The 8 Ball 6.19.13: Top 8 What If’s in Wrestling History

Welcome to second edition of my reign over the 8 Ball for the Wrestling section of 411. I am David McGregor, and unless I am Larry or Massive Q you don’t give a crap.

Last week went pretty well, thanks for all the comments. I only had one guy that asked about WCW, I knew there would be one.

But this week we are going to be spice things up a bit. This week I am going to countdown the Top 8 Biggest What If’s in Wrestling. A lot of the choices here are from the last 30 years, so I am not going that far back so no one is asking what if Abe Lincoln became a wrestler instead of a politician!

The only criteria I have are that everything listed needs to have affected the current product in some way. The event has to have altered the professional wrestling system is some massive way. And I refuse to talk about Chris Benoit, so even though that event had a massive affect on WWE I don’t want to talk about it.

Top 8 Biggest What If’s in Wrestling

Number 8 – What if the London Bombings Hadn’t Happened?

Before I go into this, I am not trivializing the London Bombings by attaching them to this event. I am actually about to move to London and I love the place. I remember where I was back in 2005 when it happened, and it was horrific. I would rather it didn’t happen for a million and one reasons other than how it affected the WWE, but it did and in a large way I feel.

Back in 2005, Muhammad Hassan was on a hot streak like no other heel in the entire WWE at the time. His character was perfect, and like most great heels he had a valid point. I won’t get into the politics of it but there were a lot of Muslim’s and people of Middle Eastern decent that were unfairly harassed after the atrocities of 9/11. But Hassan took that and made it into the biggest heel shtick we have seen in quite some time. The crowd absolutely hated him, even when he would get cheap heat by interrupting Hogan or getting a DQ victory over the current World Heavyweight Champion. No other person in the past decade has come into the WWE and made such an impact so early. Hassan was a natural on the mic, and was able to get the audience riled up to a fever pitch from the moment he stepped out of the curtain.

Then on July 7th 2005 a group of vicious and evil bastards attacked London. 52 people died, and 700 people were injured in a series of bombings throughout the London public transport system. This just so happened to be the same day Hassan was on Smackdown with an army of masked assassins who ambushed the Undertaker and choked him out while they all were on their hands and knees for Hassan.

It was stupid; it was the completely wrong way to go for the character without even discussing the insensitive nature of the segment. Hassan was an American against the prejudice he had been the victim of, that’s a great angle there was no need to change it. He didn’t need the guys praying and bullshit like that. The WWE dropped the ball with the character, and shouldn’t have aired the segment at all. The worst part is it led to Muhammad Hassan being released by the WWE for reasons that weren’t even his fault.

Hassan could have been huge, had the angle been done properly he would have been World Champion by the end of the year if not Summerslam. After that Smackdown has a readymade heel to take over from JBL, and when Orton had another tantrum we already have a guy to cover his tracks. I think Hassan would be the biggest heel in the company now, unless they had changed his character, which they would have eventually. Everyone from that time period has either left the company or doesn’t wrestle anymore. The only people left are Jericho and Cena, and beating Jericho doesn’t mean much anymore. Mark Coprani, the guy who was Hassan, is only 31 years old and he could have been the Iron Shiek of the WWE for the next 10 years at least. WWE didn’t just drop the ball here; they burst it and ruined the game.

Number 7 – What if Vince’s other non-WWE projects were successful?

This was going to be just about the XFL, but what if Vince was successful outside of wrestling with every endeavor he pursued? What would it mean for the WWE? And unlike others who say Vince would forget about WWE and focus on other things, I think it would be extremely beneficial for the WWE.

Imagine if Vince McMahon were a success in various fields, he would have the kind of clout that a movie executive or Simon Cowell does. Major celebrities fall at the feet of anyone that is successful, and if that was Vince he could get them to contribute to the WWE as well as any of his other projects. If the XFL is successful, you could have any number of sports stars performing at a WWE show to liven it up and make it special. For WrestleMania the WWE could go all out, a true legend for the national anthem and then celebrities littered throughout the show. For some that is a night in hell, but I think the reason celebrities come off bad in WWE is because a lot of them are Z-list. If you have a bona fide A-list celebrity it brings up the value of your product.

But the biggest boost would come from the backstage talent they can hire. The WWE gets great talent at the moment, but it is still considered B-level entertainment. A bigger and brighter and more successful WWE could hire some of the best writers the industry has, even offer them a movie if they stay with the WWE for a time spell. Everything goes through Vince, but not if he was the head of many divisions. Triple H or Stephanie would take over that role, therefore more writers could get their voices heard.

I kind of wish the XFL and WWE Films had been a success now. Although could anyone put up with that much Vince McMahon? I could, but I did say last week I have a total old man crush on him so maybe I am not the best person to ask.

Number 6 – What if Magnum TA’s Career Hadn’t Ended Early?

