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Eddie Guerrero is one of the best-loved and most respected figures in the history of professional wrestling. Yes, he was an all-time great, but an inextricable part of his legacy also remains the fact that we all lost him much too soon.
While Guerrero may not have been entirely innocent in his death (claims emerged that his heart issues were related to past drug abuse), it’s a particularly sad note that he had by all accounts gotten himself cleaned up and was broaching new heights in terms of both his accomplishments and level of performance when he passed on.
No one saw Guerrero’s death coming, and thus it’s only natural to wonder what might have been had he not passed on over a decade ago. This article takes a look at five possibilities of what might have followed within the world of World Wrestling Entertainment had he lived on from that point.
#5 Rey Mysterio doesn’t win a world title
When Rey Mysterio won the WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar, it was a surprise not only for the immediate upset of Guerrero pinning Lesnar but because it wasn’t clear whether Guerrero ever would reach the top of the mountain in WWE. It’s not a company where relatively small wrestlers have garnered much main event level success, nor have many Latino stars attained world champion status.
Despite being over in his own right, Rey Mysterio didn’t show any meaningful signs following in Guerrero’s footsteps—an even smaller wrestler, even more entrenched in his lucha libre roots by wearing his mask.
When Guerrero passed on, it only opened a void on top for Mysterio to step up into but provided a feel-good story for Mysterio to rise up in tribute to his fallen friend. Given how WWE booked that title reign, though, with Mysterio losing more than he won, and given that Mysterio would only enjoy lightning quick world title reigns to follow (he’d lose each of his next two world titles on the same night he won them), it stands to reason WWE never really meant to book him on top.
#4 Kerwin White carries on
Leading up to Eddie Guerrero’s death, his nephew Chavo Guerrero Jr. received a low key push with a rebranded heel character. Taking on the name of Kerwin White, Chavo played a Latino man largely trying to pass as white, complete with bleached blond hair, and hiring a caddy to escort him to the ring (a young Dolph Ziggler).
WWE promptly dropped the White gimmick immediately upon Eddie’s passing. Part of this was to allow Chavo to be himself and pay tribute to his uncle in matches to follow. Part of it, too, would seem to be WWE implicitly acknowledging the biased undertones of the angle, and wanting to let Chavo celebrate rather than undermine his family and culture.
The Kerwin White had a significant glass ceiling overhead and likely would have been shelved within a few months anyway. Perhaps he would have had more opportunities to work high profile matches in that gimmick, though, and maybe we would have even seen Ziggler rise up against him to launch his singles career that way.
#3 Eddie Guerrero vs Shawn Michaels
There are a number of great Eddie Guerrero matches and programs we never got to see, or at least never got to see fully realized. Chief among those dream scenarios that would have been entirely possible—maybe even likely—had Guerrero lived on would have been for him to square off with Shawn Michaels.
Michaels and Guerrero were a pair of complete wrestlers, each of whom was particularly great from an in-ring perspective. They’d missed each other on account of working for different promotions, Michaels’s first retirement, and then being positioned on opposite WWE brands. Had Guerrero lived on, though, one has to suspect that they would have found themselves on the same show in the years to follow—likely Guerrero moving to Raw—and WWE may have saved this showdown for a big stage like WrestleMania.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine a different ‘Mania trajectory for HBK. After all, that era saw him work memorable matches with Vince McMahon, John Cena, Ric Flair, and The Undertaker. For as iconic as these bouts were, though, Michaels vs. Latino Heat surely would have stolen the show in its own right.
2. A Radicalz reunion
In one of the most fascinating turns of the Monday Night War, a 2000 episode of Monday Night Raw saw the surprise debut of The Radicalz—Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn, all freshly defected from WCW. While they weren’t marquee stars who had headlines a lot of PPVs, they were some of the most respected workers in the business and emblematic of the kind of young in ring wizards who went underutilized in the WCW system.
Nowadays, WWE doesn’t do much to celebrate The Radicalz. This is surely done, in no small part, to Guerrero and Benoit’s untimely deaths. That leaves behind Malenko—a great talent, but one who has contributed more behind the scenes than he did on air for WWE—and Perry Saturn who was pretty squarely a mid-card guy.
We’ll never know for sure what would have happened had Guerrero lived on, but some have hypothesized that the death of such a close friend did contribute to Benoit breaking down on the way to the tragic final acts of his life.
Had both of these men survived, WWE would probably make a bigger deal out of the Radicalz legacy that contributed to WWE winning the Monday Night War, and led to two respected world champions. The group may not have come back together as an active faction, but they may well have been in line for on-air reunion segments like the one Evolution got on the thousandth episode of SmackDown.
#1 Another world title reign
Stephanie McMahon has famously recounted in a number of interviews that Eddie Guerrero asked to have the WWE Championship taken off of him in 2004 because he felt it was too much pressure to shoulder the title. She has followed up by commenting that WWE always meant to get the title back around his waist when the tie was right for both sides.
Guerrero passed away before that can happen.
We’ll never know for sure if Guerrero was going to get that second title reign, but it certainly seems feasible. He remained in the main event orbit for most of his life to follow, including a storyline with World Heavyweight Champion Batista in Guerrero’s final days. It doesn’t seem likely Guerrero would have taken the strap off The Animal in that program, but he may well have been in line for a title push when Batista went down to injury months later, or when Edge got hurt the year after that. One way or another, he was popular with fans and respected by the boys. It’s hard to picture him never finding his way back to the top, if only for a short time.
