Eddie Guerrero

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Loss]

Eddy will probably do very well on my ballot. I'd say from 1996 on, he's a fantastic worker who really put the whole package together. People point to the 1997 heel turn, but even in 1996, he was an endearing babyface that was usually over with WCW crowds despite a total lack of push. I'm not a fan of most of his work in AAA or New Japan, although there are some bright spots for sure. I love his work in WWE main events, which is his biggest strength. He has a lot of technically good matches pre-1996 that lack personality.

[ohtani's jacket]

Probably the wrestler whose stock has dropped the furthest with me since we did the Smarkschoice poll. The 1997 heel turn and the '04-05 WWE run are the only two periods of his career I'm fond of.

[Childs]

Probably the wrestler whose stock has dropped the furthest with me since we did the Smarkschoice poll. The 1997 heel turn and the '04-05 WWE run are the only two periods of his career I'm fond of.

 

I agree completely. Instinctively, I want to love Eddy but when I really think about it, it's based on those two runs. He's been a notable disappointment from the '90s review. I now think Benoit was pretty clearly better, even though that's not an opinion I want to have.

[goodhelmet]

I had Eddie in my Top 10 in the Smarkschoice poll. He'll be in my top half but I have seen too many other guys surpass him in the last decade.

[Timbo Slice]

He'll be in my Top 50 but with him being one of my favorites of all time and the fact that I was present at his best match ever, it's hard for me to look at him without personal bias. He might get into my Top 25.

[MJH]

I agree with all the above. I don't know where I'll place Eddy exactly (anywhere from 10-low 30s) because, whilst as I said in the criteria thread that I value peak work over longevity, Eddy only really has a handful of great matches. The BOSJ '96 match with Benoit is my favourite NJ Jrs match hands-down and maybe the only one that truly holds up to me, Rey at Havoc is a perfect 15-minutes, I love the Smackdown match with Rey from '05, etc... but his resume of classics is short. Of course I love a lot of his lesser stuff, his character stuff (someone said to me that you can tell how good a promo Rock was because he had chemistry with Coachman: Eddy made a run with Chyna of all people hella-entertaining), and how his charisma and personality blossomed to such a degree is pretty much unparalleled. There's no question that Eddy was fucking great, and at his very best you can certainly make a case for him as US Top 5 at worst, but putting together some variant of the Gordy List to push for him as a Top 10 guy taking whole careers into account is tough.

[NintendoLogic]

I guess I'm higher on Eddy than most. I agree that he was on another level in 1997 and 2004-5, but there's plenty of good stuff outside of those periods. One guy at DVDVR aptly described the entire 2002-5 period as the Eddie Guerrero Teaches WWE How To Work Tour. I need to revisit his work as Black Tiger, but my recollection is that it holds up as well as any juniors wrestling from that period. The weakest part of his resume is his work as a luchador. I actively despise the When Worlds Collide match, and from what I've seen of him in CMLL, he was largely coasting on athleticism while his brothers did the heavy lifting. When all is said and done, he's pretty much a guaranteed top 20 at worst for me.

[BillThompson]

Top 25 for me, as I've pretty much loved Eddie at every stop of his career. Interestingly enough I haven't seen much of his 2004 work, and from what I hear that could move him even higher on my list.

[jpchicago23]

Off the top of my head Eddie is a top 15 guy for me personally. I've really only seen from 95 on save for the Funk 89 match and the 94 tag. Can anyone recommend a few stand out matches from 89-94?

[Cap]

Eddie Guerrero is a really interesting one for me because he is one of my two favorite wrestlers of all time, but I am not sure his career constitutes being one or two on my GWE list. This has led me to be very self critical about what I like about wrestling and what constitutes good wrestling in my mind. I am working out my own criteria and tweaking it as I expose myself to different types of wrestling and different psychologies.

 

No one can remove all bias and favoritism from their list and I think trying is outright silly, but I do think it is important to try to step back, to implement good watching and analytic practices to try to check for your bias when possible. So, I am really interested to see where Eddie ends up on my list vs my sort of more haphazard and unofficial “favorites” list.

 

I am also trying to do a quick case for all my possible top 10s as a way of just fleshing things out for myself and maybe bouncing it off others. Eddie seems like a great place for me to start.

