"God bless you."
Eddie Guerrero.
written by B on November 15th, 2005

The bell rang, he jumped into the crowd, and they embraced him.

When I was first coming up in the business, no man was more a mentor to me than Eddie Guerrero, the strapping five-foot nine-inch

out of El Paso



I discovered him wrestling knucklelocks with Dean Manlenko in a bingo hall when I was

Just last week I was talking to Eddie about how he

SirdylanBob: Goddamnit.
SirdylanBob: I'm watching that match, and Eddie is fucking covered in blood, and he gets clotheslined from hell, and he kicks out at two. You know what my instinctive thought is? "Nothing stops Eddie Guererro."
Destinys2ndKid: You're right. Nothing does.

There's a highway stretching from Naples to Ft. Lauderdale called "Alligator Alley" with a gas station on each end, and about an hour's worth of road in-between. You can't turn around once you've gone too far, so you either have to stop at the gas station or risk being stranded out in the middle of South Florida swampland with nothing but your broken down car and that line from "Amos Moses" about knocking shit in the head with a stump. We knew we could meet the wrestlers if we hung out at that gas station after the show. They had to be in Orlando the next night.

My girlfriend and I sat first row box for WWF Armageddon 2002. We watched Dawn Marie and Al Wilson watch Dawn Marie and Torrie Wilson make out on video. Kurt Angle won the World Heavyweight Title. Chris Benoit wrestled Eddie Guerrero. Near the end of the match Benoit tried to put Eddie in the crossface, but Eddie had his hands clasped and Benoit couldn't fully get him in the move. To compensate, Benoit moved a little closer to the ropes. Hoping to get a called break of the hold, Guerrero unlocked his hands and reached out for the rope. Benoit switched arms. Eddie tapped out.

We stood in the arena walkway for maybe ten minutes before the end of the main event, watching Triple H and Shawn Michaels punch each other, then fall down. It just went on and on. We wanted to run around back and meet the wrestlers, or at the very least get out of the parking lot in time to get to the gas station before they did. Shawn Michaels stood up, was punched, and fell down. Triple H stood up, was punched, and fell down. I had sixteen grandchildren and boom, we were out of there.

The entire car ride was spent going over the end of the Benoit/Guerrero match. And we saw Kurt win the gold! Oh God, was Kurt going to be at the gas station? I mean, I know he's Kurt Angle, but his car still needs gas, doesn't it? Of course it does, it's a rental! Benoit breaking out the powerbomb again was sick. And did you see Al Wilson's face when they were playing the lesbian make-out video? He had his arms folded against the ropes and his head down. He probably wanted to die, haha.

Hey, was that the gas station?

Oh







Oh shit.


And there it went. The last gas station before Alligator Alley, and we were rocking maybe a quarter of a quarter of a tank. I thought about me standing with wobbly knees beside Kurt Angle, our thumbs up. It faded. I thought about Big Show buying giant novelty hams and, I don't know, D-Von Dudley enjoying a slurpee. It was just gone. We missed it. Now we weren't going to get to meet the wrestlers and we were going to end up stranded in the swamp. How does that line go? "The Loosiana Law gone gitcha Amos!" Dammit, not that one.

It was okay, I said.

It was okay, she said.

So we missed the gas station. We didn't get to meet anybody. That's okay, we still had a hell of a lot of fun at the show. And Kurt won the gold! As we glided down the road on that thimble of gasoline I thought back to Benoit switching arms, and the roll-through, and the tap out. Heh.

We made it to the next gas station and things were back to normal. We were laughing about the terrible pop music on the radio and I was making bad puns. I pointed out stars in the night sky to help myself not feel so retarded. She got out to pump the gas for the rest of the trip home and I started the walk across the parking lot to pay. As I approach the door, Eddie Guerrero walks out of the convenience store, sees my Kurt Angle shirt, nods, and says "hey."

"Hey," I say, nodding. He walks by. I walk a few steps forward.

