Just over twenty years ago, we lost a legend in Eddie Guerrero. A wrestler that to me, had versatility and range beyond anybody else. He could be deadly serious, or the funniest person on any show. He could convincingly embroil himself in an intense custody battle, a violent fight in a car park, or even shoot poo at the Big Show. He could also inspire many who came after him, by defeating personal demons to come back and raise the WWE championship above his head. Those are Eddie’s latter years, but what about his early career?
In this video, we'll look at the timeline of Eddie Guerrero’s career, up to the point where he worked regularly in the US. We’ll look at the newsletters to see what was reported about him at the time, and his autobiography published in 2005, and his RF Video shoot interview from 2001. I’ll point out any interesting stories and quotes that I find along the way.
This video was originally going to be similar to others I’ve made on this channel before, all about how Eddie got to ECW. The more I read and watched though, the more I wanted to cover, so we’re going a bit further back to when Eddie first started getting noticed internationally. It’ll be a potted history with some gaps, but hopefully there’ll be some things you didn’t know before.
Cracking America
As far as the major promotions in America, beginning his career in 1986, Eddie hadn’t had much exposure yet by the 1990’s. The closest he’d come was a match for WCW which took place at Center Stage in Atlanta, against Terry Funk in 1989. In trying to find out more about this match, I noticed that around this time Eddie’s family members, Mando, Hector and Chavo were all working for the AWA, but Eddie never did. Being the youngest of the four by quite a large margin, and having started his in ring career a decade after his brothers, it could be that Eddie was sent out to paddle his own canoe when it came to larger companies. He did work with his brothers though, winning trios titles with Chavo and Mando in ‘89, his first of many titles. In 2001 he described this as a great way to gain experience. “I learned a lot about the business, I learned a lot about wrestling. My brother Chavo taught me a lot about psychology.”
Having taken a year away from the ring, not wrestling at all in 1988 while nursing a back injury and also doing some acting work, yes, including Road House, this was actually one of Terry Funk’s first matches back, and his first for World Championship Wrestling. Jim Ross on commentary makes sure to point out Eddie’s family lineage, with all of his brothers having wrestled there before Ted Turner bought the company. As the match begins, the crowd loudly chants for Ric Flair, who Funk had brutally attacked a few days earlier at Wrestle War ‘89. While Eddie gets to look impressive, evading Funk in flashy ways and even hitting some lucha influenced offence, including a dive from the top rope to the floor, the match is designed to make Funk look like as much of a villain as possible. Terry at one point picks up Eddie, and launches him over the top rope to the floor, leaving Jim Ross wondering if the referee is too intimidated to disqualify Funk, as would have been the rule at the time. Similar to what he did to Ric Flair, Funk hits a piledriver on the floor, throws Eddie back into the ring, and then pins him with a big smile on his face. Despite looking good in the match, Eddie is in the role of the enhancement talent here, the same place many of the greats start their career, but nothing more would come of this for him.
In 1991, Eddie would make his only other appearance for WCW before joining properly in ‘95, a dark match before the Wrestle War pay per view from Phoenix Arizona. He would compete in a tag match, teaming with Ultraman, against Huichol and Rudy Boy Gonzales. It seems that for the live crowd, this match wasn’t as well received as it could have been, and it may not have been the fault of anyone in the ring. “There was a collective groan when the match started among the fans. On all the local TV and radio ads, they plugged a “lucha libre” match to draw the Hispanic population but without listing any names, I can’t see how that drew anyone.”