 

The Case For Eddie

 

For me Eddie’s appeal is not necessarily stretches of top-notch wrestling or his number of great matches, but it is how he seemed to approach wrestling after 1996 and what made him stand out. I think Eddie’s strongest trait is that he always seemed to out perform the spot, the gimmick, the match, or whatever that was given to him. Eddie always seemed to make a story bigger than it was. The cruiserweights in many ways felt like just the flippy, athletic and often workrate portion of the show with few exceptions. Especially juxtaposed to the “story” heavy WCW product of the time, the cruisers didn’t have narratives that jumped off the page. Jericho and Eddie stood out in this regard and even though I kind of loved Jericho’s stuff, Eddie’s heel turn and feud with Rey made me sit up and take notice. It felt like a serious feud that had gotten personal in the best way possible. I was rewatching some of that a few weeks ago and it was framed so horribly too. It wasn’t paced out and given time to breath very well, to capture the moments where the audience is supposed to take in the seriousness of the situation. That is such a credit to Eddie (and Rey, but I think to a lesser extent) that he got a lot of the emotion and the urgency of the story through despite what was around him.

 

Eddie was also great at making his lesser opponents better and more legit than they were in other contexts. It wasn’t just about getting a good match about them. He worked with them in a way that accentuated their character and made them more interesting. Bradshaw and RVD stand out to me as guys that I am not real fond of, but love their work with Guerrero. Another case is Malenko. Regardless of what you think about the Guerrero/Malenko matches from ECW (and I have sort of mixed feelings about them) I am not sure Malenko was ever more interesting than he seemed in those matches and I actually credit the way Eddie worked with him over time more than anything else. He worked with a sense of urgency that I think a lot of the cruisers in WCW tried to mimic with Dean. It highlighted Dean’s strengths and hid his weaknesses, but more to the point it turned his dull in ring persona into a caricature. Being ice cold was something we were told was part of his gimmick before, but it wasn’t till Eddie that I think that really came out in the ring and Malenko’s movements and nonverbal became legible as part of a broader story. The he paused, let Malenko stalk, and sold his submission work just brought a lot of Malenko I think.

 

And that is Eddie’s best in-ring quality, his ability to work in multiple stories and characters in a way that brings a lot of layers of meaning to a match. It is what makes him stand out and excel. He brings his own character, his opponents character, the storyline, the endgame, and anyone who might involved outside the match into the ring work itself. I have talked elsewhere about how much I value the character being accented and forwarded in the work itself as a way of holding stories and matches together, something I think the greats do well. It gives something for everyone and makes the match itself so much more interesting. His indy work during his road to redemption was sort of example of this. Some of that stuff was terrible, but Eddie’s work in, even his attempts to save some of the worst matches (the Doug Williams match comes to mind) always seemed to help his opponent shine not just as a good worker but as a character. A lot of that just came in matching pace selling to their strengths.

 

I think the Bradshaw feud is the perfect example of this too. I give his blood bath at Judgement day five stars. I know that is higher than most, I just think the way he worked that match from the second he came on the screen to the second he was off it was more or less flawless and he brought out an excellent performance from JBL. He works in the race and class politics in a way that makes Bradshaw look like a legitimate super villain (or at least compared to how he might have looked to the average fan months before that). Bradshaw was more or less a wrestling verison of King Pin (deceptively strong and smart billionaire who uses all of those things to get what he wants). Guerrero was the perfect opponent to highlight those things with his facial expressions, his selling, and the way they went back and forth. The whole feud is the only reason Bradshaw felt remotely legitimate as a champion and gained any momentum during that run, in my opinion. The face DQ was an amazing end to that because he “won” the fight by losing the match, highlighting how difficult it will be to top Bradshaw with all his resources and tricks on top of his physical skills. Looking back on those promos and matches, Guerrero was putting masterful performances that got everything (even the political tones) over in a way that made the whole thing hang together and gave the company multiple things to work with after.

 

All of this is on top of his obvious athleticism and precision. I think he sold pretty well, but nothing super special. He had incredible attention to detail most of the time when it came to working and selling body parts, but his selling itself doesn’t stand out as something that adds to the drama often. He had his off nights of course, but for the most part I walk away from matches always satisfied or outright impressed with how crisp and tight he kept matches, especially considering I think he was one of the best at meshing lots of different styles in general. He kept lots of offense that was not really part of the American psychology really legit looking for the most part. By the time he hit the main event (or even the E) that wasn't odd, but he continued to evolve and stood at as a crisp and believable wrestler.

 

Those are the things that I think make Eddie really good. They are skills that he brought to matches on superstars and heat as well as matches on PPV. He certainly has his weaknesses, but I think Eddie will be near the top for me. I am going to go back and (re)watch some of his lesser-acclaimed matches/runs and see how this manifests itself (or not).

[El-P]

I think Eddie is one of those guys people really got bored of talking about since he was such an internet darling in pre-Benoit Workrate Guilt era. He had his share of brillant stuff and his share of not so good stuff too. It's sad he got mentally at his best when his body fell apart. Ill take a dive in this poll I'm pretty sure.

