WWE Hall of Famer JBL recently appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, where he recalled generating so much heat during his 2004 feud with Eddie Guerrero that police escorted him out of El Paso, Texas, and warned him not to return.
The infamous angle took place at a WWE live event in El Paso over Mother’s Day weekend. Guerrero was honoring his late father, Gory Guerrero, and presenting flowers to his mother, Herlinda, when JBL interrupted. According to JBL, the idea for Herlinda to suffer a storyline heart attack actually came from the Guerrero family.
“The whole thing with Chavo, Chavo Senior came up. I don’t know if it’s Chavo Senior or Eddie came up with the idea of his mother having a heart attack in El Paso, but it was a great story because we’re backstage and we’re not selling any tickets at Staples Center. People aren’t buying me yet.”
JBL recalled discussing the angle backstage with Eddie and his older brother, Chavo Guerrero Sr. “It’s just me, Chavo Senior, Eddie’s brother, not his nephew, and Eddie. And they tell us this idea. We’re in El Paso on Mother’s Day weekend. We’re going to honor our father, Gory Guerrero, and it’s Mother’s Day. We’re going to give mom some flowers. We want you to give mom a heart attack.”
According to JBL, Chavo Sr. jokingly suggested that he should physically attack Herlinda, which immediately drew objections from Eddie. “Chavo goes, then you can get like a little heat on mom. But he’s only saying that to stir up Eddie, and Eddie goes, Chavo, I’ve told you, he’s not going to touch mom. Mom’s 70-something years old.”
JBL said Chavo continued suggesting increasingly outrageous ideas, including a clothesline, a boot and even having Herlinda bleed, while Eddie repeatedly made it clear that none of it was happening.
When the angle actually took place, JBL carefully helped Herlinda to the floor while making it appear as though he was manhandling her. “When Eddie’s mom went down, what happened was I grabbed her like that, and what I did was I was allowing her to grab my hand and go down. It looked like I was manhandling her, but I was allowing her. I’m gonna take care of her.”
JBL joked that his biggest concern wasn’t the thousands of furious fans in attendance, but the Guerrero family waiting backstage. “I’ve got Eddie Guerrero and every brother in the world backstage. I’m not worried about these 10,000 fans. Guerrero brothers, I was worried about.”
He also praised Herlinda’s performance in the angle. “I remember sitting there and thinking, there’s not a Guerrero that can’t work. She looked like she had a heart attack.” According to JBL, the atmosphere inside the arena initially became completely silent before the crowd’s anger began to build. “I’ve got her down, and the whole place was kind of heat. And all of a sudden the place just gets silent. You could have heard a pin drop in the building.”
With police sensing that the situation could become dangerous, JBL said officers rushed him backstage once the necessary footage had been captured. “We had cops going, John, you’ve got to. Because you could feel the place was about to riot. And we got to get it on camera. There’s no reason to do it if you don’t get it on camera.”
JBL recalled fans beginning to move toward the barricade as police hurried him out of the building. “They got me to the back, and the place is literally, you could feel it bubbling. By now they’re starting to get loud, and they’re getting ready to come over the rail. And these cops are trying to get me out of the building.”
The situation became serious enough that officers escorted JBL all the way to the El Paso city limits. “They took me to the city limit sign, and they said, ‘Do not come back. We think you will be killed.’”
JBL was told to continue driving to Odessa, Texas, where he was already scheduled to travel to catch a flight. The heat from the angle apparently lasted well beyond that night, as JBL claimed WWE was still reluctant to book him in El Paso two years later. “Two years later, we worked there, and they wouldn’t book me there. They thought I’d be killed. They thought something would happen to me. I had that much heat.”
The angle became part of JBL’s transformation into one of WWE’s top heels. He went on to defeat Guerrero for the WWE Championship in a Texas Bullrope Match at The Great American Bash on June 27, 2004.
Despite their heated on-screen rivalry, JBL and Guerrero were close friends away from wrestling. “Eddie loved the JBL character,” JBL said. “He was a groomsman in my wedding. Ron was my best man.”
Guerrero passed away in November 2005 at the age of 38.