This dark match isn’t even mentioned in the Pro Wrestling Torch’s coverage of the event, and it seems that we only have a live report in the Observer because Dave Meltzer attended the event live. He claims that the match got off to a patchy start. “However, as the match progressed, there were enough hot moves that the people got into it and it turned into a very entertaining match.” Eddie would get the pin to win the match following a frankensteiner, and “All four got a very nice cheer when it was over.” This end remark might sound a bit patronizing if not compared to the groan that Dave perceived at the start. Wrestle War ‘91 would turn out to be an impressive card for Eddie to have been on. As well as being very well received by fans, it would actually win Best Major Wrestling Show for that year in the Observer awards. I don’t normally draw any attention to these, but they’ll become more important later. One more thing to note about Eddy’s early career is something I’d wondered about for a long time. Sometimes you see this spelling of his name, and he says in his book that his dad Gory told him to spell it differently to make him stand out. Eddie adds that he actually preferred it being spelled this way.
New Japan
In 1992, with nothing coming after the well received dark match, Eddie would go on to achieve some success in New Japan Pro Wrestling, completing regular tours there. In his book Eddie stresses that he always had ambitions to go there. Between them his brothers had wrestled for FMW, All Japan and New Japan, but the reason was nothing to do with them. “Growing up I dreamed of going to Japan. I knew that for smaller wrestlers like me, the World Wrestling Federation wasn’t even a possibility. I had accepted in my mind that I wasn’t going to wrestle in the United States. If I was going to have any success as a wrestler, it was going to be in Mexico or Japan.” He says that it was Negro Casas who was the most supportive of him going there, as he would favourably compare Eddie’s style to the likes of Jushin Liger, but it was New Japan mainstay Black Cat who got him into the company. “Negro Casas recommended me to Black Cat, who was working for New Japan at the time, Cat put me over to the office, and they decided to give me a shot in Jushin Liger’s annual Best of the Super Juniors tournament.”
In an interview with RF Video in December 2001, Eddie says his brothers were supportive in their own way ahead of his first tour in Japan. “My brothers scared me, they said “man you better get in shape and you better do this and that.” So I was running about three miles a day in the desert, not even on the road through the dunes and stuff, and working out every day like a mad man.”
Initially using his own name, Eddie didn’t fare brilliantly. He would win only two matches in the tournament against Too Cold Scorpio and Koji Kanemoto, leaving him with four points at the end. As Eddie notes, (p75) this is pretty normal for newcomers to the tournament. Many a wrestler who went on to be a big star, like future IWGP champion and G1 Climax winner Tetsuya Naito for example, would also end with four points in both of his best of the super Juniors in 2007 and 8. In the year after he would return under the mask of Black Tiger II, and would do much better scoring twelve, the second highest points, and he would repeat this in 1994, the first year it would be known as Best of the Super Juniors.
While Eddie would never win a championship in New Japan nor win a tournament. According to him though he gained something that he valued much more. He was able to have matches with, and gain experience from, some of the best wrestlers from around the world who competed at a similar size and style to him. “New Japan drew from everywhere. They’d get the best wrestlers from Japan, from Mexico, from Europe, from America. When you’re given the opportunity to work with the finest wrestlers in the world, it forces you to reach deep into yourself to rise up to their level.” Among the amazing wrestlers he shared the ring with in Japan, one man that he would become very familiar with was Dean Malenko, who Eddie would wrestle for the first time in the ‘93 Best of the Super Juniors, and would face many more times all over the world, including in their famous exit from ECW.
In his book, Eddie writes about how Japan was a massively positive influence on him personally, saying that the (p77) “experience really elevated his (my) confidence.” It also had a very useful effect on his career. (p77) “All of a sudden, doors started opening for me. In Mexico, it’s a huge deal to have worked in Japan. It says to everybody “this guy must be good.” The fact that I was working for New Japan made it even more of a big deal. I wasn’t just working for some small-time promotion. That elevated my status even higher.”
In September 1993, Eddie would be given an interesting new gimmick. In his RF video interview, he notes that the character came about because of the third person to portray Tiger Mask, Koji Kanemoto. “At that time they were having Kanemoto do the Tiger Mask, and they just wanted to bring back some of his old rivals.” He also notes that they wanted someone else originally, Fit Finlay, who would be more in keeping with the original Black Tiger, English wrestler Mark ‘Rollerball’ Rocco. Finlay apparently turned the booking down, and so Eddie was chosen as he says he had great chemistry with Kanemoto.