[Clayton Jones]

Eddie is one of the only people to ever make me like watching Kurt Angle wrestle. He is the only person I can think of to have not only good, but great matches with JBL. He had my favorite parking lot brawl ever VS Cena in 2003 at a time I couldn't care less about John Cena. Eddie made Chavo look charismatic and worlds better than he was. He was the first person to make me realize Big Show could be good. This is all speaking to points CapitalTTruth made in his excellent post above, but really he could find a way to sell just about anything. He wasn't a "great match" wrestler and yet he had plenty of great matches. I'm sure everyone has written off the Malenko matches but aside from the 2/3 falls blowjob exhibition on the way out I think there's some good stuff in there. And they have a WCW handheld that is better than any of their ECW matches. I love the Scorpio TV Title change as well, the only criticisms I have of that match are with Scorp's big match meandering tendencies. I don't put as much stock in this as some, but also keep in mind he was world class both as a heel and a face. There was a time when he was a lock for my top 10 and that may not be the case anymore but I couldn't imagine any lower than top 15 or 20.

[KB8]

There are a couple Eddie/Malenko handhelds from WCW that are pretty great, actually. Eddie's my favourite wrestler ever and Malenko is probably one of my least favourite of his opponents (I admittedly haven't watched any of their ECW matches in about eight years), but once Eddie turned heel in '97 they had a run of really good matches.

 

Going through Will's monster Eddie comp (to this day I think that's still the only 30+ disc comp I've gone through from start to finish) I came out of it thinking the guy was no worse than good from pretty much start to end of his career (you know, as good as he can be expected to be two/three years into his career in '90/'91). I don't LOVE him in Mexico/AAA, but he was involved in some stuff I really did like (trios more than Gringos Locos tags). In '95 he transitions to working in the US, and there's some fun WCW stuff there - along with the great Benoit match from Nitro - to go with what he's doing in ECW. I wouldn't say he was great yet, but he was comfortably really good.

 

'96 was when I think he started to really put it together in-ring. He seemed to be less comfortable as a babyface and struggled to really project his charisma, but I'd say he was right around "great" level that year, primarily because the Benoit match from the BOSJ is so good that I have a hard time thinking a guy who wasn't great would be involved in something like it (I say that half-jokingly, because I know plenty of not-great wrestlers have been involved in great matches, but this felt like an instance where the match was as good as it was because both guys were clearly working at a very high level).

 

He got the heel turn in '97 and I thought he was incredible in that second half of the year. Like, about as good as anybody else in the world at the time. That was the point where I think everything came together. He obviously never stayed at that level for the rest of the WCW run, but he had charisma out the wazoo even once he'd turned face again.

 

The first WWF run isn't really much, at least not compared to '02-'05. He was a lot of fun, but he spent the majority of 2000 with Chyna and then was gone halfway through 2001.

 

From the comeback in mid-2002 until his death I thought he was at "great" level for pretty much the entirety of it. He dragged RVD to something really good, was my favourite guy during the Smackdown Six run, had an awesome short-lived tag run with Tajiri after Chavo went out, had the parking lot brawl with Cena, the feud with Show at the end of '03 - thought he was great in all of that (the tags with Tajiri against Team Angle are some of my favourite tags in company history).

 

'04-'05 is his peak. He was unreal in the first half of '04. Had the Rey and Big Show matches on Smackdown that are tremendous, the JBL feud that produced three outstanding singles matches (Judgment Day, Great American Bash and Smackdown cage match), and the Lesnar match from No Way Out. I thought the Angle match from Wrestlemania was really good, and Angle in '04 isn't someone I have much interest in watching. He has less to do in the second half of the year (well, he's feuding with Angle), but then into 2005 he picks it back up again. He was great in the '05 Rumble that year, has the fun tag run with Rey as the precursor to the heel turn, then the slow burn turn itself, which is pretty much masterful character work from him. Then the turn comes and he hits Best Wrestler in the World level. He's a different kind of heel in '05 than he was in '97. In '97 he was kind of a snivelling little douchebag. In '05 he's an obsessive psychopath who continues to be consumed by his need to finally beat Mysterio. You can visibly track that deterioration in his "mental state" from Judgment Day in May, to the Smackdown match in June, to the Great American Bash in July. The Dominic storyline got ridiculous, but Eddie's character work was so great during that feud. Honestly, I would put Eddie's very best performance during that run in '05 (Smackdown against Rey in June) up with just about any single performance from any other wrestler in history. He died as the best wrestler on the planet.

 

I guess where you rank Eddie in the end might depend on your take on 'peak versus longevity.' I think Eddie at his very best ('97, '04-'05) is really special, but if you take the amount of at-minimum "great" years he had (and your mileage will vary on that) and compare them to someone like Flair who had probably double that, or even someone like Benoit who on average probably had more "very good" output, do you favour that fairly short peak? I'll be honest, I prefer Eddie to Benoit by a fair bit and I would rather watch him than Flair without any hesitation. I think Eddie at his best is better than Flair at his best, but that might have something to do with me just flat out being bored by a lot of Flair at this point (I'll probably still have Flair ahead of him, btw. I think in that instance longevity - and longevity at a very high level - is such an obvious factor that it'd be hard to dismiss).

