During a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Chavo Guerrero commented on his infamous “Kerwin White” gimmick, being willing to wear a KKK sheet to get heat, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On Vince McMahon telling him about Kerwin White: “There was no conversation. I got off the plane in Japan, and it was — I came to Raw, and I had — Vince McMahon looks at me, and he goes, ‘Well, hello Kerwin.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, What is this? what’s going on?’ [As Vince] ‘Well, today, you’re going to denounce your Hispanic heritage, and you’re going to become a white guy. Ha ha ha ha.’ I had two options. You either say ‘No,’ and possibly go back on the back burner for a while and get fired, or you say, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’ And at the time, the political climate was different. I literally told Vince — I had a meeting with him and said, ‘If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right.’ I’m supposed to be a brown guy playing a white guy, saying ‘This is how you white guys are.’ And they’re saying no. So, I had the Hispanics hating me because I was denouncing my Mexican heritage. The had the whites (hating me) because I was making fun of them. They’re like, ‘That’s not how we dress!’ I’m like, ‘Oh yes, you do!’ I was saying, ‘If it’s not white, it’s not right.’ You know, I had caucasians going, ‘That’s not the way we are!’ That’s exactly how you are! So, I had everybody hating me, and a true heel wants everybody to hate him. I told Vince, ‘At the end of the day, I want to come out in a white sheet.’ And he was like, ‘Ho, ho! Yes! I love it.’ Now, of course, we never ended up doing that. It got too risqué; a little too racist.”
On his idea to dress up in a KKK sheet for the angle: “I wanted to. Absolutely. I wanted to come out — I grew up in the time of wrestling where the more heat, the better. I wanted to fight my way back to the dressing room every night. I wanted to have to sneak out the back window. I wanted to be in the streets and the people yelling, ‘We hate you!’ That’s heat. That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want them going, ‘Hey, look! There’s Chavo! Hey, what’s up? An autograph.’ I wanted them to look at me and go, ‘God, we hate you!’ And still to this day — And I was a heel. That’s what you have to do as a heel. Still to this day, I’ll have people on Instagram, social media contacting me, saying, ‘You know what? I really hated you when I was younger. When you made Rey Mysterio quit, I hated you!’ And they’re like, ‘I get it now.’ Thank you, I was doing my job. And they said, ‘I understand now,’ but at the time, ‘I hated you so much!’ ‘Good! That’s what I wanted!’ I wanted people to hate me. That was my job. So, you know, if I was going to do it, I was going to do it 100% like I do anything. So, we never got to that point. I was ready. I would have.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)