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CALDWELL'S MEDIA CLUB: Eddie Guerrero DVD review Day 18 - Eddie's Family Rivalry with the Guerrero brothers Dec 10, 2008 - 4:56:36 PM
Understanding the Guerrero family dynamic requires a family tree, similar to the Hart family. Who's married to? Who is the uncle to whom? It could be confusing to outsiders, but on the inside of the Guerrero family, everyone knew who the target was for jealousy. Eddie.
From the Gory Guerrero lineage, there's Chavo, Sr., then Mando, then Hector, then Eddie. Four brothers. As the youngest of the four, Eddie was seemingly left to his own devices to pick up the wrestling business while Chavo, Mando, and Hector were trying their craft.
They never did reach the same level of success that Eddie did in the U.S., culminating with his World Title victory that I'll be reviewing tomorrow. Why the jealousy, though? Chavo, Sr. explains on the Eddie DVD.
"Eddie had it really rough," Chavo, Sr. says on the DVD. "When Eddie started, he had nobody there of the Guerreros. Eddie had to fight and duke it out and there were a lot of jealousies. That's what made part of Eddie, he learned the hard way."
Chavo, Sr. said Eddie didn't care about the supposed built-in respect for big brother, and that led to competition amongst the brothers, just like father Gory instilled in them to make them competitive and make them Guerreros.
"Over the years, my bothers have put a lot of pressure on me," Eddie wrote in his autobiography. "I've felt that I could never do the right thing.
"God help us, we Guerreros can't seem to stop ourselves from telling each other what we think is right or wrong. That can lead to a lot of wounded egos and hurt feelings."
The Guerrero family rivalry took center stage in WWE storylines at the end of 2003 until the beginning of 2004 when Eddie blew off his rivalry against older brother Chavo, Sr. and his son, Chavo, Jr., who had been such an important part of Eddie's career since they were similar in age.
Eddie playing the babyface role in the brother vs. brother-and-nephew feud that helped transform him into a main event player.
"The timing was perfect," Eddie wrote in his autobiography. "Chavito began getting angrier and angrier, picking fights with me after our matches. The fans hated that - by God's grace, Latino Heat was hugely over at that point, one of WWE's most popular babyfaces."
Included on the DVD is the Eddie vs. Chavo blow-off match at the 2004 Royal Rumble that took them from their basic WCW days of Eddie teasing Chavo until having a full-blown singles match on the third major PPV of the WWE calendar.
Eddie won the match with a frog splash, then unloaded on both Chavos with a brutal post-match attack that ended the feud and sent him to the main event spotlight the next month at the No Way Out PPV.
The angle was a huge success and helped patch some old wounds between the Guerreros being able to work together in a lengthy program.
"I thought Chavo could be a great help to me. I've always believed in Chavo's psychology," Eddie wrote. "I also thought it would be good for our relationship, which had undergone a lot of ups and downs over the years, especially since I got sober."
Despite their time together, the Guerreros were still clutching onto personal pride. Chavo, Sr. broke up crying on the DVD when talking about the loss he feels having never told Eddie his real fellings.
"I never told him - I wish I could - but I was good, but he was better," Chavo, Sr. says. "Eddie was the master. He became a sensei.
"He's humble. You could feel it. He was an amazing human being," Chavo says while fighting back tears. "I miss him man, I miss him. I miss him a lot."
Eddie says in his book he watched Chavo fight some of the same battles he went through during his period of struggles and setbacks. You could also sense Eddie wishing he patched things up completely as well.
"It just about broke my heart when I heard Chavo had been released," Eddie wrote. "It hurt so much, watching my oldest brother fighting some of the same demons I fight."
TOMORROW: The most-important match of Eddie's career winning his first World Title from Brock Lesnar.
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.
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