While World Championship Wrestling (WCW) collapsed and was sold to WWE in 2001, Eddie had already joined the wrestling giants in 2000 as part of the Radicalz, an invading group that presaged the full-on, branded WCW/ECW Invasion that would occur in the latter part of 2001.
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It wasn’t immediate, however, and the redemption of Eddie Guerrero remains one of the most heart-warming stories in modern professional wrestling. It was only via cheating that audiences would accept such a small champion, or at least that’s how the company saw it. By utilizing heelish tactics, Eddie was able to push past his previous heights as a mid-card/cruiserweight attraction into the rarified air of world champions, where the men were bigger than Eddie’s 5’8″ frame. Partnering with his nephew Chavo Guerrero Jr., that’s where the “we lie, we cheat, we steal” persona truly took hold of the wrestling universe’s imagination. Los Gringos Locos would get intermittent callbacks in Eddie’s most famous WWE tag team, Los Guerreros. Before Latino Heat and “mamacita,” Eddie was an pro-US villain in Mexico, touting the valor of American exceptionalism and the ol’ red, white, and blue.
That reveal got a payoff a few years later, when he would join Art Barr as part of Los Gringos Locos, a hated and villanous faction in AAA that went full-on American jingoism as its gimmick. (Fun aside: despite becoming famous under the spelling “Eddie,” the man himself considered “Eddy” the real spelling of his nickname.) Now unmasked, Guerrero was able to work on his character as himself, not as a superhero luchador.
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The former created one of his first signature moments in a career chock full of them, as he voluntarily removed his Mascara Mágica mask–the first luchador to ever do it of his own volition–and revealed himself to the world as Eddy Guerrero.
His legacy as one of the greatest Mexican-American wrestlers ever even inspired a Mountain Goats song in 2015.Įddie–who was the youngest of Gory’s wrestling sons–began his career as a masked luchador in both Mexico–as Mascara Mágica–and in Japan–as Black Tiger. His eldest son, Chavo Guerrero Sr., who helped usher in an era of lucha libre in the 70s and 80s. Gory was one of the first pioneers of lucha libre in Mexico, and he’s even credited with inventing the Camel Clutch submission move, which would later be made even more famous by the Iron Sheik in WWF. Starting with Eddie’s father, Gory Guerrero, the Guerreros have been a mainstay in professional wrestling for over 80 years. It was a character that Eddie himself never fully appreciated he believed that it tarnished his family’s name, a name that was built on decades of luchadores fighting for their spots, both in the United States and abroad. He lied, he cheated, he stole, but Eddie’s Latino fanbase never diminished in the face of a eroticized and criminalized character that drove into the arena on a lowrider. The El Paso-born, third-generation luchador based his latter career’s character off of his Latino identity, one that was stereotyped through the lens of wrestling’s funhouse of racism. Eddie Guerrero’s mainstream wrestling career could be defined in two words: Latino Heat.
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