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Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story Book Summary and Study Guide

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This book tells the story of a man, who was given a gift to entertain the world, through the art of sports entertainment. During this, he obtains fame within and upstart company called ECW (extreme championship wrestling), then on to WCW (world championship wrestling), and finally the WWE (world wrestling entertainment). He then nearly loses it all, through a self-destructive lifestyle, is severely humbled by religion, and then is redeemed. He not only comes back into his chosen profession, and like job, is given back everything he lost and more, and ultimately rises to the top of the ranks within sports entertainment.
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The story begins with the birth of Eddie in October of1967, into what is known as Mexico's first family of wrestling, the Guererros, a.k.a. “Los Guererros”. This great wrestling family is led by his father gory Guererro, and contains such legends as Mondo, Chavo sr., Hector and Eddie's nephew Chavo Jr. He gets his start within this family, by doing intermission matches with Chavo, Jr. And the family sees that he has the gift. Of course he struggles with the persona and being in the shadow of his legendary father, but manages to become a success. Despite this, he still feels inadequate due to this issue, and he begins the self-destructive lifestyle of drug and alcohol abuse and more! During his career, he wrestles in Juarez and Tijuana, Mexico up into EMLL & AAA, to japan where many wrestlers go to hone their craft. It is in Japan, where he meets Chris Benoit, breaks into wrestling in the U.S. with ECW to WCW to WWF/E.
As he goes into ECW, he not only re-encounters Chris Benoit, but meets and befriends many other superstars in this business, such as Tajiri, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, and many more. He and Chavo would do well in ECW, but are ultimately easily snared by WCW with false promises. It is during this time that he meets and marries the love of his life, Vickie, and they have two girls Sherilyn, and Shaul. Later on he would give birth to Kaylee-Marie. WCW was a brief threat to not only ECW, but also WWE, and had a nasty habit of taking talent from different places, but never utilizing them properly. This is just what they did to Eddie and Chavo, but they made it work, especially with the “tough love” story lines they did together. It is also during this that Eddie develops his self-destructive lifestyle of becoming addicted to not only alcohol, but painkillers, and ghb. In this he describes how he nearly killed himself on three occasions, including one in which he totals his Trans am on New Year's Eve, and is ejected through the T-top of his car. He also states that this situation was the result of having had an argument with Vickie, and that the actual thought of killing himself had crossed his mind. Eddie even manages to find some humor in this serious matter, when he says that his father's training helped to not hurt his head, which was a factor in saving his life. Eddie admits that he had not hit rock bottom at that point, because he not only continued this, but also started a pain pill addiction which carried on into the WWE.
He finally describes having made in into the WWE, where he breaks his arm, but then returns, where he teams up with his friend Chris Benoit, as well as Perry Saturn, and Dean Malenko. He goes on to do an incredible story line with Chyna, where the inevitable “Latino heat” persona begins. In 2001, his drug and alcohol issues cause WWE to put him into rehab, for four months, in which he taken this semi-seriously, but unfortunately relapses, and winds up being fired by the WWE. It is in this moment, that he learns that he was justifiably “ratted out” by his three friends, who were genuinely concerned for him. At his point, Vickie has decided to divorce him, and wants absolutely nothing to do with him. It is with this moment, that Eddie begins to take his situation very seriously, and goes into rehab, and completely and gets involved in the christian religion
Upon doing rehab (taking it seriously this time.), Eddie focuses on going back into wrestling, but by doing the Indy circuit, in a completely humble fashion, he re-focuses not only his career, but his relationship with the christian religion, and is asked by the WWE to come back. God is also merciful to him in that he is back with Vickie and they mend their marriage. This time he is clean and sober, and more focused than ever. He teams up again with Chavo Jr., forming the tag team of Latino heat, where their motto is “lie cheat and steal”, plus become the tag team champs. During this, he even has a wonderful stint with Tajiri as tag team champs. Eddie then goes on a successful singles career where he achieves his ultimate childhood dream of becoming the first ever Latino WWE champion. He even goes on to do an incredible story line with Rey Mysterio for custody of Rey's son.
On a sad post script, Eddie passed away on November 13, 2005, at the age of 37 of coronary heart disease. He had just celebrated 4 years of sobriety.
Best scene in story: I really loved the moment Eddie decided to admit he had a problem and get help. Plus I loved his humble attitude through his recovery and more so.

The review of this Book prepared by Wendy Saddler a Level 1 Blue Jay scholar

Chapter Analysis of Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story

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Plot & Themes

Phys disability/mental struggle?    -   Yes Struggle with    -   drugs Sports story?    -   wrestling Sports story    -   Yes Period of greatest activity?    -   1950+

Subject of Biography

Gender    -   Male Profession/status:    -   sports figure Ethnicity    -   Hispanic/Latinic Nationality    -   American

Setting

How much descriptions of surroundings?    -   5 () United States    -   Yes The US:    -   Texas Century:    -   1980's-Present

Writing Style

Book makes you feel?    -   challenged Pictures/Illustrations?    -   A lot in color 11-15 How much dialogue in bio?    -   roughly even amounts of descript and dialog How much of bio focuses on most famous period of life?    -   51%-75% of book

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