(Click here for Part One of this review)

Jim Ross talks about what a great move it was for WCW to sign Eddie, and how happy he was that Eddie got a major league move, even if JR was working for the WWF at the time. He puts over the smaller guys as adding an element to WCW during the Monday Night Wars that really doesn’t get the credit it deserves, even from people who were in WCW at the time. JR then talks about WCW working with New Japan Pro Wrestling to get some new faces in for Starrcade 1995.

This leads to Eddie’s match from the aforementioned PPV, against Shinjiro Ootani. They work this like a New Japan juniors match, slow and on the mat to start with, exploding with some big spots and building to a clean finish. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if whoever booked New Japan at the time had a hand in booking this match, either that or the guys, with Eddie having worked in New Japan before, just knowing what would work. I’d forgotten just how much Tony Schiavone used to mark out for Eddie on commentary.

For him and Ric Flair, even in the days when Schiavone became crap and didn’t give a shit, he’d always put those two over, and here, even though Eddie is a newcomer to the company, he has no problems essentially going on camera and saying Eddie’s the best wrestler in the world. Dusty and Heenan, amongst the entertaining bickering, do the same. It’s a testament to how good they are as workers that Ootani has this really bland look yet with his athleticism, particularly his leaping ability on a dive and a standing dropkick, the crowd responds to him. From an in-ring perspective, from an athleticism perspective, this match was sensational. Eddie had better matches in his career once he managed to allay his natural charisma into the way he worked, and once he had stronger storylines to play off, but from a purely “execution of moves” point of view this may have been as good as he ever was.

Ric Flair then talks about meeting Eddie when he was just a young kid as he wrestled with Eddie’s father, and then talks about the history of the US title leading us to our next match.

At Hog Wild 1996, the biker PPV from WCW that was a year later renamed Road Wild for reasons I don’t remember, Eddie got to wrestle Ric Flair, who was accompanied by Woman and Elizabeth. Shit, four people involved in this match and only Ric Flair is still alive, that’s fucked up. I know it’s an Eddie DVD, but while watching the match something really fucking annoyed me to no end that I just had to mention it. Elizabeth. Fuck sake, she had been in the business for a decade by this point, in her role as woman standing at ringside. She’d worked for years with Randy Savage, with Hulk Hogan, with Ric Flair, with Sherri Martel, with Jake Roberts. How can she be so clueless as to what she’s meant to do? She stood with this blank look on her face for 20 minutes, raising her arms in a half-hearted cheer when Flair was on top but doing NOTHING else. I mean shit, Nancy had to basically grab her and move her when it was time for her to move, had to go up to her and tell her to yell support when Flair had Eddie down, and Elizabeth still didn’t catch on.

When Eddie was on top, Nancy reacted outside, cowering when Eddie would punch Flair and gloating as Flair dominated, while Elizabeth did nothing. You watch this and it’s like “what the hell are you even doing out there?” As for Flair and Eddie, it was a great inclusion to the DVD set to see Eddie play the fired up underdog inexperienced babyface role, which is really the only time I can remember him doing it, as there aren’t that many Ric Flair’s around, especially not in WCW in the mid-late 90s who would be willing to work with the younger talent. The thing that stood out here, strangely enough, is Eddie’s punches. I’d forgotten just how awesome they were, and he didn’t really do them too much in the previous matches on this set, but he had great fast small-guy punches like Shawn Michaels does and when he unloads a few on Flair here they’re so great that you sit up and go “oh yeah, Eddie used to do those, they RULED!” The finish saw Eddie injure his knee going for a frogsplash – a classic ‘protect the young babyface’ finish – allowing Flair to lock in the figure four and grab hold of Woman’s (what, you didn’t think lazy zombie do-nothing Elizabeth would’ve got involved do you) arms for leverage allowing him to get the pin.

Chris Jericho then shares his memories of Eddie, saying them teaming together in WCW only 6 or 7 times is something they both talked about as a missed opportunity, and they were the greatest tag team that ‘never existed.’ I remember seeing them team together, and the comparison Jericho makes to The Hollywood Blondes team of Steve Austin and Brian Pillman is more than appropriate, they really were an updated version of that team. He then talks about knowing Eddie personally, and how they’d argue over every little thing but still be best friends after.