In March 2002 during Eddie's brief time away from WWE, Eddie would be part of a rather odd visual, as he would team up with Silver King, who took the mantle of Black Tiger after Guerrero. Seeing the two standing next to each other before the bell is hardly like seeing two Doink the Clowns, or Mick Foley's gimmicks stood next to each other I’ll admit, but an interesting pairing nonetheless. While Eddie would comment in his book that he loved his time as Black Tiger, both due to the quality of opponents he faced, and the gimmick itself, it wasn’t actually the first time he’d been given a mask to wear, and the first time he wasn’t quite so keen on.
AAA
In November 1992, despite making his career so far in CMLL, Eddie would jump to the relatively new AAA. Earlier in the year, CMLL had Eddie start wrestling under a mask as Mascara Magica. In 2001 Eddie says that he had nothing to do with creating the gimmick, rather it was CMLL who wanted it. After AAA was formed in early 92’, “they wanted personalities, so they had an artist come up with all these designs and that was one of them.” There was just one problem, Eddie absolutely hated it. This was before Eddie would become Black Tiger, and so wrestling under a mask was new to him. In his book he explains why Black Tiger was so different to him, and why he preferred wearing the mask in Japan. “When I worked in Mexico as Mascara Magica, my identity was pretty much an open secret. This time, wearing the Black Tiger mask allowed me to let loose in a way that I’d never done before. The mask allowed me to escape the shadow of my family.” He goes on to describe the mask as giving him a sense of freedom, allowing him to quote (p92) “unleash his inner heel.”
Writing about Mascara Magica, he says, (p78) “I knew I was in trouble the minute I was told they wanted me to work babyface under a mask. It wasn’t like there was a lot to the angle - basically, the mask was supposed to be magical. That’s about it. To this day I don’t know what the hell they were thinking.” Eddie also notes that CMLL’s booker at the time was his cousin Javier (Llanes), but there doesn’t seem to have been any favouritism going on. “Not only did I hate wearing the mask, it felt like I was stuck in the same midcard spot. Despite Javier's promises, I was in the same position that I was as Eddy Guerrero.” He says that he was talked into making the leap by Antonio Pena and Konnan, but it sounds like it didn’t take much convincing.
Over the next few years, Eddie would spend as much as eight months of the year in Japan, returning to Mexico every six weeks or so, all the while living in El Paso Texas. It was here that he would meet and become a tag team with Love Machine, also known by his real name, Art Barr. Eddie describes Art as (p93) “a tremendous performer in every way - a ridiculously gifted wrestler.” However it wasn’t all good, as much as Eddie had nothing but praise for Art as a wrestler, he wasn’t fond of him personally, at least initially. “I thought Art was arrogant, overconfident and obnoxious. He was always bragging about how talented he was or how many autographs he had signed after a show.” This began to change when they began to hang out after shows, being two of the few English speakers working in AAA.
Once beginning their team, Art and Eddie were known as ‘American Machine’, which Eddie wasn’t happy with, saying it (p94) “just showed how Art was the star of our team.” Eventually the name would be changed, initially to ‘La Pareja Del Terror.’ “Then one night, one of the announcers said something like “those gringo’s are loco,” and all of a sudden we had a name that truly fit - ‘Los Gringos Locos.’” It still wasn’t all smooth sailing though, as Eddie notes that the two would disagree fiercely about their matches. (p95) “We were great as a tag team, but as people we just weren’t clicking. We’d have huge arguments after every match.”
