Real Name: Eduardo Guerrero
Nickname: Eddie Guerrero
Birthday: 10/09/68
Wrestling Debut: 1988
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 220lbs

Signature Moves: Frog Splash

Biography

Many wrestlers enter pro wrestling after a short stint as football players or when a promoter sees them lifting weights in the gym. For Eddie Guerrero, his pathway into pro wrestling was quite a bit different.

Since his birth, there was almost no question that he would become a pro wrestler. Coming from a wrestling family, Eddie's father was Gory Guerrero, a founding father of Lucha Libre (Mexican pro wrestling) and legendary wrestling trainer. Gory was a pioneer figure in Mexico, and over the course of his 30 year-plus career came to be considered, pound for pound, the best pro wrestler in Mexican history.

Gory was the patriarch of arguably the premier family in wrestling history. Eddie's older brothers Chavo, Mando and Hector gained worldwide reputations as excellent wrestlers, plying their trade in rings in Mexico and Japan, as well as several big territories across the U.S. Chavo Jr, Eddie's nephew, debuted in Mexico in 1994 before coming to WCW in 1996. Eddie wrestled collegiately at the University of New Mexico on an athletic scholarship. Wanting to turn pro, Eddie was trained by his father in a ring he had set up in his backyard in El Paso, TX. It was there that the foundation of Eddie's superior working style was first laid.

Guerrero debuted in 1987 in Mexico's EMLL promotion. He competed primarily in six man tag matches with brothers Hector and Mando for the first few years. In 1992 he won his first singles title, the WWA Welterweight title, and wrestled under a mask as Mascara Magica (Magic Mask).

Later that year, Eddie jumped to the newly formed AAA promotion, dropping the mask and returned to wrestling under his real name. With this move, Guerrero's career began to take off.

He began to split his time between Mexico and New Japan Pro Wrestling in 1993, becoming one of the top foreign stars in Japan. A year later he competed in the prestigious Top of the Super Junior Heavyweights tournament, having classic matches with the likes of Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, Jushin "Thunder" Liger and 2 Cold Scorpio.

In 1994, promoters in Japan saddled him with the Black Tiger gimmick, a foreign heel Tiger Mask-style character.

Back in Mexico, Eddie teamed with El Hijo del Santo as La Pareja Atomica (The Atomic Pair), reviving the tag team their fathers (El Santo and Gory Guerrero) made famous in the 50s and 60s. Eddie formed a friendship with “Love Machine” Art Barr and the two approached promoter Antonio Pena about turning heel and teaming up together.

The idea worked to perfection as Guerrero and Barr turned on El Hijo del Santo and formed the most hated team in Lucha Libre history: La Pareja del terror (The Pair of Terror).

Turning his back on his Mexican heritage, Guerrero donned tights with the stars and stripes, waved the American flag and recruited the likes of Konnan, Louie Spicoli (Rad Radford) and others to form Los Gringos Locos, a Mexican version of the Four Horsemen.

Los Gringos Locos set Mexico on fire in 1994 as the heel clique feuded with every top Mexican star in AAA. Guerrero and Barr won the AAA World tag team titles in Chicago during the summer, defeating El Hijo del Santo and Octagon. Santo and Octagon would garner their revenge in November at When World's Collide from Los Angeles, (AAA's only foray into pay-per-view) defeating Guerrero and Barr in a double mask vs double hair match, forcing Eddie and Barr to have their head shaved bald.

The match, a ****1/2 star effort, had put Guerrero and Barr in the spotlight, clearly establishing as the best tag team in the world at the time. They were seemingly unstoppable.

Tragedy, however, struck three weeks later as Art Barr was found dead in his bedroom in Springfield, Oregon.

With Barr out of his life, the value of the Mexican peso at an all time low and AAA complaining about the cost of his contract, Guerrero left Mexico and resurfaced in Extreme Championship Wrestling. On his first night in he defeated 2 Cold Scorpio for the TV title. A week later he had what is widely considered the best match in the history of the promotion, going to a 30-minute draw with Dean Malenko.

Eddie added the frogsplash to his vast repertoire, made famous first by Barr, paying tribute to his fallen partner. He and Malenko feuded the entire summer, exchanging the title between them in a series of matches noted for the scientific wizardry, drawing comparisons to the epic Flair-Steamboat feud of 1989.

Eddie left ECW in September of 1995 for the greener pastures of WCW. In his first year there, Guerrero feuded with Malenko, Benoit and then-US champ Konnan. In June of 1996 Guerrero, competing as Black Tiger, defeated Jushin "Thunder" Liger in the finals of the Top of the Super Juniors in Japan, becoming only the second foreigner (Chris Benoit being the first) to win the prestigious tournament.

At Starrcade '96 Guerrero won his first title in WCW, defeating Dallas Page to win the vacant U.S. Heavyweight title. Eddie would lose it three months later to Malenko but rebounded by upending Chris Jericho at SuperBrawl to capture his first of three Cruiserweight titles.

Between his matches with Malenko, Benoit, Chris Jericho, Ultimo Dragon and Psicosis, his best effort in the promotion came at Halloween Havoc '97 where he dropped the Cruiserweight title to Rey Misterio Jr in mask vs title match. The ****/3/4 match will long be remembered for its high flying spots and the amazing chemistry between the two luchadors.

After several months of feuding with nephew Chavo Jr and being lost in the shuffle, Eddie formed the Latino World Order, a shoot-like gimmick where Guerrero addressed frustrations he and the other Mexican talent had over their shameless misuse by management.

The angle was starting to get over when Eddie was involved in a terrible car crash on New Year's Eve 1998, sidelining him for several months. In his absence, the quality of wrestling has greatly diminished in WCW. The reversal of fortunes for the promotion will not so coincidentally coincide with Guerrero's hopeful return to the ring in '99

Eddie has recently been working within the WWE and keeping standard with his nephew Chavo.

Bio by www.wrestlingentertainment.com Editor Stephen Anderson & contributing sources