This leads to the Guerrero v. Jericho match at WCW SuperBrawl 1997, which Jericho talks about as one of the most frustrating of their career. The reason for the frustration is clear, as they have this kickass match where they’re going out there and busting their ass to put on the best show possible for the crowd, but it’s perhaps the quietest crowd I’ve ever heard in my life. I mean you could hear random conversations amongst the crowd on TV as the match was going on, it was THAT quiet. And it’s a shame because Jericho and Guerrero kept it in the ring and kept trying to drag the crowd into this really nice match they were having, but when WCW did nothing with them, nothing to showcase their talent or make people care about them as personalities, they’re just throwing guys out there and saying “have a match” – it’s going to mean nothing because without the story there’s no emotion and no drama, nothing for the crowd to connect to. For both these guys, that would soon change and in the cases of both guys all it would take is a heel turn and some TV time and suddenly these great personalities came through and the great wrestling talent that people knew they had got the chance to shine.

Rey Mysterio is shown, and he puts over strongly his match with Eddie at Halloween Havoc 1997, saying it’s a match he wouldn’t have been able to have with anyone else because nobody else would’ve trusted him to come up with the amazing spots used that night, and hit every single one of them perfectly. It really was a masterpiece of a match, probably the best in the history of WCW, and although it’s not included here due to WWE’s new policy of trying not to repeat matches across multiple DVDs, that policy was not in place for the first Eddie DVD or the two Rey DVDs so you can find it on there and it’s well worth seeking out. In fact, on the previous Eddie DVD they actually have Eddie and Rey do alternate commentary (with Michael Cole but that can be forgiven I guess) and it’s awesome.

Rey also makes a rather telling statement about Eddie’s drive for perfection, saying that they could have an awesome match, they could get backstage and have everyone tell them how great it was, but Eddie would still be picking holes in what he did and thinking about how he could do things better.

The Eddie/Rey match shown here is from Nitro on November 10th 1997, and it’s the rematch from Halloween Havoc, where Eddie wins the Cruiserweight title back from Rey. It’s the first match on the DVD where Eddie is in full-on sleazy heel mode, complete with this amazing arrogant sneer at the crowd as he walks down the aisle, and playing up to the ‘Eddie Sucks’ chants, which are as loud as can be already. Even after all the other lightweight wrestlers Eddie took on earlier on the DVD, you still get a sense that Rey is special, that he’s going another gear or two up from everyone else, and Eddie is right there with him. The pace means they have some very minor timing issues on a few spots, which may be one of those imperfections Rey is taking about when he said Eddie would stress out over minor moments in an otherwise great match. The finish is my favourite so far, as Rey goes for his springboard huracanrana, but Eddie catches him and drops him backwards, snapping his neck on the top rope, and then winning with the frogsplash.

Malenko is back to talk about how it was great that WCW let he and Eddie have same kind of matches they had against each other in ECW, and calls Eddie his greatest opponent.

Dean Malenko v. Eddie Guerrero from Starrcade 1997 is a match I was very interested in seeing once I heard it was going on this set. Dave Meltzer recently talked about this match as it’s also being included on the best of Starrcade DVD, basically saying that the people voting for the match must have done so without seeing it, implying that it’s a bad match people assumed must be great because of the people involved. Having now seen it, I definitely don’t agree with that. OK yes it was different to their matches from ECW, they worked a slower pace and Eddie was much more into getting his character stuff over (this is the first match on the set where he goes for his famous insincere on-knees handshake only to get dropkicked in the face that became a trademark spot for him in his WCW days), and they dragged things out for time with lots of stalling and a fair bit of resting selling double knockdowns after spots, the fact is that’s what WCW would’ve wanted at the time.

The dead spots gave the announcers time to talk about who the referee would be for Sting/Hogan or why Kevin Nash didn’t come to the building and other such angles that would pay off later, without detracting from the action like it would’ve done had they gone non-stop and a million miles an hour. I really liked the finish, as Malenko injured his knee, so Eddie took him out with a top rope dropkick to the knee. OK, read that again. Top rope dropkick to the knee. Sounds contrived and awkward looking, doesn’t it? When it’s Eddie Guerrero doing it, it looked like the most natural move in the world, something he could’ve done all day every day. Little moments like that show the genius of the man.

Chavo talks about how he and Eddie grew up around wrestling, and therefore Eddie was able to master several different styles. He puts over Ultimo Dragon as a great worker, talking about his fast kicks in particular.