Looking back in 2005, Eddie says that there may have been some jealousy there on his part. He saw himself as the better wrestler, but admits that Art was filled with personality, something he himself hadn’t put together yet. “Eventually we came to find peace. I relinquished the starring role in the ring, but in the back, I became the team leader. Art was the charisma and I was in charge of the psychology.” Los Gringos Locos would go on to be a main event act in AAA, even placed near the top of the card at major shows for the company. On November 6th 1994, WCW and AAA would co-promote When Worlds Collide from the LA Memorial Sports arena, the same venue that hosted Wrestlemania VII a few years earlier. When Worlds Collide drew an estimated thirteen thousand fans, not much lower than the Wrestlemania that was there. The night was one that Eddie would describe as (p105) “a special moment” in his career.
Los Gringos Locos would be the semi-main event of the night in a mask versus hair match against El Hijo Del Santo and Octagon. While the whole show was very well received, their match was reviewed as the best of the night, and maybe even one of the best of the year. Dave Meltzer would go even further, calling the match one of the best he had ever seen live. The Torch also praised the match, saying it “This match combined the spectacular, well–executed hot moves seen often in previous matches with a stronger storyline and more drama given the fan heat and match stipulations.” Los Gringos would lose, meaning they would have to lose their hair as per the matches stipulation, and they would cut each others off in the ring while weeping. In reality they weren’t all that sad, as Eddie notes that he haggled AAA up to paying them seven and a half grand each for their hair, though he tried to get ten, telling them that's how much his hair was worth.
Just when it seemed like Eddie and Art were set for big things, this match would be Art’s last. On November 23rd 1994, just over two weeks after When Worlds Collide, Art would be found in his home dead, thought to be from a drug induced heart attack. What makes Art’s death so shocking, is that as Wade Keller wrote, “Barr's death comes at the high point of his career. He was signed to a $5,000 per week guarantee with AAA.” He adds that Art described the match as “the high point of his career” to friends. By this time despite their rough start, Eddie and Art had grown closer, and the loss was a difficult one for Eddie to handle. “It took a long time for me to come to peace with Art’s passing. I cried every night for two or three months straight. I used to call my Mom and cry to her about how much I missed him.”
On a professional level, Eddie credits Art with perhaps one of his greatest skills, something that ended up making Eddie so beloved. In the RF interview Eddie comes across as very shy and reserved, nothing like the loud and expressive version that we saw on television, and Eddie says Art helped him develop this part of himself. “Art taught me that wrestling isn’t just about being skillful in the ring. There’s so much more to it - having a charismatic personality, telling a compelling story with your facial reactions. It was from working with Art that I started opening up and trying to be charismatic.”
Art Barr was just twenty eight years old, and though he was no saint having a very dark conviction in his past that I can’t cover in a YouTube video, many of his peers have made clear their respect for his work and his talent. In July ‘94, just a few months before his passing, Art would go with Eddie on his first tour in New Japan, wrestling under the name American Machine. According to Eddie, Art “He so impressed the office that they offered him a shot to come back and work a program with their biggest star, Jushin Thunder Liger.” According to Art’s obituary in the Torch, the only thing that delayed this was Liger suffering a knee injury. The Torch also adds that Art had served community service for his conviction, and gotten himself clean off recreational drugs, and was hoping to advance in his career, saying that “Barr's life, personally and professionally, was just beginning to hit its stride. Most involved in the business who were around him recently and many fans who saw him regularly believed he was on the verge of being one of the most influential wrestlers in the world.” As I hinted at a while ago, Art is quite a controversial figure, but one that can’t really be ignored in Eddie Guerrero’s story. He did undoubtedly have a massive influence on Eddie, really opening his eyes up to the performance aspect of wrestling and how important that is.
