Jim Ross Recalls His Reaction To Eddie Guerrero’s Passing, WWE Using It In Story

[Liz]

In a recent edition of Grilling JR, Jim Ross discussed his reaction to Eddie Guerrero's passing in 2005, Eddie's legacy, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Jim Ross on his reaction to Eddie Guerrero's passing in 2005: "I'm not so sure Bruce [Prichard] didn't break that news to me. Bruce and I were working together, and when you look back at when we started working together, it was 30 years. I think maybe Bruce told me. That surgery [I had] was rough, but it wasn't nearly as rough as getting that news. I'd go through another surgery if I didn't have to hear that. It was just heartbreaking. 38 years old, Conrad. My god. It was hearbreaking. There's no other way to describe it. You just wonder why things end the way they end sometimes, and sometimes there are no answers. That's what's tough, you don't know the answer. That's another thing that helped changed things there in WWE is guys getting full physicals, blood work, and all these things to make sure the heart is good. In some of the tragedies, and they were tragedies, some good came out of it because of testing. Eddie looked great, was feeling good, had no problems that I'm aware of. As I said, if they were, I would've heard about them. It caught up with him."

On Eddie's legacy: "I prefer to think of Eddie's legacy as Eddie Guerrero became the biggest undersized star in the history of wrestling. We're talking 5-8. The fans go back and YouTube the Lesnar match with Eddie from the Cow Palace, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. He had so many memorable outings. You could say, who did Eddie wrestle that he wasn't smaller than? I can't think of anybody significant off the top of my head. I prefer to remember him as the great talent that he was, and he could have great matches with virtually anybody."

On WWE using Eddie's passing in storylines: "It was the shits. As my granny would say, even worse, it's the drizzling shits. I didn't like that, and I thought it lacked creativity. There were a lot of ways you could use this whole matter. Make it about Rey [Mysterio] and not about Eddie, but that's not how it went down. I wasn't comfortable with that personally."