10 Sweetest Examples Of WWE Payback
7. The Latino Volcano
“To survive a war, you gotta become war.” - Rambo: First Blood Part II
But there’s more JBL where that came from. Given an opportunity for Eddie Guerrero’s WWE Championship by heel general manager Kurt Angle in mid-2004, the big lug began trying to get into the champ’s head, interfering in his matches and cutting a racist promo on his family.
All that was bad enough - but after a month of mind games, the audience were informed on the May 6th edition of Smackdown that JBL had grabbed Guerrero’s mother and threatened her, causing her to have a heart attack. The following week, Guerrero was arrested for smashing the window of JBL’s limo, while JBL cleaned Rey Mysterio’s clock in the ring to send a message. The stage was set for a serious grudge match at Judgement Day that Sunday.
The match itself is usually remembered due to the horrific blade job that Eddie inflicted on himself. The match was intended to be a gorefest - however, Eddie hit an artery and lost far too much blood, so much so that it took a fortnight for him to fully recover.
But the story of the match was the champion’s revenge, and the blood definitely sold it. Eddie, dripping with claret, retained the title by disqualification after hitting JBL with the WWE Championship belt, and in the post-match angle, continued to beat the challenger down, despite the blood loss.
Over five additional minutes, Guerrero, every inch of his face a vivid scarlet, blasted JBL with another title belt shot and with chairs, opening up the bigger man in turn. Even as JBL tried to escape backstage, Guerrero followed him up the aisle to complete the beating, having to be dragged off him by three people to return to the ring, barely able to stay upright, but still able to hold the WWE Championship aloft.
Later in 2004, Eddie would rely on his real life friend to take the title from him when the pressure of being the WWE Champion became too much to bear. But for that one night, Latino Heat was a merciless, fighting champion who didn’t take !*$% from anyone.