
Hailing from El Paso, Texas, Guerrero, who was also a former amateur wrestler, was entrenched in Mexico’s lucha libre tradition, though in New Japan he wrestled under the guise of Black Tiger II, a tribute to masked Englishman Mark Rocco. The junior Malenko was well on his way to becoming the stone-faced “Man of 1,000 Holds” when he crossed paths with Guerrero in the Orient in 1993.

“After that, we spent pretty much our whole careers together,” Dean Malenko said.Īn AAU tournament competitor since age 8, Malenko grew up in Tampa, Florida, admiring the smooth technique of Welsh wrestler Tony Charles, who competed alongside Prof. Their in-ring chemistry was obvious from the start.
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Almost 30 years later, their youngest sons would meet for the first time while competing in a prestigious junior heavyweight tournament held by New Japan Pro Wrestling. Boris Malenko used to joke with Gory Guerrero in locker rooms in the Carolinas. “My people wear a yarmulke, but your people wear sombreros,” Prof. “There are things that changed the course of people’s ideas of what wrestling should be and in the ’90s I think between the two of them, there was a different outlook on what a wrestling match could be,” William Regal said. They became great friends and travel buddies, and along the way modernized sports-entertainment, inspiring everyone from Daniel Bryan to Sami Zayn to CM Punk. They were peers, two second-generation wrestlers, born seven years apart, whose careers dovetailed at a time of creative discovery before flourishing into unlikely superstardom.

The legacies of WWE Hall of Famer Guerrero, who passed away in 2005, and Malenko, currently a WWE official, will be forever intertwined. It was so technically sound and spot-on that it basically revolutionized the way I thought about wrestling and the way I thought about wrestling as an art form.” “Their smoothness, their footwork, just the fluidity with which they wrestled, was like this beautiful, flowing water. “They physically moved in the ring differently than anybody I had ever seen in my life,” Seth Rollins said. Malenko caused fans to view what transpired in the ring not as entertainment or sport, but as art. Perhaps more than any other rivalry in history, Guerrero vs. Not only is the competition fierce, but it’s beautiful to watch. The moves look unfamiliar, like an alien interpretation of the tried-and-true. Soon, you realize you’ve never seen such grace or precision. But what begins as confusion - Do they not see the table? - and teeters on boredom eventually gives way to curiosity, then fascination. Lacking the physical presence of The British Bulldog and Vader that you’re used to, the two relatively normal looking guys with human names begin exchanging wrestling holds with utter disregard for the chairs and trashcans you’d been promised. Finally, when you wipe the sleep away from your eyes, you tune in to see … Dean Malenko vs. on a school night so you could watch the outlaws in action. You begged your mom to let you set your alarm for 2:00 a.m.

Your older brother’s friend told you about this wrestling organization that was unlike WWE or WCW it was grittier, crazier, bloodier. Imagine turning on ECW television for the first time in late summer 1995.
