Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio (Oct 1997 – Aug 2005)

Background

Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio came from lucha libre royalty on opposite sides of the same family tree. Eddie was the youngest son of Gory Guerrero, one of Mexican wrestling's most influential first-generation stars, and grew up watching his older brothers Chavo Sr., Mando, and Hector all become wrestlers before him.[1] Rey Mysterio Jr. had wrestled for AAA in Mexico from 1992 to 1995 before jumping to WCW, following the same path his uncle, the original Rey Misterio, had helped pioneer; Rey has said he first saw Eddie wrestle in Tijuana as a young teenager, years before either man left Mexico for good.[2][17] Eddie built his own reputation in AAA teaming with El Hijo del Santo before turning on him to form a hated pairing with Art Barr; both men crossed paths a handful of times in Mexico before their history really began in WCW.[1]

By 1997, Eddie was the WCW Cruiserweight Champion, having won the title from Chris Jericho at Fall Brawl that September, and had reinvented himself as a sadistic heel willing to target Rey's biggest vulnerability: his mask.[3][9] Rey, meanwhile, was the division's top babyface and one of WCW's biggest young draws, his identity literally hidden behind a piece of cloth that carried real weight in the lucha tradition he came from. The Cruiserweight division that housed both men also included Dean Malenko and Chris Jericho during the same stretch, and a program between its top face and its reigning heel champion gave WCW a natural main event for the division.[7][1]

The two had wrestled each other before in Mexico and shared real affection off camera, the beginning of a friendship both men would describe for the rest of their careers as more like brothers than colleagues.[17] None of that stopped WCW from building its biggest cruiserweight angle of the year around the one thing that could hurt Rey the most.

Build-up

On the October 13, 1997 episode of Nitro, Eddie Guerrero slid into the ring during a Rey Mysterio Jr. versus Dean Malenko match and tore Rey's mask off in one motion, a genuine taboo in lucha libre that instantly raised the stakes of their upcoming pay-per-view match.[8] Two weeks later, at Halloween Havoc on October 26, 1997, in front of 12,457 fans at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Rey defended his mask against Eddie's Cruiserweight Championship in a Title vs. Mask match.[3] Behind the scenes, WCW booker Eric Bischoff had planned for Rey to lose both the match and the mask, believing the unmasking would help him cross over to a wider audience; Rey has said he seriously considered no-showing the match rather than go through with it, and fought hard enough against the plan that it was scrapped at the last minute.[7] In the finish, Rey reversed a top-rope crucifix powerbomb attempt into a hurricanrana for the pin, keeping his mask and winning the title in a match the Wrestling Observer Newsletter's Dave Meltzer rated 4.75 stars.[18]

The rivalry didn't end with one match. Eddie regained the Cruiserweight title from Rey on the November 10, 1997 Nitro and successfully defended it against him again at World War 3 that same month, and the two kept trading wins through 1998 in a string of televised matches that November alone included a time-limit draw and two more title changes.[2] In October 1998, Eddie formed the Latino World Order and tried to recruit Rey into the group, feuding with him and Billy Kidman over it instead.[2]

That story, like Eddie's career, was cut short by a real accident. In the early hours of January 1, 1999, Eddie was seriously injured in a car crash that left him with a fractured collarbone, a broken hip socket, a lacerated liver, and three fractured vertebrae; doctors reportedly did not expect him to wrestle again.[13] He returned five months later, not as a rival but as an ally, joining Rey Mysterio and Konnan in WCW's Filthy Animals stable.[13] The accident's aftermath, managed for years afterward with painkillers and alcohol, planted the seeds of the substance abuse problems that would define the next stretch of his career.[13]

Eddie left for the WWF in January 2000, and WCW folded the following year. Rey arrived in WWE himself in 2002, and by 2004 Eddie had completed one of the company's most personal redemption stories, winning his only WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar at No Way Out that February after years of public struggles with addiction that had gotten him released from the company in November 2001 following a DUI arrest.[13][14]

Eddie and Rey reunited as a tag team in early 2005, winning the WWE Tag Team Championship from the Basham Brothers at No Way Out on February 20, 2005, in Pittsburgh.[4] Rather than defend the titles at WrestleMania 21 that April, the pair chose to wrestle each other in a singles match instead, a decision retrospectives point to as the first sign of Eddie's ego creeping into the partnership; Eddie's nephew Chavo Guerrero, working both men throughout this stretch, reminded his uncle he'd fallen from WWE Champion to sharing gold with someone who'd beaten him twice.[9] Rey won the WrestleMania match on April 3, 2005, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and the two shook hands afterward, still on the same side.[4]

