8 Things You Learn Binge Watching Every WWE SmackDown From 2006

Eddie Guerrero's untimely death aged just 38 at the tail end of 2005 put a black veil over all things WWE heading into a new year. As always, the depth of the roster and some talented upper-carders kept things ticking, but SmackDown was in a strange place. It'd been tepid in '04, had started to heat up again by '05, then '06 came along to remind everyone that it was firmly behind Raw in Vince McMahon's mind.

Thank the lord then for Booker T, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker and Rey Mysterio. All of them worked hard to make sure SmackDown was a worthy product inside the ring, but 'Taker must've been cursing creative for watching him tear the roof from buildings in hot matches before deciding to turn the clock back to 1993.

Why did they always lean on Undertaker when some lumbering monster who couldn't work needed a boost?! He was surely wondering the same thing, and 'Taker would've been scratching his head harder upon seeing Angle move over to the new ECW brand before departing the company. They'd been on fire together at the turn of the year.

Several haphazard returns for old faves from the 90s also made 2006 a head turner, albeit not always for the right reasons. Back on the plus side, bringing back a certain tournament and putting it on somebody who'd run with a played out gimmick proved to be very smart indeed.

SmackDown was sometimes a struggle in '06, but it had some notable highs too.

There was simply no need for this. No need for it at all.

On the 3 February 2006 SmackDown, Randy Orton told Rey Mysterio the following: “Eddie (Guerrero) ain’t in heaven. Eddie’s down there…in hell”. That promo came a mere 82 days after Guerrero’s death, by the way, and this was done to promote a match between Randy and Rey on a ‘B’ tier pay-per-view. Their No Way Out match was up next.

Listen, both Orton and Mysterio would likely point to Eddie's workhorse 'wrestling first' mentality and say he'd have been cool with the line, but they couldn't possibly know that for sure. The passage of time definitely matters when it comes to this sort of stuff. Being insensitive just a few months removed from someone's death just to promote a match? Nah, that's too much.

WWE were looking for cheap heat here when they really shouldn't have been. They could've had Randy disrespect Rey's tributes to Eddie without the whole 'he's in hell' shock value. This fan knew it was coming when he sat down to binge some of SmackDown's biggest moments from '06, and he was dreading it.

Guerrero didn't die in some bogus wrestling angle. His wasn't an on screen death that was there to be mocked or used as a plot device. A grieving widow (Vickie) and some children had just lost their husband and father for real. Who knows what they were thinking when they tuned in to see Rey pay homage to Eddie then this line spewed forth straight at them?