Magnum TA was one of the biggest and brightest of his day. He was one of the most popular wrestlers Jim Crockett had, and people saw him as the next big thing in professional wrestling. Sadly, on October 14th 1986 he had a horrific car crash and lay there for over an hour before anyone even noticed the accident. He was taken to the hospital still speaking, however he was in pretty bad shape. The popularity of Magnum was shown during his time in the hospital, as thousands of people went to the hospital to show their support and there were floods of calls and well-wishers. Thankfully Magnum made it through the surgery and came out alive, but the damage done to his body was too much. He never wrestled again.

But what if that accident had never happened? Magnum was one of the biggest stars of the entire industry and was blossoming during the golden age of wrestling. I don’t think Magnum’s success would have had any negative impact on the WWF’s meteoric rise, but apparently Vince had a great interest in signing him to a WWF contract. Could we have seen Magnum in WWF? I think it is very likely, even Ric Flair went to the WWF so I think it is a shoe in that Magnum would have stepped foot in a WWF ring at some point.

But as with most guys of his style and age he would have more than likely went to the WCW side for the most part. If Magnum was such a huge star maybe the whole WCW v WWF war could have started a few years early, and more importantly WCW wouldn’t have had to bend over backwards to appease Hogan at every point. The main reason I feel Magnum would be best suited to WCW is that he has a major southern appeal, he basically looks like a cowboy for Christ sakes! I don’t know if a WWF audience would realize how much of a big deal Magnum was. Quite similar to Flair when he came to the WWF, he was a success but not on the level he was in WCW.

Either way Magnum went he would have made an impact. It is very likely that in discussing who is the best of all time we would be discussing Magnum as an equal to the Hogan’s or Flair’s.

Number 5 – What If Lesnar and Many Others Hadn’t Left the WWE?

The day Brock Lesnar left to play football in 2004 the WWE changed. No one had ever left Vince and the WWE high and dry like Brock did. Then Kurt Angle left in 2006 and caught the entire WWE and audience by surprise. The same thing happened in 2008 with Bobby Lashley, who had been pushed to the moon since 2006. All of this clearly got Vince and the WWE management nervous about pushing talent too fast and too hard, as since then we have constantly saw stop-start pushes for some of the younger talent. The Miz, Cody Rhodes and even Daniel Bryan have all been subject to this nervous booking.

The WWE was previously fairly consistent with the way they pushed talent, if someone was chosen by the fans or WWE management to be a main event talent then Vince did everything in his power to make it happen. Look at Austin, Rock, Mick Foley, Hogan, Bret Hart or even HBK. Once Vince realized they could be main event talent they were consistently pushed to be the best, they weren’t stopped abruptly and forgotten about. Could you imagine if Austin was disregarded after he was injured in 97, or Rock was kept in the IC title hunt instead of beating Mankind at Survivor Series 98?

Instead of Vince McMahon trying to create new stars he has relied on the talent that he knew were successful. John Cena hasn’t been out of the main event scene since he won the WWE Title in 2005, and probably more problematic the WWE has relied on past talent and celebrities to keep them afloat. Only recently has the WWE actually pushed the younger generation, and still not in an effective enough way. Lesnar and the like have a lot to answer to for this, but ultimately it is Vince and the WWE that need to man up and just push stars properly or else they are in real trouble.

Number 4 – What If the Screw Job Hadn’t Happened?

It was the moment that officially kicked of the Attitude Era, it was the moment that propelled Vince McMahon into the spotlight and he and Austin saved the company. It is the moment that ruined Bret Hart, personally and professionally. But what if it never happened? What if Bret had just dropped the title to Michaels like he was asked?

We all know what happened, so I don’t need to repeat it. But if Bret had just walked into the sunshine, then it changes so much. The evil character of Vince McMahon wouldn’t have worked as well because his first true evil act was to screw Bret out of the WWF Title. Then you have Austin coming along to make Vince’s life a misery because he is an evil bastard. Instead you have Austin coming along and just hating the boss because he is a bit of a douche, while that’s a good storyline it isn’t brilliant and definitely isn’t the best feud of all time.

Bret Hart would be a major beneficiary of the non-screw job. His head was in a terrible place after Montreal, and most of the people in WCW have said that he was never dedicated to the company. Maybe had be come in all guns blazing to WCW they would have been able to do something decent with him, although knowing WCW that’s unlikely but at least Bret would have been in the right mind set. Obviously that would change with what happened to Owen Hart, but at least relations between Bret and the WWF would have been open and there would be no bad blood to intensify the already horrid situation.