That goodwill didn't last. On the April 21, 2005 SmackDown, Eddie stood on the ring apron and refused to make the tag that would have saved their titles against MNM, costing them the championship through inaction rather than a direct betrayal.[9] Two weeks later, on May 5, 2005, Eddie removed all doubt, attacking Rey outright, tearing his mask, and busting him open.[9] The program escalated through the summer with Eddie threatening to expose a secret about Rey's young son Dominik, and on July 24, 2005, at The Great American Bash in Nashville, Rey beat Eddie under a stipulation built entirely around keeping that secret buried.[9]

It didn't stay buried long. On the August 4, 2005 SmackDown, Eddie told Rey, in front of Dominik himself, that he was the boy's biological father, the product of an affair Eddie had while separated from his real wife Vickie, and that he wanted custody.[10] The story escalated into a legal storyline complete with custody papers, drawing Rey into a fight to keep the son he had raised.[9]

The Matches

The two settled it at SummerSlam on August 21, 2005, at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., in front of 18,176 fans, in a Ladder Match for custody of Dominik with a briefcase holding the custody papers hanging above the ring.[5] Commentator Michael Cole introduced the stipulation to the audience without a hint of irony: "the custody of a child will be determined in a ladder match."[19]

The match ran 20 minutes and 19 seconds and was built entirely around ladder spots rather than a conventional wrestling structure. Eddie smashed Rey into the ring steps and a ladder propped on the entrance ramp early, then set a ladder up in the ring, only for Rey to cut him off with a springboard dropkick. Both men traded control of a second ladder before Rey hit a springboard senton to the floor, narrowly missing it. Climbing together, Eddie eventually knocked Rey down and grabbed for the briefcase, only for Rey to recover and answer with a series of ladder-assisted spots of his own, including a back body drop that sent both men and both ladders crashing down at once.[19]

The match's strangest moment came when eight-year-old Dominik himself climbed into the ring and tried to shake a ladder Eddie was climbing, too small to actually move it; Eddie yelled at the boy that he was "gonna love him" before turning back to the match, the storyline's uncomfortable premise briefly made literal in the ring.[19] Rey answered by fighting back with a 619 and a springboard leg drop that drove the ladder into Eddie's face, then climbed again, only for Eddie to kick the ladder out from under him and catch him with a powerbomb before pinning him beneath a ladder to slow him down.[19]

The finish turned on the one person in the match who wasn't a wrestler. As Eddie climbed toward the briefcase again, his real-life wife Vickie Guerrero came down to ringside, knocked over his ladder, and held him back as he tried to climb the other side; with Eddie restrained, Rey climbed up and unhooked the briefcase to win the match.[5][19] Rey Mysterio kept custody of Dominik, and after an emotional reunion with his own family at ringside, hit Eddie with the briefcase one last time before leaving the ring, the story that had run since April closing with Eddie's own family, at least in kayfabe, turning against him at the decisive moment.[19]

Aftermath

The feud didn't get a chance to run much further. Eddie Guerrero was found dead in his Minneapolis hotel room on November 13, 2005, less than three months after the SummerSlam match, at age 38.[6] The following night, WWE turned its Raw broadcast, held in that same city, into a full tribute show. Both rosters wrestled interbrand matches in Eddie's memory and his peers delivered video tributes between them; Rey Mysterio and Shawn Michaels, wrestling each other for the first time, both wore Eddie T-shirts to the ring.[21] Rey won with the 619 and his Droppin' Da Dime finisher, then broke down crying and pointed to the sky, dedicating the win to his friend in front of the same city where Eddie had died less than 24 hours earlier.[21]

The story continued to shape WWE programming into the following year, in ways that made some of the people involved uncomfortable. Heading into WrestleMania 22, Randy Orton feuded with Rey Mysterio by needling him over Eddie's death directly, telling Rey on the February 3, 2006 SmackDown that "Eddie ain't in Heaven, Eddie's down there in Hell."[15] Orton has since said he was "100 percent not comfortable" cutting that promo, and that it was Rey and Eddie's widow Vickie who convinced him to go through with it, telling him it was something Eddie would have wanted.[15] The angle built to a triple threat match at WrestleMania 22 where Orton and Mysterio both challenged Kurt Angle for the World Heavyweight Championship.[15]

