On November 13, 2005, Eddie Guerrero was found dead in his hotel room. At just 38 years of age, Guerrero was around the top of his game, less than two years removed from winning the WWE Championship and still very much part of the WWE main event scene in an angle with reigning World Heavyweight Championship Batista.
More important than wrestling storylines or titles, Guerrero was both a beloved figure to fans and to colleagues behind the scenes. His passing was a legitimate shock to all levels of the pro wrestling community.
It’s hard to believe that we’re looking at the 20th anniversary of Guerrero’s passing, but as such, there’s no better time to consider his enduring legacy.
Eddie Guerrero Remains An Influence
It’s no secret that wrestlers are influenced by other wrestlers, but it’s telling that in the modern era so many talents pay homage to Eddie Guerrero. Indeed, the list of major names who cite Latino Heat as someone who inspired them, whom they’ve sought to emulate, or whom they’ve directly imitated is staggering. It ranges from Seth Rollins to Finn Balor to Mercedes Mone to Sammy Guevara to Athena. That’s not to mention Dominik Mysterio directly borrowing from his kayfabe papi’s look and mannerisms.
All that’s not to mention now-veteran performers who only briefly crossed paths with Guerrero but have spoken of learning a lot from the late legend, including John Cena, CM Punk, AJ Styles, and The Hardy Boyz. On top of that, talents like Rey Mysterio and Chris Jericho, in the twilight of their careers, still speak of their old friend and colleague in reverential terms.
Cynics might attach some of the outpouring of love to the tragic circumstances of Guerrero’s death, far sooner than anyone was prepared to say goodbye to him. Nonetheless, there are very few wrestlers whose legacies have remained as potent as long after their passing as Guerrero’s.
Eddie Guerrero’s Style Has Lived On
When discussing Eddie Guerrero’s style as a professional wrestler, a unique combination of factors comes into focus. He was a high-flyer and a skilled technician. He showed real fire as a babyface and a wonderful sense of both humor and swagger as a heel. The combination of these dynamics allowed him to ultimately arrive at the best version of himself late in life as an irascible rogue character whom it was hard not to love. Indeed, his “I lie, I cheat, I steal” mantra became emblematic of a uniquely endearing heelish manner. This complex character shone through both in the ring and on the mic alike.
So it is that Latino Heat lives on every time a crafty character gets an opponent disqualified by pretending to have been attacked with a foreign object, just as it does in signature spots like the Three Amigos suplexes and the Frog Splash.
Guerrero embodied both a work ethic and a sense of personality that fans and promoters alike could not resist. While he was neither the first, nor the smallest wrestler to break through WWE standards and arrive in the main event picture despite relatively diminutive size, he nonetheless stands the test of time as a performer who defied norms and was simply too great to be denied a top spot.
Eddie Guerrero’s Work Holds Up Remarkably Well
One of the uncomfortable truths that wrestling fans are particularly prone to facing in the modern era of extensive archival footage available to stream at all times is that much of what they think of as “old school” wrestling does not hold up to the test of time. Indeed, as much as someone can respect stars of the 1970s and earlier, the style is so much slower and less high-spot-oriented than today’s product that it’s hard to bridge that gap. From there, more purely personality-driven acts like Hulk Hogan and Sid Vicious can be fun to revisit for pure nostalgia, but it’s also hard to defend most of their matches as being objectively any good.
Eddie Guerrero’s body of work holds up remarkably well. As a staple cruiserweight, mid-card, and tag team wrestler in WCW, his work was well ahead of its time. From there, in WWE, he really put the pieces together when he had more of an opportunity to shine on the mic, besides building muscle mass to better suit the look of a WWE Superstar. So it was that he delivered classic action with fellow in-ring greats fans would expect like Rey Mysterio and Kurt Angle, but also gave performers like JBL, young Batista, and John Cena some of their best bouts.
Eddie Guerrero was under-featured in his time. In hindsight, it feels like a travesty he never made it to the main event in WCW and only captured one world title in WWE. Just the same, there is some solace in the fact he’s still so well remembered two decades after his passing. Indeed, though it wasn’t a popular sentiment when Guerrero was at his actual peak, looking back, there’s every argument that he belongs in the conversation of the greatest professional wrestlers who ever lived.