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The G.O.A.T. 100 #69 | Gori Guerrero
- Peter Edge
- 17 hours ago
- 9 min read
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
Salvador Guerrero Quesada was born in Ray, Arizona to parents who were migrant workers, moving to California at the age of 4. Later, the family moved back to Mexico and the city of Guadalajara, where Gori’s father worked as a translator in a pottery shop.
Gori was one of nine siblings and had to become a bread winner quickly as his mom died at the age of 30 after a bout of pneumonia before Gori had even hit double digits in age, back when the family still lived in California. Gori had a paper route as one of his two jobs along with selling bread at a stall. Then once the Guerreros moved to Guadalajara, he took a job as a bell boy in a hotel in the city. But then when he was sixteen Gori became an orphan after his father was killed in a hit-and-run.
During his youth, Gori enjoyed taking part in sports and took advantage of an opportunity to train at the “Box y Lucha” club – but in boxing instead of wrestling. But when he saw lucha training going on in the other half of the gym, Guerrero gave it a go under the eye of two local wrestlers called Diablo Velasco and El Indio Mejía.
After two weeks of very basic training he had his first match. He wrestled for a small, but highly respected promoter called Jim Hernandez at a show on September 14, 1937, at the Arena Nilo in Guadalajara. That night, the 16 year-old Gori was beaten by Rafael "El Rojo” and earned 15 centavos for his efforts.
Continuing to work small arenas, Gori was a fast learner and impressed people in the business with his work and also his look, with a daily schedule of gym work that saw Guerrero spend hours lifting weights to get him a body that not many could match in those days in the industry worldwide.
Gilberto Martinez Larrea, a veteran wrestler in the Guadalajara area took Guerrero under his wing, teaching him the intricacies of the business and how to defend himself in case things went south in the ring, and El Profesor Raúl Romero would help refine his ring skills. Under their mentorship, Gori became one of the finest technical wrestlers in the world, with two moves that are still synonymous with Guerrero: the Gori Special in which an opponent is hooked by his opponent by his arms in a crucifix position, and “La de a Caballo,” better known to English-speaking fans (due to popularization north of the border by WWF Champion Iron Sheik) as the back-stretching Camel Clutch.
Signed by EMLL, Gori made his Arena México debut on the first show of 1943 in the now-famous arena – back then still known under its original name, Arena Modelo. Two years later, Gori won the Mexican Welterweight Title, defeating Jack O’Brien, and a year after that he went up a division in weight to take the Mexican Middleweight Title off Bobby Bonales and then beating Tarzán López for the NWA World Title in that weight division. After a 790 day reign he would drop the NWA belt to Mike Kelly, to help set up the big Kelly vs. López match for EMLL’s 18th Anniversary Show.
While lucha is defined greatly by the lucha apuesta concept, Gori has just one on his record – beating The Red Mystery on April 27, 1945, with Gori taking the win and Mystery’s mask.
Guerrero would embark on a feud with Cavernario Galindo which saw many bloodbaths, something that while matches where the blade was run occurred in Mexico – a feud to have so many crimson masks was very rare.
The pair would battle in singles and tag matches with Gori teaming with El Santo against Galindo and Black Shadow with the tag matches main eventing all over Mexico starting in 1949. The Santo team would become a regular attraction with the team known as La Pareja Atomica (The Atomic Pair).
Gori’s record would have plenty of title reigns though, in both Mexico and the USA – mainly in Texas, north of the border. Sam Muchnick, the President of the NWA and Salvador Lutteroth, EMLL’s head-honcho would negotiate an arrangement where EMLL would get Lou Thesz to come to Arena México, while the big cities in the States would get the big names of Lucha, with Guerrero going to Los Angeles and Tennessee as well as Texas in his year in the USA on this deal.
Mexican media would hype up the soon-to-be arrival of el Campeón Mundial, Lou Thesz and who would be the challenger for the Thesz match. If it were in today's social media environment the booking for who got the shot at the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title would be analysed endlessly.
Carlos Moreno would win the tournament for that shot, beating Enrique Llanes in the final. But four days after the tournament concluded Gory Guerrero returned from his US tour, and two weeks later, Guerrero and Moreno would be booked together for a match – which (in kayfabe) made Moreno mad.
With Thesz in attendance, Gori won the 2 out of 3 Falls match in two straight with people including the media saying that Guerrero was now more worthy of the shot and the “matchmakers” agreed as Gori got the match against Thesz.
Gori was a big-time heel in Mexico. His son, Eddie waxed lyrical about the ability his dad had to wind up fans when wrestling. But on May 21st, 1954, in Arena Coliseo, the love of the Mexican flag drove 16,000 of Gori’s countrymen to cheer him on for the very first time.
In the 2 out of 3 Falls match (the structure traditional for both a NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title Match and a lucha contest) Thesz did a Jude Bellingham at the Azteca and silenced the crowd by going up 1-0 after 13 minutes but Gori levelled it up to the soundtrack of a Mexican roar. But Thesz would win the deciding fall to retain the belt.
