by Robert Igoe

Created on: January 13, 2009

First of all, I'll let you all in on a little secret: Eddie Guerrero was, by far, my favorite Smackdown wrestler, and this was the first time that my favorite anything ever died suddenly. It's not that I agreed with his spirit of lie, cheat and steal, but the way he was able to so proudly and ably apply this philosophy in a way that made you somehow happy when he got away with something and disappointed when he didn't. Even in his final great angle with Rey Mysterio, as happy as we all were to see Dominick end up with Rey, one still couldn't help but think, "Hey, Dominick is Eddie's son, after all."

There's a line from Kim Carnes' song "Looker" that goes: "But when she smiles, is she really smiling? She's the only one who really knows." I thought of that line often when I saw Eddie smile. It was often hard to tell if he was genuinely happy or if he was merely baring his fangs at the thought of another victim.

As painful as it is knowing I'll never see another match from Eddie Guerrero, I'm glad that his final day on Smackdown was so memorable. He used his chicanery to fool the referee into thinking that he had been attacked with a chair by Kennedy, making the referee disqualify him. As Eddie was laughing at his latest trick, Kennedy clobbered him with the chair and once again, we all felt sorry for a smooth criminal.

At the time of his death, Eddie was in a program with Batista, who was the World Heavyweight Champion at the time. Eddie was trying to convince Batista he was now his friend and that he wanted to take on Batista in a strictly scientific match with no tricks. As hard as Eddie tried to convince Batista and us that his intentions were honorable, likely no one except Batista believed it. The day Eddie died, he was going to finally get that title shot at a joint taping. We all knew that Eddie was going to pull a fast one on Batista, and unlike the case with other heels, no one would have hated Eddie as much as they would have laughed at Batista for allowing himself to be fooled.

Too bad Eddie died before he could even win the World title that night. Would Eddie have continued in his current persona of a flawed hero or would he have turned heel (well, more heel) as champion? Who cares? Either way, we'd have still been there anxiously waiting to see how Eddie would play us again. For all the talk about getting rid of the "black hat, white hat" mentality of wrestling characters, no one understood how to work in a grey area like Eddie did.

Oh, I seem to have gone on so long about Eddie's ring psychology, I forgot to mention the other thing I liked so much about him: he was a damn good worker. Not many people in WWE could stay move-for-move with Chris Beniot, then turn around and slug it out with JBL. Eddie could do it.

But I suppose my favorite Eddie memory came in 2000, when he was one of several WCW and WWE superstars that agreed to take part in a benefit show to help former referee and wrestler Brian Hildebrand. Like the rest of the troupe, Eddie had absolutely nothing to gain. He wasn't going to be paid, the arena was a small one and it was not being held in a major city. But he came and put on a typical five star performance.

It's harder that one might think to take solace in the idea that Eddie is now with many of his friends, like Art Barr, Brian Pillman and his father, Gory Guerrero. We selfishly want him here with us, but we can keep part of him with us if we choose to.

Via con dios, amigo.

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