While we can argue if Ric Flair was the greatest all around pro wrestler to have ever lived, I can argue that Eddy Guerrero was the most underrated all around pro wrestler that has ever lived. I would certainly put him up in the Tully Blanchard category. As you might recall, Blanchard was my candidate for the most underrated pro wrestler of all time.
Eddy Guerrero was the son Gory Guerrero and started to roll around in the pro wrestling ring as a child. Gory and his sons Chavo, Mando and Hector are severely unheralded in terms of their relevance in pro wrestling. They were each substantial draws in not only Mexico, but Los Angeles in the old Labell territory, Arizona and San Antonio and El Paso. And when you look at Eddy’s ability to draw in AAA as part of the Los Gringos Locos with Art Barr and then in the WWE, the Guerrero’s may have been the best drawing family of wrestlers of all time. Furthermore, unlike the Hart and Von Erich families the Guerreros were not a disaster of family tragedy and scandal.
Eddy started out wrestling in CMLL in Mexico. CMLL is more of a family friendly and conservative style of promotion in Mexico. As accustomed with luchadores, Eddy donned a mask and used the gimmick Mascara Magica (Magic Mask). He soon quit CMLL to go to the new and hip AAA promotion. The problem was that CMLL owned the rights to the Mascara Magica gimmick. Eddy actually showed up to a AAA show as Mascara Magica, only to immediately voluntarily unmask himself as Eddy Guerrero which had never been done before.
From there, Eddie teamed with the son of El Santo…El Hijo Del Santo. Eddie’s father, Gory, had a famous tag team with El Santo called the ‘Atomic Pair’ and by Eddie teaming with El Hijo Del Santo, this was a reprise of The Atomic Pair. However, Eddy then turned heel on El Hijo Del Santo by siding with gringo, Art Barr.
This drew volcanic heat because not only did Eddie voluntarily unmask himself months before, but turning on a Mexican wrestler like El Hijo Del Santo for an American wrestler was sacrilege. But even more, there was some logic to the turn as Eddie is American himself having been born and raised in El Paso, Texas. By voluntarily unmasking and then turning heel for Barr, it was a slap in the face to all Mexican people. The also formed The Los Gringos Locos stable with Louie Spicolli and Konnan, who at one point was one of the most over wrestlers I’ve ever seen in a territory. Konnan is also American as he hails from Miami.
This formulated my favorite tag team of all time…Art Barr and Eddie Guerrero.
This is what I always felt was the foolishness of Kevin Nash and WCW. There was an idea that Eddie couldn’t cut a promo and lacked charisma, but having watched a lot of AAA during that time that was far from the truth.
Where Eddie learned all of those years from his father and brothers on how to wrestle and then learned from El Hijo Del Santo, Barr helped him learn how to really work as a heel as Barr was the 2nd best natural heel I’ve ever seen. Barr knew how to make a look or a grimace or a sneer and it was send the lucha crowds into a frenzy. He knew how to beg off a face’s comeback without overdoing it. And at the time Eddie and Art had also started wrestling in Japan and were not only the cocky gringos that slapped the Mexican people in the face…but they wrestled this beautifully advanced hybrid style of lucha and puroresu (Japanese wrestling) along with a hybrid style of Lucha and American heels that it brought something new to the table.
And that led to the extraordinary match of the Los Gringos Locos vs. El Hijo Del Santo and Octogon in a hair vs. mask match at When Worlds Collide pay per view.
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Perhaps Eddie got the reputation of not being able to cut a promo and being ‘vanilla’ from his time in ECW. Ironically, his work in ECW is what got him to WCW.
Art Barr had passed in a tragic overdose. He and Eddie were scheduled to come over to ECW prior to his death and now Eddie was being sent alone. And instead of being the cocky heels with this new, incredible ‘lucharesu’ style of wrestling…Eddie was more of a quiet, but likeable babyface there to put on a show of top quality matches with Dean Malenko.
The idea to do this came from the famous Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid feud. And this is part of what made ECW so great from 1994-1997…they had a lot of various different talent with different styles that could all work together and cut promos. So you could see a tag match with more technical wrestlers like Benoit and Malenko versus brawling types like The Public Enemy. Or you could see a traditional technical style of wrestler like Shane Douglas versus a shooter type like Taz. Or a wild brawler like The Sandman versus a high flying brawler like Sabu.
As great as the Malenko vs. Guerrero matches were (and their final ECW match was on my birthday, 8/27/1995…and it’s my favorite match of all time)…ECW missed out by not allowing Guerrero into the fold of wrestling other wrestlers and cutting promos on the mic.
Eventually, Guerrero left for greener pastures. Although people forget that there was a deal struck with WCW and New Japan at the time and New Japan wrestlers could not work for any other promotion than WCW. So even if they wanted to work for ECW and New Japan, they couldn’t. And so Dean and Eddie (and Sabu) were off to Atlanta.
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WCW is where Eddie’s drug issues started to take hold, but it was also where he started to really hit his stride as an in-ring talent. He could work the babyface role, but outside of Hogan’s heel turn, nobody seemed to get that visceral hatred that Eddie could get.
And while there was talk of how great of a worker that Malenko was, you started to see that Malenko really lost his luster in the ring when working with wrestlers that were 230+ pounds. And it appeared a little more difficult for Malenko to keep up with the most modern of luchadores at the time in Rey Mysterio, Jr., Psicosis and Juventud Guerrera. Eddy, on the other hand, this was ‘old hat’ for him. And Eddie had the heel skills that he learned from Art Barr to get Mysterio over.
This led to one of my favorite matches ever…Eddie vs. Rey at Halloween Havoc.
At the time, I thought that this is what wrestling could become. This incredible athletic competition with a well defined heel vs. babyface without making the heel look clumsy and stupid and the moves being plausible and looking pretty non-participatory.
But, we don’t even really see this today with more athletic junior heavyweight wrestlers. There’s little in the way of heel vs. face and if there is, they just don’t pull it off as well. And there is a complete lack of selling, pacing and it’s overly choreographed.
As great as Rey Mysterio was in that match, I have to say that Eddie carried him in that match. Without Eddie, the heel heat isn’t there, the believability of the spots isn’t there and the ebb and flow of the match likely stinks.
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I didn’t watch a lot of Eddie in the WWE. Although I made sure to watch his great ladder match versus Rob Van Dam.
I was happy for Eddie because he was finally being highlighted as a wrestler, again. It likely would have been impossible for Eddie to get over as a heel like he did as part of the Los Gringos Locos. But, I just didn’t love the babyface version of Eddie at the time. Looking back, the issue was more that there wasn’t a very good heel to face Eddie. I mean, when your best heel is likely JBL and only because he nailed Eddie with a vicious chair shot and it would be like JBL to hurt somebody for his own benefit…it’s not like the run of heels that Hogan had lined up for him in the 80’s.
But, it was good to see that the WWE realized that Eddie was a draw. And according to Bruce Prichard the only problem was that the more Mexican crowds that would come to see Eddie would only get tickets the day of the event and that’s a problem for promoters who generally want a good advance.
And that was kind of Eddie’s career. He was a better in-ring worker than Tully Blanchard. Blanchard was a better pure heel and a little better talker. But, Blanchard was used to his full potential and while ECW and WWE didn’t do him badly as WCW did, he was still never used to the potential that he was used in AAA. Blanchard OTOH was used to about his full capability.
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