Rey Mysterio remained close to the Guerrero family for the rest of his career. He helped induct Eddie into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006, and when Rey himself was inducted in 2023, he closed his own speech by returning to Eddie, saying of him, "His heart never changed. Always had the same heart."[20]

Behind the Scenes

The custody storyline came from an unlikely source: Eddie Guerrero himself. Dominik Mysterio, who played the on-screen version of himself as a child throughout the angle, has said as an adult that the idea was Eddie's, pitched alongside producer Bruce Prichard because Eddie wanted to turn heel and felt the custody angle was the way to do it.[11][12] Rey was reportedly excited by the pitch rather than hesitant, and Eddie made a point throughout production of checking in on the real child playing the role, making sure Dominik felt safe and comfortable through scenes built around losing his family.[12] Dominik has said he was young enough at the time to believe some of it was real, recalling he "genuinely thought I'd probably end up going home with him" if Eddie's character had won.[12]

The angle's real emotional core was a friendship that long predated either man's WWE run. Rey has described the two as "like brothers" going back to when he first watched Eddie wrestle in Tijuana as a young teenager, decades before either man arrived in an American promotion.[17] That closeness is part of what made the 1997 mask stipulation so tense behind the scenes: Rey has said he strongly opposed WCW's plan to unmask him and came close to skipping the Halloween Havoc match entirely rather than go through with it, a real professional disagreement layered under a storyline about betrayal.[7]

Eddie's redemption arc gave the 2005 storyline extra weight for anyone who had followed his career. He had been released by WWE in November 2001 after a DUI arrest that came on the heels of a rehab stint the company had already sent him to, and the fallout was personal as much as professional: his wife Vickie left with their daughters, and Eddie has said he spent that period dependent on pills and alcohol before finding sobriety and, by his own account, religion.[13][14] He was rehired in April 2002, rebuilt his career from the bottom, and won his only world title from Brock Lesnar in February 2004, a moment widely read inside and outside the company as the payoff to that whole arc.[13][14] Putting that same man through a heel turn against his real best friend, built on a fake affair and a fake custody battle, asked the audience to root against a story WWE had spent years building sympathy for.

Not everyone around the angle was comfortable with how far it reached into real relationships. When WWE extended the storyline's emotional weight into 2006 by having Randy Orton mock Eddie's death to provoke Rey, Orton has said the discomfort was real and that only Rey's and Vickie's blessing got him through it, on the reasoning that the elder Guerrero would have wanted the story to continue rather than be treated as untouchable.[15]

The storyline also leaned on real family members playing versions of themselves. Vickie Guerrero, Eddie's actual wife, appeared on WWE television throughout the custody angle and was the one whose interference decided the SummerSlam match, a role that mirrored the real trust between her and her husband even as the character she played was accusing him of infidelity.[5] Chavo Guerrero, Eddie's real nephew, spent the early months of the story playing both sides, telling Rey that Eddie liked to keep his friends close and his enemies closer while separately reminding Eddie how far he'd fallen since his WWE Championship reign, a bit of manipulation built entirely on a real family member needling a real uncle in front of the cameras.[9]

Legacy

The two acts of this rivalry are remembered in almost opposite terms. The 1997 mask-versus-title match is treated as one of the greatest cruiserweight matches ever wrestled, drawing a 4.75-star rating from Dave Meltzer and regularly appearing on best-match-of-the-decade lists.[18] The 2005 custody storyline drew a much more mixed response: retrospectives have called it one of the most absurd angles WWE ever committed to television, criticized both for hanging a custody battle on a real child and for the more basic booking problem that Eddie lost every televised match against Rey that year on his way to supposedly justifying a heel turn.[19][10] Meltzer rated the SummerSlam blow-off match itself at three and a half stars, and later retrospectives have called it entertaining despite the storyline rather than because of it, something closer to wrestling as soap opera than an in-ring classic.[19]

What both acts share is that neither one aged into simple nostalgia. Eddie Guerrero's death on November 13, 2005, turned the custody storyline from a tasteless soap opera into something fans and historians revisit specifically because of what came right after it, and the Randy Orton program that followed remains one of the more debated uses of a real death as wrestling storyline material.[15][6]

Both men eventually received the WWE Hall of Fame's formal recognition, Eddie in 2006 and Rey in 2023, and each induction became an occasion for the other's name to come up. Rey has spent two decades since Eddie's death describing him as a brother rather than a rival, a framing that sits over both the 1997 classic, still shown as an example of what the cruiserweight style could do at its best, and the far stranger story WWE built around them eight years later.[17][20]

For a wrestling audience, the two matches end up functioning almost like bookends on a real friendship rather than a single continuous rivalry: one, in 1997, a technical showcase that launched Rey's American career; the other, in 2005, a strange, uncomfortable story that neither man got the chance to move past before it became permanently tied to Eddie's death.

