Former WWE Champion Eddie Guerrero passed away 13 years ago today.
In this flashback article, we take a look at an old conversation between Chavo Guerrero & Chris Jericho, where Chavo gave details on Eddie’s death.
You can read their conversation below:
Jericho: It’s like you said – he had so many issues over the years with alcohol and with pills and stuff and you know I was in the dressing room when they carted him out and took him straight to rehab in Minneapolis when I fell asleep but finally he had gotten over that at least as far as I knew. I mean he seemed like he was pretty legit clean and sober.
Chavo: Four years sober.
Jericho: And then he passed away from enlarged heart.
Chavo: Heart failure at 38 years old.
Jericho: Do you think that’s because of all the drugs that caught up to him?
Chavo: Absolutely. They say you know because of the…you’ve seen it time and time again in this business. The worst drugs and I don’t care what they are, it’s not steroids, it’s not alcohol, it’s not cocaine, it’s not marijuana – the worst things are the pills.
Everybody that we know they’ve died has been from those pills. It’s a quick release, we’re hurt and it’s easy for us to justify using that because if anybody needs them, we need them.
We need Vicodin, we need this but then it’s so easy to start abusing that stuff and that’s where you know that was Eddie’s vice.
So you know, he fought every day to stay off those, he really did. But they say with vicodins and somas and all that stuff was that it gives a lot of scar tissue on your heart because you abuse them so much and we’ve seen it with Umaga and so many different people who died from heart failure and heart troubles because of pills.
So that’s kind of what happened to him and story really he and I were flying to Minneapolis. We’re all home and this is the first day of the tour and we’re going to Europe.
Jericho: Was it a PPV?
Chavo: No, it was a dual show like SmackDown and RAW, doing both shows in Minneapolis and then we’re gonna go straight to Europe. So everybody was there.
So I get in the plane and Eddie had already moved to Phoenix. So I get on the plane and I’m in coach and he’s in first class. The doors getting ready to close and I see Eddie, he was always the last one, he’s on Mexican time always and I say that with all due respect.
So he runs on the plane and I’m right before the doors closed and he gets on and I go “hey!” and he goes “hey what’s up, man?”
I didn’t know he’s gonna be on this plane so he gives up his first-class seat and comes back with me. So we hung out and stayed together. It was like just a treat to sit next to each other and we’re on different shows at the time so we didn’t see each other all that much.
So we sat next to each other and we’re watching a movie and he looks at me and he’s talking and stuff and he kind of nods off as he’s talking and i say ah man he’s really tired and then he kind of wakes up like “oh hey” and we watched the movie together. I didn’t think anything of it.
We get to Minneapolis and we’re gonna check in at like the Marriott by the airport or the Target Center, everybody was staying there.
So we go there and you know it was like we used to room together all the time and we said hey you know we’ll just get our own rooms. Okay, no problem. So we’re checking in and as we’re there we see Michael Hayes. Michael Hayes comes up to us and he’s not Michael Hayes anymore, he’s a Freebird, he’s been drinking, hanging out and he kind of mad dogs Eddie and I didn’t really notice it – stared him down – and after Michael leaves and goes back to the bar, Eddie stops and looks at me and goes “Did you see what that mofo did? He’d he staring at me”.
Eddie’s pi$$ed. I said alright what do you wanna do? Beat him up? Coz we were just you know if he’s gonna fight I’m gonna fight and vice-versa. So he’s like “No, I’ll give him a pass”. So we literally gave a pass. So the night before Eddie died really I mean, Michael Hayes didn’t know how close he was to getting beat up. Literally we were gonna go in there and drag him up and beat him up.
So we said “Hey man, why don’t we go work out in the morning” and just as we got there we see Chris Benoit and Benoit goes “Hey man, what’s up guys”. “Hey, we’re going to bed but we’re going to train at 8 am”.
So I go to my room, Eddie goes to his room. I get a call from Eddie on my cellphone. He goes “Hey man, can I talk to you?” I say “Yeah, what’s going on, man?” He goes “I just really, I gotta talk to you”. I said “Okay, hold on. Let me run downstairs real quick, let me take care of stuff downstairs.” I don’t know if I was getting an extra key to whatever I was doing.