Then we see one of the most entertaining post-nWo gimmicks in WCW, as Eddie Guerrero took on Ultimo Dragon at Slamboree 1998. Eddie was accompanied in this match by Chavo Guerrero, wearing a t-shirt that said on the front “Eddie Guerrero is my Favourite Wrestler” and on the back “Cheat to Win.” I so wanted one of those bad boys back in 1998, but I’m not even sure WCW ever sold them, and if they did, their marketing department hadn’t even heard of Europe so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Dragon showed just how great he was in WCW, and Eddie is able to adapt his style and some of his stuff in amongst Dragon’s kicks and submissions, a moveset that did great things for him in WCW as he stood out amongst all the other masked guys who concentrated on highflying.

Dragon could fly, I mean the Asai moonsault is named after him, but he pulled it out for a highspot here or there not as the basis of everything he did. Eddie pulled out a nifty counter to one of his karate kicks by doing a forward roll to avoid it, then springing up and hitting a dropkick. The ending saw more furthering of Chavo’s frustration at having to cheat like Eddie, as Eddie used the ropes to counter a Dragon Sleeper and lock on one of his own, then used the ropes for leverage, but Chavo knocked them off the apron. They got into a confrontation, but Eddie moved and Dragon kicked Chavo off the apron, allowing Eddie to hit the brainbuster and frogsplash to win. This was a great match that showed off an underappreciated and often-forgotten talent in Ultimo, and furthering Eddie and Chavo’s master/servant storyline at the time as Chavo flipped out after, but still refused to punch Eddie and turn. I suspect Phil Lowe might have loved this angle, given firstly that it’s Eddie and he rules, and secondly because it’s such an obvious ripoff of Dibiase/Virgil, but using family instead of money for the heels hold over the soon-to-be-babyface.

Chavo tells the story of The Guerreros growing up with a wrestling ring in their backyard, before putting over Juventud Guerrera as one of WCW’s best highfliers, leading to showing their match from the August 3rd 1998 edition of WCW Monday Nitro. It’s strange that they included a four minute Nitro match here, on the surface, but I’m glad they did because it reminds me of a time when we used to get matches of this style and of this quality on free TV every week. Now it happens once a year when Evan Bourne wrestles Rey Mysterio and you remember it for ages afterwards, which might actually be better but it does make you miss seeing those quality matches regularly.

Juvi is so fast in the ring, his big moves are spectacular and he had a charisma that connected to the crowd. He really could’ve been a great young star if he didn’t become a mentalist drunk with an over inflated opinion of himself for years afterwards, and it’s a shame he didn’t because when you watch him here, admittedly with Eddie, Juventud was a tremendously charismatic performer who could definitely have been an absolute godsend for a company like Ring Of Honor over the last five years if he could’ve kept his head straight. I loved this, both for the match quality and the sense of nostalgia from watching Nitro that I got from this match more than any of the other WCW stuff shown here. The ending saw Eddie counter the Juvi Driver with the fastest, snappiest shoulderbreaker I’ve ever seen, a move I don’t think I saw Eddie do before or since, followed by the frogsplash.

Vickie is back to talk about Eddie’s fearlessness in the ring, which was definitely in evidence in the earlier matches here. Then she talks about his New Year’s Eve car accident that could have killed him, and injured him so badly he had to re-learn how to walk. Amazing that from that he was back wrestling less than seven months later, but Vickie says that’s what he wanted, as wrestlers always go nuts when they’re at home with nothing to do.

Then Eddie’s second ever match back is shown, from WCW Thunder on June 24th 1999 against Psicosis. I’m not sure if they’d moved to taping Nitro and Thunder the same night or bi-weekly Thunder tapings by this point, so it may have actually been his first match back even though it would’ve been his second broadcast, as he wrestled on Nitro that week against Juventud Guerrera, doing a storyline where he was pissed off that all the other members of the Latino World Order had deserted him while he was out injured. Eddie did a lot more matwork here, probably because he didn’t want to go right into the balls out flying even with a guy like Psicosis who works that style, so quickly off his accident, and even though he was a tough asskicking heel, they still threw enough spots in there to showcase Eddie’s flying, in particular a huracanrana in midmatch which was snapped off out of nowhere got a huge pop, and of course so did the frogsplash finish. Although thinking back it’s scary how quickly he returned from something so serious, at the time I remember it was just great to see him wrestling again.

If you’re in the UK you can pick up a copy of this DVD today via Silver Vision.

The third and final part of this review will follow tomorrow!

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com