Chavo Guerrero wrestled Kane in a surprise match at WrestleMania 24, which was only set up whilst the show was on.
Guerrero did not originally have a challenger for the show. However, a battle royal was put on for the live crowd, with the winner getting a shot at Guerrero’s ECW Championship later in the evening.
Chavo Guerrero had not long beaten CM Punk to win his first ECW Championship title, and with the help of La Familia was the dominant force on Extreme Championship Wrestling.
In a dark match in front of the live crowd at WrestleMania 24, Kane won a 24-man battle royal to earn a shot at the ECW Championship. He last eliminated Mark Henry to win the match, setting up a bout with Chavo Guerrero later in the night.
Before the iconic Ric Flair vs Shawn Michaels match, Chavo Guerrero entered the ring, ready to face Kane. As Kane’s music hit, Chavo stared down the ramp, waiting for The Big Red Machine to make his entrance.
Instead, his appeared from under the ring, and ambushed the ECW Champion. Hitting Chavo with a Chokeslam, Kane pinned him in eleven seconds to win the ECW Championship, for the one and only time in his incredible career.
However, the Chavo Guerrero vs Kane match turned out a lot different than it was originally meant to.
Chavo Guerrero vs Kane
During a digital signing on “The Captain’s Corner,” Chavo Guerrero revealed that the match was the biggest payoff he ever had in WWE.
The former ECW Champion also revealed that the match was originally going to be longer, but time was cut from the match whilst the show was already ongoing.
The original Kane vs Chavo Guerrero match was meant to be eight minutes long, whereas the actual match only last a then-record eleven seconds.
“The week before, we had like eight-minute matches. When we got to WrestleMania, Vince called us in. He goes, ‘Guys, I have to cut time. I’m cutting time all over the place. I even cut time from the main event and here shuffling times around.’
So he goes, ‘I can only give you guys two minutes.’ Well I’m like, ‘Two minutes? What are we gonna do in two minutes? No one remembers a two minute match at WrestleMania, nobody.’ So we’re like, ‘Well, what if we say we can do this in, you know, 10, 20 seconds’ and he was like, ‘What? What? That’s great. How can you do that?’
“By the second, it’s incredible but it’s for the whole match. It was the most I got paid for one match. It was a lot and thank you Jim Ross. But yeah, that was for that and if you break down the second, it was pretty lucrative.”
Chavo Guerrero vs Kane was the shortest WrestleMania match ever when it occurred, and held the record for eight more years.
It was beaten by The Rock’s last match in the WWE, when he defeated Erick Rowan in an impromptu match at WrestleMania 32.
