Eddie Guerrero was contemplating leaving the wrestling industry, mere months before his untimely death at the age of 38 in 2005.
Guerrero died that November, with his final match on WWE TV seeing him qualify for the SmackDown Survivor Series team, in which he was replaced by Randy Orton.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on the “Insight” podcast, Eddie’s nephew Chavo Guerrero revealed that the Hall of Famer had been considering hanging up his boots. He said,
“Eddie had a great mind for the business. He just didn’t want to be on the road anymore. He loved his family a lot. He really, really did, and he wanted to be home with his family. I remember before he passed, like 6 months before, I remember him coming to me and saying, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t want to wrestle anymore.’ I said, ‘Dude, drop out and do something else.’
“He got really mad and said, ‘What am I going to do? What else am I going to do? This is what we do. We wrestle.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. Your family life is more important. What good is it if you are away from your family all of the time?’ That’s why I left WWE. My kids at the time were 8 and 11 maybe, and I just didn’t want them growing up without a dad.”
After Eddie’s death, the former WWE Champion was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame, with Chavo being one of three men to induct him.