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CALDWELL'S MEDIA CLUB: Eddie Guerrero DVD review Day 5 - Eddie vs. Chris Jericho; the day no one cared Nov 18, 2008 - 4:10:49 PM
"They went back and forth, exchanging offensive sequences. Neither played to the crowd and therefore the crowd sat silent, even for the highspots. ... It came across as a really good practice match in an empty gym, but missed whatever it took to get a crowd into it and move to that next level. ... A clinic of moves, especially by Jericho, and even though the crowd didn't pop, it wasn't as if they were disinterested or totally unappreciative." -- Torch Newsletter #429 on Chris Jericho vs. Eddie Guerrero from February 1997 WCW Superbrawl PPV.
Eddie Guerrero had charisma. After all, he traveled around with the "Love Machine" Art Barr for so long that some of Barr's antics and ability to play to the crowd were bound to rub off on Eddie.
However, in WCW, in the national spotlight, Eddie wasn't able to connect with the audience. In Day Five of the Eddie Guerrero DVD review series, I'm looking at Eddie's match against close friend Chris Jericho from early 1997 when both men were having great matches, but no one seemed to care.
"Both of us had a little bit of a complex in the fact that we were both smaller guys," Chris Jericho says on the Eddie DVD. "We knew what we could do. Knew the personality and charisma that we had and knew the matches we could have, but (we were) not getting any respect from the office people in WCW or any of the top tier wrestlers."
When Eddie, Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho were brought into WCW, Eric Bischoff sat them down and identified a role for them to deliver great, athletic wrestling in the cruiserweight division without trying to wrestle a heavyweight style.
Unfortunately, WCW wasn't putting marketing effort into the cruiserweight division to allow the personalities of that cruiserweight foursome to stand out as viable stars. Casual fans were trained to identify with the bigger names, while WCW simply offered a great dose of athleticism for hardcore fans who wanted to see great wrestling.
That brings us to Superbrawl 1997 where Jericho and Eddie put on a wrestling clinic in front of a silent audience. Maybe the action looked overly-choreographed to casual fans or just something they didn't want to see after being trained on Hogan, Luger, and Nash, but Eddie and Jericho couldn't get much of a response from the audience.
Instead, they tried to have the best match possible for themselves. It wasn't enough, though.
"We were both really deflated. Even at our best, nobody cared," Jericho says on the DVD. "What's it all mean? What are we going to do? We're just going to keep working. He felt the same way. I had never been so morose after having a great match."
In an interview last week, Eric Bischoff said from his perspective that there was balance between the heavyweights and cruiserweights in WCW. But, over time, the cruiserweights wanted to be like the heavyweights to become more marketable to the casual fans. To the heavyweights, they were afraid of looking bad following an athletic match and wanted to keep the cruiserweights in their place.
This constant tension between two divisions created self-defeated attitudes for Jericho and Eddie, who decided they weren't even going to try to connect with the audience, but rather have the best match for an audience of two.
"We're just going to go out there and steal the show every night even if nobody watches," he said about a conversation with Eddie. "If no one in the crowd cares, then at least you and I will care."
Watching Jericho vs. Guerrero on the DVD and listening to the WCW announcers focused on empty words to describe the "Young Lions" while turning their attention to the Hogan vs. Piper feud was a pretty strong reminder of the current TNA storylines focused on Main Event Mafia vs. Joe & Styles's group.
There's a sense in TNA that the Young Lions's time is coming, but yet, it seems like the time is far away. Guerrero and Jericho were two stars who already had success before WCW, but weren't connecting on the national level as money draws. Joe and Styles haven't been positioned there either. There's a lot of talk, but no action so far to bring them to Angle, Sting, and Nash's level on a consistent basis.
It's important to look at what history tells us. It wasn't until Guerrero and Jericho moved on to WWE where the full marketing effort was put behind the younger core of wrestlers to develop tomorrow's stars. TNA can't allow the same thing to happen - Joe and Styles becoming household names in WWE - when TNA's opportunity is right there to create the next group of stars ten years later.
Over the course of 25 days, I will be reviewing the "Viva La Raza" Eddie Guerrero DVD recently put out by WWE. I'll be looking at the significance of each of the 25 matches on the DVD as well as establishing the context of events that were occurring at the time of each match.
This match made me really mad when I first watched it. Jericho and
Guerrero put on at least a ***1/2 match and almost no-one clapped or gave
any noise. They were all waiting for Hogan vs. Piper which is said because
Hogan and Piper don't have half the talent Jericho and Guerrero do.
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