Professional Wrestling Career
In Mexico, Guerrero joined a gym with the intention to learn to box, but instead learned lucha libre from Diablo Velasco and El Indio Mejía. He wrestled his first professional wrestling match on September 14, 1937, jobbing to El Rojo. He began his career in Mexico working under the ring name Joe Morgan, but later changed his name to Gory Guerrero—a reference to his bloody matches.
He made his debut for the Mexico City promotion Empresa Mexicana de la Lucha Libre (EMLL) in 1943 and was named "Rookie of the Year" later that year. In 1945, he briefly held the Mexican National Welterweight Championship. Several months later, he won the Mexican National Middleweight Championship, which he held for approximately one year. Guerrero and his brothers also feuded with Cavernario Galindo and his brothers.
In the late 1940s, Guerrero began tag teaming with El Santo as the undefeated La Pareja Atómica (The Atomic Pair). Guerrero also appeared in some of El Santo's films.
He also feuded with Enrique Llanes and his tag team partner Tarzán López. He defeated Lopez for the NWA Middleweight title. In 1954, he wrestled a championship match against NWA World Heavyweight Champion Lou Thesz but did not win the title.
Guerrero broke away from EMLL in 1966 after refusing to drop the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship to Ray Mendoza. He worked as an independent in the mid-sixties. He also began to branch out into booking and training with Dory Funk, Sr.. In addition, he helped run shows in the World Wrestling Association for two years, and later he booked shows for World Class Championship Wrestling. With age his in-ring performing decreased until his ultimate retirement in the 1980s.
Guerrero is credited with the invention of La de a Caballo (Camel Clutch) and the Gory Special, a type of backbreaker. He also invented the back to back stretch hold which has been modified into a facebuster move (Gory Bomb), a piledriver (Barry White Driver), a powerbomb (Stu Hart Special), a reverse STO (The Deal) or a neckbreaker/backbreaker (Widow's Peak).
Read more about this topic: Gory Guerrero
Famous quotes containing the words professional, wrestling and/or career:
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)