Of Facism: Eddie Guerrero

And sorry for all the critical questions.

Austin was certainly the modern prototype for the anti-hero face (of course, faces have always cheated, for example, Hogan cheated LOTS during his big WWF run, but it was never emphasized).

2004 was a good year for the WWE in the sense that the best workers were consistently given massive pushes, which hadn't happened since 2000. In general, the best workers tend to rise to the top, and fans may start cheering them because they're involved in the best matches (heel Flair consistently got face pops from certain crowds in the 80's).

In 2002-3 the best workers were certainly NOT the guys at the top, which made it that much more obvious how good the Smackdown Six were (Eddie, Chavo, Edge, Rey, Angle, Benoit) compared to the guys they were supposed to be paying to see in the main events (i.e. Show, Nash, Steiner, et al all getting big pushes and multiple PPV main events). Witness the three-way Survivor Series match with those six, in which the crowd booed when Benoit and Angle were eliminated even though both were heels at the time.

So like Austin before him, Eddie became a face because he was awesome in the ring (which the fans were quick to recognize), had a fantastic cocky heel persona which he played perfectly.

The other point is that Austin and Eddie are both playing (and, indeed, are) characters from traditionally villified groups within the USA (rednecks and Hispanics), thus perhaps to make them palatable for mainstream audiences, they have to retain something of that "edge".

His Latino Heat (circa Chyna) was pretty popular, 'cause he'd be all suave and shit. As for the main event rise, I think the whole underdog comeback-from-tragedy thing gave his character a new dimension. As opposed to Benoit who was cast as a persevering hard worker who never caught a break, Eddie was more of the flawed man who made terrible decisions and who by all rights should be dead right now. It balanced his cartoonish side (the excessively innovating cheating and the Latino Heat character) with a real-life "I've been through hell and still fighting every day, seeking redemption for my past mistakes and to stay alive" edge.

I don't like the "I've been through hell". Partly because I think that drug addiction shouldn't be part of a wrestling angle. But with the WWE, it's also upsetting that drugs and overcoming a rough upbringing is only treated as character development with visible minority wrestlers like Shelton Benjamin, Booker T, and Eddie. We never heard a word about Austin's drinking problem, or Regal's drug addiction, or the drug problems of several other white wrestlers.

I don't like the "I've been through hell" *edge*.

Yeah, I never thought about the race aspect of those angles. But then again, remember the classy angle in WCW where Scott Hall was drunk all the time?

I understand (though I never saw) that the rise through adversity was a classy move after a lot of earlier racist gimmickry.

You can't talk about the rise without talking about Kurt Angle, though. His psychotic Eddie-fixated shenanigans gave a great contrast to Eddie's hard working (cheating) man schtick. And I loved the sneaky political commentary of "I know you are going to dishonor this belt, so as America is my witness, I will find ways to stop you before you get the opportunity to prove me right".

The finish to their WrestleMania match has to be one of the coolest ever and makes me very happy. For those who missed it, Eddie unlaced his boot while Angle was making his way back into the ring. When Kurt went hooked on the Anklelock, the boot came off. Surprised, Angle charged Eddie who rolled him up for the victory.

angle got his revenge though when the boot came off again and this time he got the ankle lock on on the bare, unprotected by boot ankle of eddie and he had to tap out!!

Why aren't there more in-ring storytelling like this, referencing past matches?

For such continuity to work, you need a) to be referencing a great match (so that the fans will remember it), and b) the announcers to do their job in selling it by referencing the previous match, so that fans are trained to look for the continuity. With the great improvements in WWE match quality over the last couple of years, a) is less of a problem, but the commentators consistently forget to do b).

The continuity in big matches is incredible in the Japanese feds, in large part because big singles matches (and title matches) are so rare. Fans remember the storylines of these big matches because they don't happen too often.

ROH does that whole past-match referral schtick, lots of stuff like moves that worked in previous matches being countered this time round, problem being that in a three minute TV match you have precious little time to tell a story, usually "big guy beats up smaller guy" is as deep as it can get.