Roberto Jose Andrade FrancoNov 12, 2025, 10:30 AM ET
The choreographed violence inside the ring is a delicate mix. When a single inch makes all the difference, every step and hold must be as close to perfect as possible. Too much distance between fiction and reality and it’s not believable. “This is Chavo Sr. and Mando,” Maria says of a black-and-white photo from some time in the 1960s. Her younger brothers are in the backyard, practicing leg locks while her father watches and points.
A moment of quiet as we sit across from each other with pieces of the past in front of us. “He’s still very present,” Maria says. A sip of coffee and another search. She then slides Eddie’s funeral program halfway across the table.
Inside that gym is where I spent a lot of my time during the summers, when my parents were working an eight-hour drive north in Colorado. I still remember how my mother cried the first time we moved there. She tried to console us, but especially herself, by telling us to enjoy the state’s natural beauty. Green and cold, it was the opposite of the desert we came from.
When he jumped and his long black hair flowed in the air, it looked as if Eddie could fly. It also looked like what evolved into the Frog Splash. That was Eddie’s signature move where he’d jump from the top rope, tuck his knees to his chest, then uncoil as he landed on an opponent.
With that move he would become the Eddie Guerrero the wrestling world would remember. The wrestler who once gave The Rock among the best matches he has ever had. The one who John Cena called a genius.
Every time he’d land the move that would later be known as the Frog Splash, I’d jump out of my seat, cheering along with everyone else.
Sherilyn liked to playfully wrestle with Eddie. They’d wrestle in their living room and sometimes in the ring before his matches. He’d tell her stories of his own father, who died before she was born, and the family they came from. Wrestling felt natural to her, so innate that Sherilyn is now training to be a wrestler, too.
Family members have told her they’ve also dreamed of Eddie. Sometimes they wake up confused, trying to understand why they can’t see his face. But with Sherilyn, each of those dreams feels like a blessing. If they come during difficult times, she is convinced it’s him telling her everything will be all right. “He was a great father,” Sherilyn says.
It felt good to hear classmates talk of her father, but that also made Sherilyn shy and guarded. She wondered if people wanted to be her friend only because she was Eddie’s daughter. To this day, when she meets someone around Houston, where she lives, she doesn’t mention his name. But Eddie lives an immortal existence online, so they eventually find out.
“Every day someone’s sending me something on my dad,” Sherilyn says. Something as simple as tagging her social media with a clip of Eddie’s wrestling highlights. Other times it’s messages from those who’ve made art inspired by him.
THE FIRST DREAM I ever chased was being a wrestler. I was 7 and spending the summer in Juárez designing a mask and a matching cape. I’m certain I also made up a name. I don’t remember it so it must have been bad.
They were much older and stronger, but they’d go along with my game until they got annoyed and the play wrestling turned real. Once I’d get body-slammed and struggled to breathe, it was time to leave them alone.
Years later, I’d pursue other dreams, each of them an empty search. But long before then, I imagined myself as a wrestler in Juárez, and the reason was Eddie. I wanted to wear a mask and cape and be anyone who didn’t have to feel the summer end. I didn’t want to return to feeling like a stranger; the boy who spoke with an accent in that green and cold of Colorado.
THERE’S A TRAILER parked on the plot of land Mando Guerrero owns. Since it’s the middle of July and that land is in a small Texas town between San Antonio and the Gulf of Mexico, it feels like breathing inside a sauna.
He can’t remember the last time it was fully built so he has been thinking of assembling it. But at 75 years old it’s not as easy as it once was for Eddie’s oldest living brother. Not when he feels the toll of a physical life, first as a wrestler around the world, then as a stuntman and coordinator in Hollywood. It’s hard enough to walk with prosthetic knees without having to carry heavy pieces of metal.
“Family was the most important thing so Gory took them on the road with him. He’d tell his children everything was all right when they watched him bleed. Other times he’d tell them to sit in the stands but never mention they were his children, worried they’d be hurt by those who refused to distinguish what’s real from what’s staged.
“It has sentimental value, but there’s really nothing I can do with it,” Mando says of the ring. It’s where all the Guerreros learned to wrestle and its canvas — parts of which he’s sure rats have eaten away — is stained with the blood and sweat of his father and brothers.
Mando has a stepdaughter who lives in Minneapolis. He loves her but laments not having children of his own. Maybe they’d be here to help rebuild the ring. Maybe they’d be here to learn all the things he got from his father.