That's when the visuals and understanding hit my brain. My feet stopped working for a while. I looked into the store. Chavo Guerrero was buying Powerbars at the front counter. Hector Guerrero was grabbing a drink. Who recognizes Hector Guerrero? He looks like Eddie, only with grey hair and I'm guessing bullets strapped across the chest under his PPV T-shirt. He was once a giant dancing turkey for the WWF. I mean that literally. Okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. And there in the back was the back of a man's head, sitting just a few inches above a really broad hockey jersey.

I shuffled back to my girlfriend's car, where she was sitting wide-eyed. Eddie made his way back in. "Oh my God dude, Chris Benoit is in the gas station."

"OH MY GOD DUDE I KNOW."
"OH MY GOD."
"DUDE, I KNOW."

By the time we gathered our composure Chavo had made his way out to the rental car to eat dinner. Hector was paying for his stuff and I made all these really great Lazertron and Mexican Bandito jokes that I kept to myself. Eddie was buying Gatorade. Or water. Or something. I walked forward so close to the next glass door over that part of my nose was getting freaked out by the Jabberwocky. Eddie looked up at me and then back down at his shopping basket. I didn't say a word. I was selecting a drink by standing motionless with my arms down by my sides.

"We really loved your match tonight," she said.

Eddie turned on his knee toward her almost instantly, like he'd been waiting for us to just get the fuck over it and say something, and said, "Oh, thank you very much." I turned to him and opened my mouth, and he began to smile.

I don't really remember what I said to him. I know there is a type of wrestling fan who can only muster I LOVE YOUR WRASSLE BODY SLAMMM in the presence of these guys. Alternately I know there is the fan who is too educated on the literature and will ramble on about spots instead of matches, workrate instead of joy, steroids instead of some simple faith. I didn't want to be either. I made a lot of clasping motions with my hand and told Eddie how much I appreciated how the match ended tonight, and how so few people take the time to put those little realistic touches on things anymore. I told him it reminded me of being six years old at the Greensboro Coliseum again. He wasn't "Eddie" then, really. At least not as I knew him.

Eddie Guerrero is "Latino Heat." He is MEXICAN in all capital letters. He drives a lowrider to the ring equipped with fuzzy dice and hydraulics, and, because he is Hispanic I guess, made a gimmick out of being a liar, a cheater, and a thief. But we loved him, because OH THOSE CURMUDGEONLY MEXICANS. He did shoulder shimmies and called moves "The Three Amigos." He spoke like an excited Cheech. HEEEY HOLMES. He called people "vato" a lot. His shirts featured "papi" and roses and Scarface.

There he laughed his wonderful laugh and in this demure, humble voice thanked us for everything. We joked about when we'd be getting Los Guerreros T-shirts. He signed my ticket EG, Latino Heat. I shook his hand.

"God bless you," he said.

"God bless you."

"God

It's a work.

Eddie Guerrero isn't really dead.

I typed that on Sunday afternoon, about six hours after I'd heard that he'd died. I stared at it for about twenty minutes, then closed the window.

I have an elaborate reason for everything. I've thought everything through. I know why I love what I love, and why I hate what I hate. I can type it out. Eloquently, sometimes. Sometimes not, but at least I can always do it, that "do" that puts things that I wouldn't even admit to myself out onto paper or a screen for people to read. I promised myself years ago that my writing would always be honest, and I would always understand it. I would open up my heart. It's Tuesday evening and I have no reason why Eddie Guerrero died and no idea how to feel.

He was not my brother. I discovered him wrestling knucklelocks with Dean Manlenko in a Philadelphia bingo hall when I was a teenager. Malenko rolled him up for two. Guerrero reversed for two. Malenko rolled him over for two. Guerrero tucked the head down for two. Malenko bridged and backslide for two. They stood at the same time and stopped. The crowd roared.

He was not my idol. He was there when the people who chastised me for loving wrestling became wrestling fans and sat alongside me for WCW Monday Nitro, watching Chris Jericho's shitzu ponytail snap back from an Eddie dropkick. He was greasy now. I don't know why. His mullet was MASSIVE. His nephew Chavo wore a Zorro mask and rid a hobby horse. We laughed. We chanted "EDDIE EDDIE EDDIE" when he was good and "EDDIE SUCKS, EDDIE SUCKS" when he was bad.

