Former WWE Creative Writer Reveals Original Plans For Eddie Guerrero At WrestleMania 22

Ten years ago Friday, Eddie Guerrero passed away in a Minneapolis hotel room from heart failure. Former WWE creative writer Court Bauer appeared on Busted Open on SiriusXM to share some stories on Guerrero, where he revealed what the Vince McMahon had planned for him at WrestleMania 22.

According to Bauer, Guerrero was to have wrestled Shawn Michaels at the pay-per-view event, which took place on April 2, 2006, at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois.

He recalled, “It was 24 hours before he passed away, I believe. 24 hours, 48 hours, something like that. We had a call with Vince [McMahon] at home, and we were talking about the preliminary plans for WrestleMania. I know there’s this romanticized story about how Eddie was going to get the title [from Batista], and that was the plan that he was going to get it that night or at Survivor Series. That wasn’t the plan. I think Stephanie [McMahon] said that, or alluded to it on the air, and that was not the plan. The plan was that he would lose, and I think they were going to return in December.

“We had talked about a fascinating idea; I’m not the biggest Bruce Pritchard fan, but to his credit, I believe it was Bruce Prichard who pitched putting Eddie Guerrero at WrestleMania against Shawn Michaels and doing the parallels of their careers. Being the heartthrob in Mexico and this mercurial figure south of the border, and the American version being HBK. They had never really worked, and you would’ve had such a great dynamic between the two with heel Eddie versus Shawn. That’d be your ‘tear the house down,’ high quality match at WrestleMania 22 in Chicago. Vince was like, ‘God damn, that’s really appealing. We could parallel their careers. What kind of footage of Eddie do we have outside of WCW? We could really do some impressive packages.'”

HBK would go on to wrestle Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 22, where he beat him a No Holds Barred Match.