“We represent something that was a phenomenon in the game of professional wrestling,” Mando says with a prideful tone. He’s protective of the family name especially when talking of his baby brother. He isn’t alone. Some who knew Eddie the best would rather let what remains of the family legacy speak for itself.
“Do you remember the last time you spoke with Eddie?” I ask. Mando makes a deep sigh and thinks. Though they sometimes spoke on the phone, he struggles to remember the last time he saw him. Eddie was on television so often, it mixes with the moments of seeing him in person. “I don’t recall,” he says.
ON NOV. 13, 2005, the phone rang and my mother answered. “Roberto,” she said after the short call. “Your grandmother said Eddie Guerrero’s dead.” That memory is clear. And likely because I was dealing with my own struggles, I don’t remember feeling much.
On the day Eddie died, I was a 25-year-old who had barely graduated high school and was bouncing around between a series of construction jobs. I slept on a broken futon with a thin mattress that left my back sore. Whatever dreams I had then felt as broken as where I slept.
Back living with my parents, I was depressed and ashamed from feeling like I’d wasted the opportunities they’d struggled to give me. I was lost, living between Phoenix, Tucson, and El Paso. And on each of those long, quiet drives through the lonesome deserts connecting those cities, I wondered why I was in the middle of losing an entire decade of my life, searching for what I couldn’t find.
I almost feel ashamed to admit it, but there was no overwhelming sadness when I heard Eddie died. There was no sense of disbelief, no contemplation of my own mortality. No proper understanding that Eddie was one of the few to make it out of here, then, at his peak, he was gone. It was like he had climbed to the top rope, jumped and flew away before I could fully understand why he meant so much to me.
“I FELT EVERYTHING was OK,” Dean Malenko says. His gruff voice can’t hide the pain when talking of how unexpected Eddie’s death felt. They were close friends even if they wrestled as bitter rivals inside the ring dozens of times.
The wrestling life is being in one city then on to the next as soon as a match ends. That life continues over and over, year after year.
“Eddie wasn’t one to hide stuff,” Malenko says. By his own admission, Guerrero was an angry drunk who’d fight anyone. At first, those occasions were a funny story to tell. But when those instances went from once or twice every few months, to every week, to every day, Malenko recognized that his friend needed help. They were in the WWE in 2001 when Malenko told management that Eddie had a problem. “The worst thing to do is rat on a friend,” Malenko says, “but I was trying to save the guy.”
Years later, Jim Ross, the legendary commentator, then the senior vice president of WWE Talent Relations, recalled that moment on his podcast, “Grilling JR.”
The Hennepin County medical examiner said Eddie died of heart disease. Past use of painkillers, alcohol and steroids hardened and narrowed his arteries. In the days before he passed, Eddie would close his eyes and nod away during conversations. It looked like he was sleeping so friends and family thought he was just tired from the road. They later understood that was his heart slowing down, until it stopped inside Room 3015 of the Minneapolis Marriott City Center.
Three months after he passed, with the shock of one of its biggest stars gone at 38, the WWE implemented a random drug-testing policy.
“I miss him,” Malenko says. “Eddie was like my little brother.” He still watches their old matches even if it hurts. “They remind me of how much he meant to me as a person,” Malenko says of those fights.
A FEW YEARS after I dreamed of being like Eddie, I watched Julio César Chávez knock out Meldrick Taylor in the last seconds of a fight. The way my father — a strong, stoic man — hugged me as it happened, you would have thought we’d just seen a miracle. That’s when I wanted to box. That lasted until I got punched in the face a little too hard.
In my early teenage years, I was sure I’d play college football. I even taped a photo of the Heisman Trophy to the ceiling directly above my bench press for motivation. Then I stopped growing early in high school.
In my early-to-mid 20s, I sought more realistic things. They weren’t dreams but ways to survive and get out of working construction. I wanted to be a mechanic like my father or sell bootleg CDs and DVDs at the swap meet like my uncle. I wanted to work at the copper mine or as a city maintenance worker since that provided medical insurance.
I was 28 years old when I wanted to be a high school teacher since that was the profession of my future wife. I took the El Paso Community College placement exam and almost didn’t return after scoring a zero on the writing section. I enrolled and have rarely felt the self-doubt I had on that first day of class. I sat close to the door in case I wanted to leave since I was afraid that I was too old. Afraid I was wasting my time. Afraid of what came next if this also didn’t work.