So I went downstairs and then I call Eddie codes room you know 5-8 minutes later and I go “hey man, you want to talk?” He goes “No, I’m okay. I’m cool” and I said “Are you sure? Let’s talk!” He goes “Nah, I’m cool man, I’m okay”. I said “Alright man, I’ll see you in the morning we’ll work out”. I think I had a beer then went to bed, I was gonna wake up and go work out at 7 am.
I got a call from one of security guards in the hotel. He says “Chavo, hey this is security in the hotel”. I’m like “Alright, why you calling me?” Guard says “Because your Uncle’s passed out in the bathroom.” I’m think the bathroom, we had just talked on the plane that Eddie was sober for 4 years.
So I was like “passed out, did he have a relapse?” I say I’ll go right down and security guard goes “No, I’ll come to your room”. So he comes up to my room and he comes gets me and I’m still half out of it. We got in late last night so I’m coming down and he takes me to Eddie’s room.
I guess he explained to me that Eddie had missed a couple of wake-up calls. So they went to knock on his door and the latch was on his door. So whenever that happens and there’s no answer, they cut the latch off. So as I open up, the latch is already cut off and I walk in and I see Eddie facedown in the bathroom. He’s face-down and I looked at him kind of like still thinking wait a minute and I’d seen Eddie passed out from drinking or pills or whatever was you know 20 times in my life. But ofcourse this was years and years before.
So I looked at him like anybody else. If I would have seen just any random person like “you’re passed out, what the heck” you know, let me get him up.
So I see Eddie’s down I’m like okay, let me access this issue. So I put my hand by his nose and there’s no breath, but I hear a couple of gurgling noises and then like I’m still feeling him, he’s warm. This isn’t right so I just pull him up. So I talked to the security guard and we pull him out and turn him around. So as soon as I see his face when we turned him around I start panicking…”this really isn’t right, call 9-1-1 now” and so they’re calling 9-1-1 and we’re giving the mouth-to-mouth, CPR and I’m freaking out. I’m yelling at him going “Eddie, stay with me stay with me. Come on Eddie!”
Jericho: Basically he was still alive?
Chavo: He was still alive because he was warm. Then I saw him go from warm to cold. He died right there. Right there.
Jericho: Wow…
Chavo: Ambulance came, they’re giving CPR and everything and they’re just like he’s gone and I was like what if I would have got here an hour before and usually we room together, but we didn’t room together (this time).
They’re like no. They said he had seen something already he would have been gone no matter what. I’m like what?
So now I’m sitting here with my brother dying basically in my arms. I was in shock. I had to go back to my room and call people. I didn’t know who to call.
Jericho: Who did you call?
Chavo: I think I called home. I’m freaking out so I called Fit Finley. Fit was an agent. So I want him to get the word to what’s going on and tell Vince (McMahon) and everybody, I don’t have Vince’s cellphone.
So Pete goes around and makes some calls and all of a sudden I’m in my hotel room just sitting on the bed like what the heck just happened?
Then I get a call from Chris Benoit. He goes “Hey, where are you? I’m downstairs. We’re supposed to meet at 8 o’clock to go work out and eat breakfast.” And I’m like “Chris sit down” and I told Chris and Chris was like I never heard somebody whale like this deep, deep mourn like I just punched him in the stomach and stole his soul. That’s what it felt like. He was yelling and screaming and just deep, deep, deep, deep “no, no, no!”.
From there I had to go back to the room and then Vince McMahon, Triple H & Shawn Michaels came over. Vince is asking what to do? Do we go on with the show? I was like absolutely go on with the show, you don’t cancel the show. I was like yeah you go on with the show, that’s what Eddie would have wanted to do. He wouldn’t want that everybody here and Eddie knew… we’re always taught that you always have to give the people their money’s worth no matter what. They’re there to see you. In this economy they don’t have a lot of money and they’re choosing to spend it on you – it’s your obligation to give them their money’s worth. It really, really is.
So I looked at Vince and said “if you would cancel the show then he’d be pi$$ed, that’s not what he wanted”.
So they went ahead and made a tribute show, I mean completely rewritten.
Jericho: Did you have to go to Europe?
Chavo: So we did that show and they said “Chavo, you can go home” and I said “no, I wanna wrestle”. I was able to wrestle JBL.
Jericho: Another great friend of Eddie (JBL).
Chavo: Yeah, that was just a great moment, but that night who stayed behind from the tour was just me, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio and Dean Malenko. Let’s all stay behind and take care of some stuff.