In early 1995, Eddie Guerrero was known to the most die hard US fans, but was by no means mainstream yet. That’s another way of saying he was known by the newsletter readers. In early 1995, he and Art won the ‘94 Wrestling Observers team of the year award by a massive margin. Though you could make a claim that this was due to Art’s passing, Eddie would also be shortlisted for several other awards on his own, including most under-rated, match of the year with the Great Sasuke in New Japan, and readers personal favourite wrestler. Also, when you look at the field under them, I wouldn’t have given it to the Heavenly Bodies either. Around this time in early 1995, there was a slight chance that Eddie could have made a return to WCW as part of a cruiserweight tournament that was being planned. The January 9th Wrestling Observer would claim that “They have a verbal deal with Antonio Pena to send in two wrestlers. Pena is looking to send in Jerry Estrada and Eddy Guerrero, although I’ve heard Bischoff didn’t want Guerrero." Eric might not have been interested, but he would be once Eddie went somewhere else first. Eddie says in his book that at the time he heard a rumour that Paul Heyman had seen Worlds Collide and wanted to bring them in, but he didn’t know at the time how true that was. “All I know is that Art heard about it and got all excited about coming to work in the states. He called me and said “They want us brother, they want us!”
ECW
A week after the awards issue, Dave Meltzer notes that Paul Heyman had in fact already tried to get Los Gringos Locos into ECW in November 1994. “ECW did a short tribute to Art Barr on television two weeks ago at the end of the show. Barr had never worked for the promotion although about one week before he died, Paul Heyman had called Barr up about he and Eddy Guerrero working with Public Enemy.” In researching for this video, I managed to find footage that may well have been Art Barr’s last interview, filmed backstage at When Worlds Collide. In this interview, Art talks about ECW and the Public Enemy, among many other tag teams, perhaps with building future matches with ECW in mind..
It may be the case though that ECW may not have been able to bring Eddie and Art in anyway, thanks to a deal in place with Ron Skoler, president of the IWC, not the internet wrestling community. If you’ve ever watched When Worlds Collide, you may have noticed an IWC logo on the ring apron, and this is because Ron, whose main profession was being an entertainment lawyer, played a part in enabling the show to happen. While it seems that AAA talent were able to go and work for WCW due to a deal the company had with Antonio Pena, Skoler had an exclusive contract to promote AAA in the United States, which seems to include their talent too. In January ‘95, (WON Jan 16th) several talents including Rey Mysterio, Torero and Psicosis were suspended from AAA for working an independent show in California. The report even states that Ron was so mad about this that he “threatened a breach of contract lawsuit against AAA if they weren’t suspended.” By April this deal appears to have ended, and AAA talent were no longer exclusive to shows that the IWC was affiliated with. According to Ron appearing on the 6:05 Superpodcast in 2016, this was because When Worlds Collide hadn’t drawn a buyrate high enough to be considered a success, and he was having trouble getting AAA on television in the United States. A week after Eddie’s ECW debut, Dave would report that “It appears all relations with Ron Skoler are out the window as the two sides failed to meet on terms. The relationship seems to have ended on a bitter note. This frees AAA talent to be able to work independently within the United States such as Eddy Guerrero for ECW.”
It wouldn’t take long after AAA and IWC partnership ended for Paul Heyman try again. Eddie would spend the whole of March on tour with New Japan, and would finally make his ECW debut not long after. His first appearance would come at an event known as Three Way Dance on April 8th 1995, a night main evented by a three way tag team championship match, where the Public Enemy would win the titles in a match also featuring Tazmaniac and Rick Steiner as well as Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko. This is also the night that Paul Heyman would publicly fire Sabu in the ring, because he had prioritized his New Japan bookings where he was in line to win the Junior Heavyweight title, over ECW. Paul had wanted to put this main event on for quite some time, and every time something got in the way like a no-show or injury. Finally Paul had enough, and let Sabu go, for taking a booking with New Japan instead.
In his first match for ECW, Eddie would wrestle someone he knew very well from their time in Japan together, Too Cold Scorpio. It was a very smart move by Paul Heyman to set Eddie up against someone he had worked with plenty, as it helped to put his best foot forward in his debut. It’s worth adding though that in the RF video shoot interview, Eddie mentions that a different opponent was in place, and even advertised at one point, that being Sabu. This can’t have been for April 8th though, as Sabu was always set to be part of the three way tag team main event, eventually replaced by Rick Steiner, but it could have been for another night. Incidentally, Sabu and Eddie Guerrero would end up meeting in the ring a couple of months later, but not for ECW. On June 12th 1995 in Osaka, Sabu would make his only successful defence of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title by beating Black Tiger in New Japan.
