10 Superstars WCW Completely Wasted

Eddie Guerrero never thought he would make it in North American professional wrestling. Undersized by the standards of the time, he assumed his career would be spent working in Mexico, where his father Gory was a genuine legend, and Japan, where junior heavyweights were viewed in a much more favourable light.

That's exactly how the first few years of his career went, with Eddie splitting his time between CMLL, AAA and New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he wrestled under a mask as Black Tiger II. A successful tag team run as a member of Los Gringos Locos with Art Barr brought him to the attention of Paul Heyman's ECW, where he debuted in April 1995 (after Barr had unfortunately passed away).

After some strong encouragement by main employer NJPW, Guerrero, along with Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, signed with WCW later that year. They were to be the 'car crash' portion of the show, providing exciting, state-of-the-art wrestling before the 'real' stars like Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage came out to wrestle a routine squash or cut a fifteen-minute promo.

Eddie quickly rose through the ranks, winning the United States and Cruiserweight championships while also turning heel. Gone was the smiling, pandering good guy Guerrero and in his place was the lean and vicious Latino Heat. Eddie had charisma in spades, regularly wrestled absolute barnburners and genuinely wanted to succeed and move up the card in order to provide a better life for him and his family.

But to WCW, he was always 'just a cruiserweight'. He wasn't 6ft5 and didn't weigh 300lbs. As good as Eddie was, as many five-star thrillers as he wrestled, it was clear that he always had a ceiling. Sick and tired with his lack of upward mobility and burnt out on the backstage politics, Eddie (and Benoit, Malenko and Perry Saturn) left WCW in January 2000 to go to the WWF.

The grass was far greener in this instance.