 

Like Clayton, there's a time where I almost certainly would've had him top 10. I won't now, but I can't imagine dropping him out of my top 20, either.

[Jimmy Redman]

For a guy who finished Top 10 last time and could still go pretty high here too, there's been next to no talk about him. Other high end candidates get pages and pages of discussion and revision, but with Eddie it seems that there's some kind of fatigue that prevents people from really discussing him anymore.

 

Where do you see Eddie now?

If you did the 2006 poll, have your feelings on him changed since then?

What do you think causes the fatigue/lack of discussion?

[ohtani's jacket]

It feels like the book is closed on Eddy. I can't imagine people re-evaluating him too much unless it's his early stuff or the period between the end of his WCW run and 2004. He's a worker that most of his grew up with as opposed to someone we discovered later in our fandom and there's not that much to rediscover.

[Jimmy Redman]

Yeah but you can say that about plenty of guys.

 

It's just weird because like, I'm in the same boat. I never got to talk about him the first time, and he'll be in my Top 5 most likely, but I still have no idea what to say about him. Just a weird case.

 

Having said that, Eddie is awesome and will be in my Top 5 most likely.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't want to say Eddie ages poorly because I don't think that's true at all. In fact I think peak Eddie holds up very well. That said I think the idea of Eddie as a top 10 guy ages pretty poorly, and it's not all because of the footage explosion elevating other guys.

 

When the SC poll happened Eddie had just died, and as it happens he died during what was almost certainly his peak as an overall performer. The fact that he felt like one of "our guys" both added to the heartbreak and also added to his status. I don't think there is anything wrong with that at all.

 

That said, when I look at the scope of Eddie's career I just don't see a top ten case at all. I suppose it's possible that if you are voting for someone on absolutely peak performance Eddie could be in the discussion. But if you are someone like me who tries to synthesize peak and volume, I think it is really hard.

 

Of the eleven or twelve years when he was really in the limelight as a performer, a couple of those are lost entirely to injury or drugs. While I thought he was excellent at times in WCW, especially in 1997 which I thought was a brilliant year, looking at the totality of the run nothing about it screams top ten. I do think a lot of his WWF run was masterful and closer to that level, but it's not a terribly long run in the grand scheme of things.

 

I think in order to make a top ten case for him that I would find compelling you'd have to go the wall for him having had tremendously underrated years in 98 and 99, and I'm just not sure that's possible. There are just too many other guys that have comparable peaks, and much larger amount of volume.

[Microstatistics]

I agree that he was on another level in 1997 and 2004-5, but there's plenty of good stuff outside of those periods. One guy at DVDVR aptly described the entire 2002-5 period as the Eddie Guerrero Teaches WWE How To Work Tour.

Strongly agree with this. Top 15 guy for me: excelled everywhere he went, versatility, charisma, great matches etc.

[KB8]

I've started re-watching that run from when he came back to WWE in 2002 and the first thing he's done is make RVD look halfway worthwhile. There no way he doesn't make my top 20.

[Cap]

Yeah but you can say that about plenty of guys.

 

It's just weird because like, I'm in the same boat. I never got to talk about him the first time, and he'll be in my Top 5 most likely, but I still have no idea what to say about him. Just a weird case.

 

Having said that, Eddie is awesome and will be in my Top 5 most likely.

This, for me. I mean I said a bunch about him, but really was just rehashing some stuff that people I assume thought about him the first time he really came up in these circles.

 

He will definitely be top 10 for me and could break my top five. If this were a "favorite" wrestler every list he would probably be number 2 (or 1, depending on the day you asked me to turn it in).

[InYourCase]

I've been binging on Eddie lately and Jesus Christ, he'll be finishing very well for me. Not on the same level as Rey, but someone that doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to great TV workers. His Smackdown Six-era run has been a blast to go through and I really loved his performance against The Rock here.

 

I really need to make time to watch his Black Tiger run because if that impresses me the way his ECW, WCW, and WWE runs have, he's someone that could crack my Top 30. Great brawler, great at sprints, I love his selling, his offense is explosive, and he's a solid tag worker. Can't believe I've neglected Eddie all of these years.

[JerryvonKramer]

I loved him as Black Tiger in this match:

 

Great Sasuke and Black Tiger vs. Wild Pegasus and Shinjiro Ohtani (10/18/94)

 

Probably a top 10 performance of the 90s for me.

[InYourCase]

Will check that out for sure. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Tim Cooke]

Also recommend the non-TV, not-JIP 6/11/96 match against Benoit from the semis of the BOSJ is an all time classic selling performance by Eddy and a terrific match.