WWE: Viva La Raza - The Legacy of Eddie Guerrero

Introduction

When the news came of the death of Eddie Guerrero a little over three years ago, it hit harder than usual in an industry which had become frighteningly used to it. Between 1997 and 2007, 104 wrestlers (of various levels of fame) passed away, and aside from the torrid Chris Benoit murder-suicide tale, none came as more of a shock.

Guerrero was born into a wrestling family, and wanted to follow in those footsteps from the moment he was capable of considering his options. He wrestled extensively in the USA, Mexico, and Japan, but was considered too small for the big-league WWE and WCW, until he, Benoit, and Dean Malenko - at the time, all regulars for New Japan Pro Wrestling - competed in the original ECW promotion.

Seeing that success, WCW brought the three into their organisation, where they continued to impress with their spectacular performances. But the WCW experience was a tough one on Guerrero in particular, who found the success difficult to deal with. He slipped into drug and alcohol dependency, and in 1999, was involved in a car accident that almost cost him his life.

Having recovered as well as could be expected, Guerrero joined Malenko and Benoit once again, as they left WCW for the WWF (now WWE). It was the pinnacle of Guerrero's career, but he had not yet defeated his demons, and was fired from the company in 2001. He would return a year later after proving his sobriety on the independent circuit.

2004 was a landmark year for Guerrero, and also for best friend Benoit. At No Way Out, he defeated Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship, and then defended it against Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania. On that same Wrestlemania night, Benoit defeated Triple-H and Shawn Michaels in a Triple Threat match, after which Guerrero joined him in the ring for the most emotional of celebrations.

But it was only 15 months later that Guerrero was dead, a victim of a heart attack after years of recreational drug and steroid abuse. He had been scheduled to recapture the WWE Title just a few days later, but he was pronounced dead in his hotel room on November 13.


"Viva La Raza: The Legacy of Eddie Guerrero" is a four-disc look, then, at one of the greatest wrestling performers of the last twenty years. Containing many matches as well as comments from his peers, a bonus fourth disc contains the WWE TV tributes to the man himself.

Video

Video is presented in 4:3 fullscreen PAL, and is excellent for a DVD of this genre. The bouts here come from various sources, including the early days of ECW, which means that those particular bouts (Guerrero vs 2 Cold Scorpio, Dean Malenko) don't have anywhere near the professional look of the bouts from WCW and WWE.

There are some censorship issues with the WWE "scratch" logo, which is blurred out on several matches, due to legal issues with the World Wildlife Fund.

Audio

Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and is also very good. Throughout all of the interview footage and wrestling bouts, the various sounds (background music, speech, in-ring action) can all be heard clearly alongside the other.

For international viewers, there are further 2.0 tracks available in French and German.

Extras

With most of the footage here a part of the main feature, the named extras are quite brief on Discs 1-3. There are, however, some hilarious "Los Guerreros" vignettes with Eddie and nephew Chavo, which play up to their motto of "Lie, Cheat, and Steal".

There's also a short story of how Chris Jericho met Guerrero while working in Mexico, as well as Guerrero's final match, a bout with Mr Kennedy from the Smackdown television show.

Disc Four is limited to the UK market, and the BestBuy chain in the USA. It features the tribute shows of Raw and Smackdown, in the week following Guerrero's death. These are incredibly moving in some instances, but the most moving testimony of all, that of Chris Benoit, has been edited from this release as the company still deals with the fallout from his own death in June 2007.

Main feature & conclusion

With 26 matches available across three discs here, it would be tempting to say that "Viva La Raza" is the subject of quantity over quality. But that fact is that throughout, there's plenty of quality as well.

Ironically - considering that this is a WWE release - the best matches here come from Guerrero's pre-WWE days. At the time, his bouts with 2 Cold Scorpio and Dean Malenko in ECW were groundbreaking for fans who had only ever watched North American wrestling, and watching them again now, there's still a magic in seeing the appreciation of the ECW crowd to these excellent matches.

Things only improve with the transition to WCW, where the bouts with Rey Mysterio, Ultimo Dragon, and in particular, Chris Jericho are stunning here. With the lack of complete WCW events available on DVD, many of these classics have been forgotten, so it's quite the pleasure to have them compiled on this release.

That's not to belittle the WWE bouts, which have their moments too, especially since it was during those last two years of Guerrero's life that he came upon the look and persona by which we all remember him. There are fine TV bouts here with Matt and Jeff Hardy, and Edge, although unquestionably the most impressive of the WWE bouts are those against Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle.

If there is a complaint to be made here, one might be the complete omission of Chris Benoit throughout the set. It's perfectly understandable given the circumstances, of course, but given that Guerrero's career was inextricably linked to Benoit's, it feels like this set is incomplete. To make no mention of the Wrestlemania XX in-ring victory celebration is to ignore not only one of the most memorable moments in modern WWE history, but something that meant a great deal to Guerrero himself.

That said, however, there is more than enough quality material here to keep any wrestling fan occupied for a long time. In fact, this is a set that many will revisit over and over again.