What if Eddie Guerrero hadn’t passed away?

2. A Radicalz reunion

The Radicalz went from a

feel good

story to one WWE would just as soon forget.

In one of the most fascinating turns of the Monday Night War, a 2000 episode of Monday Night Raw saw the surprise debut of The Radicalz—Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn, all freshly defected from WCW. While they weren’t marquee stars who had headlines a lot of PPVs, they were some of the most respected workers in the business and emblematic of the kind of young in ring wizards who went underutilized in the WCW system.

Nowadays, WWE doesn’t do much to celebrate The Radicalz. This is surely done, in no small part, to Guerrero and Benoit’s untimely deaths. That leaves behind Malenko—a great talent, but one who has contributed more behind the scenes than he did on air for WWE—and Perry Saturn who was pretty squarely a mid-card guy.

We’ll never know for sure what would have happened had Guerrero lived on, but some have hypothesized that the death of such a close friend did contribute to Benoit breaking down on the way to the tragic final acts of his life.

Had both of these men survived, WWE would probably make a bigger deal out of the Radicalz legacy that contributed to WWE winning the Monday Night War, and led to two respected world champions. The group may not have come back together as an active faction, but they may well have been in line for on-air reunion segments like the one Evolution got on the thousandth episode of SmackDown.