(I have spent two days thinking of a wrestling metaphor comparing this to Dan Burn’s clearing header that went 60 yards, but nothing came to mind. Answers on a postcard please.)
Gori’s time in the USA saw him have success in Amarillo and Portland with Gori specialising in tag teams with reigns with Pepper Gomez, Ricky Romero and Sonny Myers. But it was El Paso that would be the place most associated with Gori, for non-wrestling reasons.
He and his wife, Herlinda Llanes, the sister of Enrique, would have six children with four of them going on to become wrestlers in their own right. The oldest of the four guys, Salvador Jr, would go by the nickname Chavo. He would be best known to a younger generation of fans as the father of Chavo Guerrero Jr and for teaming with his son in his twilight years as “Chavo Classic,” but in his prime Chavo Sr was a fine technical wrestler in his own right.
The next son, Mando, would have a decent career in wrestling, but his main claim to fame was as the head trainer of GLOW as well as a resume as a stuntman on movies such as Falling Down and My Giant.
Héctor worked all over the USA, most famous for his time in Florida, L.A and Jim Crockett Promotions but his biggest claim to fame (or is it “lame”) was that night he debuted at the Survivor Series as the Gobbledy Gooker, the mystery man (actually, was it even a man? “mystery being,” anyhow) that came out of an egg at the PPV. It was an appearance that was so critically skewered that it had a Razzie-style annual worst-of award named after it on the WrestleCrap website.
But before all that, in 1962 their father moved the growing family just north of the border to El Paso to work in a short-lived new territory there called International Wrestling Enterprises, where he won the tag titles in the promotion with Juan Garcia. 5 years later, 13 years after Héctor, Herlinda gave birth to their youngest son, Eduardo – better known by us as Eddie.
He ended up doing alright, didn’t he?
Right before moving to El Paso, Guerrero would win the NWA Light Heavyweight Title on 29th July, 1960, where he beat Ray Mendoza, holding the belt for three years before losing it to the Bulgarian Ali Bey on a IWE event in Juarez before winning it back a month later in Arena México.
Gori would continue to be listed as the champion in NWA record books for three more years, but would not return to Mexico City or any further south than Juarez right across the border from his El Paso home until EMLL finally stripped him of the title.
It wasn’t because of money or the way he was treated by management like other luchadors that he left the main company in the country. Gori played his “that doesn’t work for me, brother” card to the point that staying became untenable. Gori didn’t want to drop his title back to Ray Mendoza and the resulting falling out with Lutteroth left Gori with only one direction left – the road out of the company.
Gori would refuse to hand the physical NWA Light Heavyweight title back to EMLL and (despite not being the official champion) would take it around the country defending it against Danny Hodge and Danny McShain, until 1975 with Dorrell Dixon beating Gori in Ciudad Juarez.
Gori spent more time in Los Angeles than anywhere else in the 70s as his son Chavo would be the booker of the territory and the father and son pair would briefly hold the NWA Hollywood Americas Tag Titles after beating Karl Von Brauner and Señor X on Feb 27th, 1976 but losing them to Roddy Piper and Crusher Verdu the next day.
Gori did promote shows for a while in his new home of El Paso, but then the Texas scene collapsed after the 1973 death of Dory Funk Sr. who ran the Amarillo territory, not reviving until a decade later with the boom of the Von Erichs’ WCCW promotion in Dallas.
After the collapse of the Texas scene, Gory would commute across the border to the neighboring city of Juarez. Starting from March 1975, Gori would run shows every Sunday at the Plaza de Alberto Balderas, a 7,500 capacity bullring – using young wrestlers he trained (with the help of his son Chavo) in a ring set up in his garden, like Juan Limón and Zombi Palacios, along with two of his other sons Hector and Chavo plus his nephew Javier "Gusano" Llanes, as well as bringing in old friends/enemies of his Mexico City days, Dory Dixon and El Santo in what would be his retirement match for he and his fellow Pareja Atomica.
Gori and CMLL would patch things up with Guerrero appearing at the CMLL 54th Aniversario show at what was a ceremony to celebrate his career with the four sons that took the family name for the next generation also in Arena México to pay homage to Gori.
After stepping away from the ring, Gori would enter the insurance field. Presumably he must have done a better job than Mark Walter with the lack of investigation that Guerrero went through while in that field but in April 1990 at the age of 69, Gori would pass away. His death resulted from cirrhosis liver failure caused by hepatitis. The tributes from all of the greats of the world of lucha told what his impact was in the industry.
John Molinario’s book ranking the Top 100 Wrestlers of All Time talks about Guerrero being in the same league as Danny Hodge as a technical wrestler, calling him his nation's answer to the Oklahoman. The Llave style came from Gori and also the bloodbath special that defined heated feuds around the world, a world that saw Mexico as the source only of the high-flying style.
When you see a Gory Bomb, think of Gori Guerrero, (with the i in his name not a y) when you see that Camel Clutch, also think of Gori … and obviously when you think of Eddie Guerrero and how fucking good he was, think of what he picked up from his father, one of the greats of lucha libre.
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