Not only would Eddie win his ECW debut against Scorpio, but he would on his first night win the Television championship. When the match had its television airing on April 11th, it would receive rave reviews from the newsletters, with Wade Keller in the Torch being very complimentary of Eddie in particular, noting that he was really allowed to show off what he can do more than he could in Mexico. “This singles match format really gave Eddy Guerrero a chance to shine, rather than just show glimpses of highspots like in many of the AAA six-man style bouts.” The Observer points out something that Eddie also mentions in his book, which is that the ECW arena fans, already having a reputation for being very knowledgeable about their wrestling, were well aware of who Eddie was before he even stepped into the building. “Guerrero was over strong with the crowd the moment he came out with lots of “Gringo Locos” and “Rudos” and “Eddy” chants.” From Eddie Guerrero’s first night in ECW it was clear that he was going to make an impact, unfortunately from ECW’s perspective, that impact would be noticed after not very long.
Ending
As I’m not covering his ECW run here, let’s end with some stats about Eddie’s time in the land of extreme. Guerrero’s run was very brief, lasting only four months, and in that time he wrestled eighteen matches. He would win the television championship in his very first match for the company, and would walk in as a defending champion in half of all the matches he had there. That's not quite Gunther levels of impressive stats but it’s something. In his short time there, Eddie would wrestle in ten different venues in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Florida and New York, which is a pretty staggering for 1995 ECW. The company wasn’t yet breaking as much new ground as it would in later years. In short, Eddie packed an awful lot into his four short months in ECW.
Over the years that I’ve covered in this video, Eddie Guerrero really began to grow as a performer into what he was by the 2000’s. At the start of the decade he was wearing canary yellow trunks that matched his brother, and by the middle of it he was much more his own man, and also someone else while donning the Black Tiger mask. He wasn’t yet as charismatic as he would become, but he was beginning to show that he could be an excellent in ring wrestler, and his time in ECW would really help to show that to a bigger audience, until WCW came calling at least.
Sources:
WON March 4th 1991 Wrestlewar live review https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/march-4-1991-wrestling-observer-newsletter-wcw-wrestle-war-review-tons/
WON March 9th 1992 91 awards https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/march-9-1992-observer-newsletter-patterson-and-garvin-resign-amidst/
WON Jan 15th 95 WON awards and not going to ECW https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/jan-16-1995-observer-newsletter-1994-observer-awards-issues-best-and/
Cheating Death Stealing Life, Eddie Guerrero, 2005
WON Jan 9th 1995 Not going to WCW https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/jan-9-1995-wrestling-observer-newsletter-flash-report-tokyo-dome/
WON Nov 14th 94 Worlds Collide review https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/nov-14-1994-observer-newsletter-savagewwf-relationship-falls-apart/
PWT Nov 12th 94 Worlds Collide review https://members.pwtorch.com/artman/publish/1994pwtorchnewsletters/article_83843.shtml
PWT Nov 26th 94 Art’s death https://members.pwtorch.com/artman/publish/1994pwtorchnewsletters/article_84351.shtml
WON Jan 16th 1995 Ron Skoler https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/jan-16-1995-observer-newsletter-1994-observer-awards-issues-best-and/
WON April 24th 1995 Skoler out https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/april-24-1995-observer-newsletter-ufc-v-does-20-times-buys-modern-day/
PWT April 22nd 95 Eddie ECW debut review https://members.pwtorch.com/artman/publish/1995PWTorchNewsletters/article_87085.shtml
WON Apr 17th 95 Eddie chants https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/april-17-1995-observer-newsletter-wrestlemania-tanks-ufc-v-full-report/
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