Season 2 of the pro wrestling series Dark Side of the Ring premiered on Vice TV in March, and the first two episodes told the story of Chris Benoit, who died by suicide after killing his wife and son. One of the things that stands out in the episode is the death of fellow pro wrestler Eddie Guerrero, who was good friends with Benoit. Guerrero’s nephew, Chavo, was interviewed on Dark Side of the Ring and told the story of how he found Eddie’s body.
“I walk in, I look in the bathroom,” Chavo said when looking for Eddie in his hotel room after not responding to his wake up call. “I see Eddie face down. He’s in his underwear. His toothbrush was in his hand. He’s in my arms and he’s not there anymore. Then I get a call from Chris (Benoit). And Chris goes ‘Hey Man, I’m downstairs. Where are you?’”
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Chavo continues: “‘Hey man, are you sitting down?’ He goes ‘yeah.’ And I go ‘Eddie passed away this morning.’ And all you hear is, from a guy with no emotion whatsoever, you hear a wail. Just this wail, from deep down, like a heartbreak. If you’ve ever heard one, this was a heart breaking.” It was revealed that Eddie died from an enlarged heart at the age of 38. In a past interview between Chavo and Chris Jericho, Chavo revealed that the drugs Eddie used caught up to him.
“They say you know because of the…you’ve seen it time and time again in this business,” he said, per WWF Old School. “The worst drugs and I don’t care what they are, it’s not steroids, it’s not alcohol, it’s not cocaine, it’s not marijuana – the worst things are the pills. Everybody that we know they’ve died has been from those pills. It’s a quick release, we’re hurt and it’s easy for us to justify using that because if anybody needs them, we need them. We need Vicodin, we need this but then it’s so easy to start abusing that stuff and that’s where you know that was Eddie’s vice.
“So you know, he fought every day to stay off those, he really did. But they say with vicodins and somas and all that stuff was that it gives a lot of scar tissue on your heart because you abuse them so much and we’ve seen it with Umaga and so many different people who died from heart failure and heart troubles because of pills.”
