So I recently had a lot of free time on a weekend (Translation -- I couldn't sleep and the NCAA games were making me all nervous...as I AM STILL in the money hunt for some pools.) so I read a bunch with one eye on the games.
One of the books that I read while watching the games and while running on the elliptical machine was Cheating Death, Stealing Life : The Eddie Guerrero Story.
On November 13, 2005, Eddie Guerrero of the WWE passed away when his nephew found him dead in his hotel room. This biography was published right before his death and released immediately after.
I loved Eddie... he was truly one of my favorite wrestlers....
Eddie had some tough times in his life and this book essentially lays out all of them. Between being dumb, drugs, alcohol and pain killers, the man was lucky to be alive and have retained his family -- with several near misses during his 38 years.
By the time he died in 2005, he was free from drugs and alcohol for over 4 years... but it did its damage to his heart as he died of heart failure. years of abuse of alcohol and anabolic steroids damaged his heart so much that it was almost inevitable that he passed away.
In the book, Eddie tells a story of where his wrestling friends basically outted Eddie's problems to the management who forced him to do somethign about it. Eddie wrote this passage about a conversation he had in 2000...
"When I asked Dean about it (ratting him out), he told me why they felt they had to do what they did. 'I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I would've found you dead in a hotel room,' he said. 'and there's no doubt in my mind that that's the path you were on.'"
Ok... that was eerie...
The book reads like most of the WWE biographies in that it tells some amazing stories, but this one was different in that Eddie had it pretty bad and he turned his life around. It just wasn't in time.
I also feel that the book reads differently as it is a love story about his dedication and love for his wife and girls. They were the driving factors that eventually straightened him out.
I recommend this book to anyone that cares...
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