The tribute shows in November of 2005, both taped less than a day after Eddie was found dead. If the opening salute on Raw didn't get you, the tribute video will.
This later one is also sure to get waterworks flowing.
The horrible, horrible "Eddiesploitation" angle WWE ran after his death, widely regarded as THE worst thing the company has ever done. According to Konnan, Vince McMahon was the only person who wanted it to happen, but since he was the boss, he was able to force everyone, from Eddie's best friends to his widow, to take part in the crass, tasteless, and degrading angles. Supposedly it was supposed to last even longer (with Chris Benoit being set to feud with Chavo over "Eddie's Estate") until Benoit, Eddie's dearest friend, finally put his foot down and told Vince he flat-out wasn't doing it. When WrestleCrap awarded the angle the Gooker Awardfor 2006, RD Reynolds didn't include any soundbites or images from the angle in the article because the angle wasn't something he could enjoy himself mocking — it was simply loathsome, and he just couldn't bring himself to go back and go through it again to find the material.
Reynolds: On the marquee of this site, it says, “The Very Worst of Professional Wrestling.” Truly, this induction is the very embodiment of that tagline. The seemingly never-ending exploitation of the late, great Eddie Guerrero is the absolute worst of pro wrestling, bar none.
How bad was it? Within that Gooker Award article, Reynolds quotes an excerpt from Bryan Alvarez on the February 13, 2006 edition of Figure Four Weekly in which Alvarez stated he knew people whose friends at the time believed Eddie's death was a work for a shocking return of the ages as a result of what was being booked on TV. It got so bad that Kenny Casanova, an indie wrestling manager who had worked with Eddie a few times when he was on the circuit, wrote a blog article that same month openly speculating the possibility of a massive death work leading up to a shocking return at WrestleMania 22 — not because he believed any of it himself, but specifically to increase traffic to his website. Yet not only did the stark majority of his material come from researching what people were already saying, the article itself got so much traffic it crashed his server immediately and was convincing enough to massively signal-boost that Poison Oak Epileptic Tree all the way up to 'Mania. Yes. Eddiesploitation made enough people wonder if Eddie Guerrero was actually dead that a major dirt sheet reporter found it worth mentioning and an indie personality who knew Eddie milked the conspiracy theory for hits and ended up crashing his own website. Yeah, on the list of most tasteless things McMahon has ever done, it's gonna be very hard to top this.
Chris Benoit's death. Not only does the death erase the iconic ending of WrestleMania XX from history, but Eddie's own death played a part in it. Chris never got over it.
In particular, the part of Chris's speech during Eddie's tribute show quoted below. If Eddie had lived, it's really likely that Chris, his wife, and his child would still be alive today, his legacy would remain intact, and the course of the company's history from 2008 on might be very different. However, it has been said that even if Eddie was still alive, Benoit, due to drugs and concussions, would only have about ten months to live. But people would remember Chris as one of the greatest wrestlers.
"He was the one friend that I had that I could go to and pour my heart out to if I was going through something, a personal issue, a personal problem. He was the one guy that I could call and talk to, and know that he'd understand and... he would talk me out of it."
Benoit's reaction to Eddie's death. According to Chavo on Dark Side of the Ring, the usually stoic Benoit literally started wailing uncontrollably the second Chavo told Chris over the phone that Eddie was gone.
Sasha Banks's story regarding the tribute show: A huge fan of Eddie, she revealed on an episode of Talk Is Jericho that she won front-row tickets to a live WWE show. She made a sign saying "I love Eddie" and hoped he would see it. When she got to the show, she thought it was strange how there were so many "RIP Eddie" signs around, assuming Eddie had been booked to wrestle The Undertaker that night. A fan then told her Eddie had died that morning. Ouch.
will.