated, but still, that match, which was abjectly horrible, was awesome for me because of how far Eddy made it. The dude didn't even cut promos at that time, and yet he and Malenko were my favorite in-ring workers.

 

To this day, I miss Eddy. I think at least once a month something brings him to mind and I get sad he isn't around any more. Maybe some of that has to do with my dad, who died back in '98, but his birthday was on 11/13.

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

On the mike Eddie Guerrero gave one of the creepiest promos I've seen, the week after he turned heel on Rey Mysterio in 2005. The promo had Eddie Guerrero sitting down on a chair with an overhead spotlight on him talking to Rey Mysterio’s mask. The promo ended with Eddie Guerrero telling Rey not to come back: “don’t make me hurt their papa”. Superb intense promo.

 

A legend.

[TimLivingston]

EricR and I were at this when it happened (albeit on different sides of the Cow Palace) and suffice to say, no volume on any sound system in the entire world can duplicate the pop when the ref counts three. There was absolute fucking magic in the air that night.

 

[Pete]

 

Laughing and crying at the same time. Yep.