He was not my father. He dislocated his elbow doing a frog splash the very first time he did so on WWF television, back when "Radical" meant he wore dress shirts. Eddie, why are you talking like that? Eddie, why are you studying to get your GED? Is it because you're Mexican? Oh, I get it. Eddie, why are you the third Hardy Boy? Eddie? Eddie? Where did you go?

He was not my role model. That Rob Thomas song "Smooth" was just terrible. But there he was walking out to it in what looked for the life of me to be a high school gym. Wrestling in a building with basketball hoops with guys named "Bugaloo" and "Quiet Storm." Just terrible. But Eddie Guerrero is Eddie Guerrero, and everything he did was fucking Eddie Guerrero. The brainbuster was still there, and it looked stronger. The frog splash hit with more impact. I didn't know how many drugs he was on. I didn't know how many drugs he was off. I just wanted to chant his name, or that his name sucked.

He was nothing more than a guy in his underwear pretending to fight. Some of these things started to fade away. The bingo hall was replaced by an arena. No more mullet. Chris Jericho cuts his hair like my Dad. The disgusting undercurrent of the GED and abusive Papi became a perverse celebration of his heritage, a bothersome display of exaggerated Hispanic machismo that seemed so damn sincere and like so much fun. Crowds are conditioned to cheer for the good guys and jeer the bad guys because it's all in the good fun of a fake fight, but no matter how many "EDDIE SUCKS" chants began, the words fell like the ancillary memories pretending to define him and we were left chanting "EDDIE, EDDIE, EDDIE."

Wrestlers die. They do. They're people.

I'm shaken by the realization that one day Eddie Guerrero will die. Chris Benoit will die. Kurt Angle will die. They will die like everybody does. They'll die in their sleep, or from drugs, or from car crashes or whatever, and I will be without them. They will exist only as characters I may or may not've just made up one day to make myself happy. Benoit will be the image of a man squeezing the life from another in the Crippler Crossface. I will see Kurt Angle with his arms outstretched, spinning in his velour tracksuit as people chant "You Suck" in unison to him, for him. I will see Eddie Guerrero frog splashing from the top rope, and every year, every day it will fade more, and blur more, and eventually he will be colors swirled against black, and that will be all I have left of him.

Where the fuck are you going? You aren't supposed to do this yet. How are you supposed to fade when it still seems like you're here? How are your colors supposed to swirl against the black when I can still see every line on your face? Get up, open your eyes. You're supposed to live. You're supposed to die from drugs and steroids like everyone says. Not your heart. You aren't supposed to die because of your heart. Not because of yours.

Open up your eyes, my brother. My idol, my father, my role model. Open up your eyes and stomp when you throw a punch. You have to keep doing this. I need you to keep doing this. Nothing stops Eddie Guerrero.

Nothing stops Eddie Guerrero.
Nothing stops him. He is fire.

And then, there's Eddie at the gas station, rising up to his feet with that gentle smile. And maybe he just wasn't that strong anymore.

I miss you, Eddie. I took you for granted. Did I? I watched every show you were on. I learned all about you. I shook your hand and told you that I loved you. I do. I'll love you now and I'll love you when I've gone wherever you've gone. I'll miss you now and I'll miss you then. Because I need you, Eddie. I need that stupid smile and that terrible Cheech voice holding up the structure of that asinine profession that I love so much. It's been yours for ten years, Eddie. Right in your hand. Nobody else could hold it.

Just open your eyes.

Please.

On Monday night they did a tribute show for him, and on Friday night they'll do another. Folby told me how scared he was to know that they would chant "EDDIE, EDDIE, EDDIE" one last time, and then he'd be gone, and that would be it. I don't think that's true. They'll never chant "EDDIE SUCKS, EDDIE SUCKS" again. They stopped really chanting that years ago.

The Eddie chant, however, is ours, God bless you.