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. Eddie Guerrero — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Guerrero
2. Rey Mysterio — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rey_Mysterio
3. Halloween Havoc (1997) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Havoc_(1997)
4. WrestleMania 21 — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_21
5. SummerSlam 2005 — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SummerSlam_2005
6. "Eddie Guerrero's Cause Of Death Officially Revealed" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2005/12/eddie-guerrero-cause-of-death-officially-revealed-489846/
7. "Rey Mysterio Strongly Opposed His Unmasking In WCW But Had Bigger Concerns" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1845625/rey-mysterio-unmasked-wcw-bigger-concerns/
8. "Eddie Guerrero snatches Rey Mysterio's mask: Nitro, October 13, 1997" — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/videos/eddie-guerrero-snatches-rey-mysterio-s-mask-nitro-october-13-1997
9. "Why Eddie Guerrero Betrayed Rey Mysterio In WWE, Explained" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/wwe-why-eddie-guerrero-betrayed-rey-mysterio-explained/
10. "The Custody Of Dominik Ladder Match Storyline, Explained" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/custody-of-dominick-ladder-match-storyline-explained/
11. "Rey Mysterio Explains Being Pitched The Custody Storyline With Eddie Guerrero" — Fightful. https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/rey-mysterio-explains-being-pitched-custody-storyline-eddie-guerrero/
12. "Dominik Mysterio Reveals Eddie Guerrero Came Up with the 2005 Custody Battle Storyline" — 411Mania. https://411mania.com/wrestling/dominik-mysterio-eddie-guerrero-2005-custody-battle/
13. "The Tragic Life Of Eddie Guerrero" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1005497/the-tragic-life-of-eddie-guerrero/
14. "A Way Out: On Addiction, Redemption, and Eddie Guerrero Winning the WWE Championship" — Bodyslam.net. https://www.bodyslam.net/2023/02/15/a-way-out-on-addiction-redemption-and-eddie-guerrero-winning-the-wwe-championship/
15. "Randy Orton Admits He Was Uncomfortable Using Eddie Guerrero's Death As A Plot Device In 2006" — Fightful. https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/randy-orton-admits-he-was-uncomfortable-using-eddie-guerrero-s-death-plot-device-2006/
16. "WWE Star Rey Mysterio Details Friendship With Eddie Guerrero 20 Years After His Death" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/2026208/wwe-rey-mysterio-eddie-guerrero-20-years-after-death/
17. "(Almost) 5-Star Match Reviews: Eddy Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio - WCW Halloween Havoc 1997" by Alex Podgorski — TJR Wrestling. https://tjrwrestling.net/feature/almost-5-star-match-reviews-eddy-guerrero-vs-rey-mysterio-wcw-halloween-havoc-1997-by-alex-podgorski/
18. "(Almost) 5-Star Match Reviews: Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero - WWE SummerSlam 2005" — TJR Wrestling. https://tjrwrestling.net/feature/5-star-wwe-summerslam-2005-rey-eddie/
19. "WWE: Rey Mysterio pays tribute to Eddie Guerrero during Hall of Fame speech" — GiveMeSport. https://www.givemesport.com/wwe-rey-mysterio-pays-tribute-to-eddie-guerrero-during-hall-of-fame-speech/
20. "Celebrating Eddie Guerrero" — WWE.com (Raw, November 14, 2005 recap). https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/archive/11142005/mainarticle

Further Listening

• WWE Hall of Fame 2023 — Rey Mysterio's induction speech, closing with a tribute to Eddie Guerrero
• Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story (Eddie Guerrero's autobiography) — his own account of addiction, redemption, and his relationship with Rey Mysterio
• Rey Mysterio's autobiography and later podcast interviews reflecting on the 2005 custody storyline and Eddie's death