But the major problem is that without the entire buzz from Survivor Series 1997 the WWF would be in a bad situation. WCW was destroying the company, and business was just starting to pick up. But now their WWF Champion had just walked out the door and into WCW, that’s devastating for any company. Sure HBK was now the man, but he would be gone within 6 months and the company was left on the shoulders of a new guy in Steve Austin. That’s fine when you have McMahon for him to butt heads with, but without Montreal you don’t have that. All you have is the Undertaker and Austin who are accepted WWF Champions, and a bunch of great talent underneath who isn’t ready to carry a company. Rock wasn’t ready for another 6 months, Foley wasn’t seen as champion material, Triple H was a year and a half away from it and no one else was ever trusted with that kind of responsibility. The Undertaker is the only man Austin has that is an equal, and even then Undertaker wasn’t on a hot streak of originality. Without the Austin v McMahon storyline to run us through ’98 the WWF has nothing to sustain it creatively.

Financially the WWF is in disarray. Creatively they have no one for Austin to face, bar Undertaker. And undoubtedly something would have given way, and I believe that would have been the WWF entirely. The company might have made it into 1999, but I don’t see how they get much further. WCW would have bought them out before anyone got the chance to say Happy New Year!

Number 3 – What If Vince was Found Guilty in the Steroid Trial?

Vince McMahon has an ego bigger than most, and he has every reason to have it as he is brilliant. That’s an unpopular opinion these days but the guy is a genius. But what if during the trial of his life, he was found guilty?

In 1994 Vince McMahon was put on the stand to testify during a trial that alleged that Vince was selling steroids to his wrestlers, and promoting their use to members of the WWF roster. The main witness against Vince was Nailz, who stated that Vince encouraged him to start taking steroids. His testimony was disregarded once he stated that he had a personal vendetta against McMahon and hated him. Then Hogan came down as the prosecutions star witness, and ended up saving Vince’s ass by stating that he had never sold steroids to him. Vince walked out a free man, but with a ton of bad press.

Had things went differently then Vince McMahon would have been taken to jail. Linda was already running the company, or at least on paper anyway. Had he been found guilty there would probably be no Austin v McMahon, due to the bad press surrounding Vince. How would the WWE have gotten out of their near demise in 1996 if Vince wasn’t there? I don’t think they would have. The bad press from the trial was one of the reasons the WWE was in such a bad way in 1995/6 and had it been even more intense then it could have ended the company. The roster would have run from the burning ship by this time and Vince would have been finished.

On a side note I still think that the WWE’s biggest legal dispute is yet to come. Their treatment of the wrestlers is ridiculous, and while I have no clue about US employment law if the WWE was a UK company they would be getting sued for billions! So many aspects of the independent contractor contracts don’t work with proper employment law, and it lets WWE get away with murder. When Congress finally clicks on to this, I think the WWE will be in a lot of trouble.

Number 2 – What If Someone Else Bought WCW?

Eric Bishcoff was all set to buy WCW in 2001; he had the investors ready and was already pinpointing ideas for when the show became his. And then they took the prime time television slot out of the deal, and it was worthless so he backed out. That let Vince McMahon come in and buy the brand and everything with it, bar a few wrestlers, for a cool $7 Million. Although some say it was as low as $2.2 Million, which is ridiculous as it was previously worth over $400 Million!

But what if someone had got in there before Vince? Had they got the same deal that Vince did then there isn’t much you can really do with the company bar shop it out to a few networks, while trying to lure the talent that had contracts with Time Warner and not WCW.

But if someone had gotten the deal Bischoff had agreed to in 2001, then you have an interesting concept. There is a readymade prime time slot available and the talent to make something out of it. The obvious thing about this scenario is that clearly the Invasion angle does not happen, and the WWE goes in a completely different direction. Most of the events would probably stay the same, just without the WCW guys. Angle v Austin and Rock v Jericho were the feuds that WWE focused on most during the summer and fall of 2001, and they would most likely still happen.

But WCW was in an odd place; they needed to reinvigorate the company. Had Bischoff been in charge I think he would have took a good swing at it, and with a plethora of backers he needs to answer to it could have been a better run company. It may have rubbish on screen but the business in the back would have been much better, much like the WWE is now. And with enough negotiating WCW could have lured back Flair, Sting and maybe even Hogan. There was enough juice left in the tank for those guys to be the backbone of the company, while Goldberg and whomever else they promoted were the younger face of the new WCW.

Whoever took over WCW could have made it work, and very easily. At best it could have reinvented the company and put it back on a path of success. At worst it would have been the number 2 wrestling company in the US, and that’s still going well for TNA the last time I checked. All of the guys who are TNA stars today could have gotten their start on a bigger platform like WCW. Although maybe the name WCW was too synonymous with failure? Maybe after hitting the heights of 1996 and 97 there was no going back? Maybe in the end Vince would have still won and still got the library, and maybe even a better invasion angle out of it. Either way it would have been interesting.

Number 1 – What If WrestleMania Failed?

WrestleMania is professional wrestling to most of the mainstream audience these days. The WWE’s finances are tailored around WrestleMania, they make up such a massive part of the success of the WWE that if it were ever to fail the WWE would be in a lot of trouble. But what if it had never worked in the first place? What if WrestleMania 1 had failed?

The original WrestleMania was a do or die moment for the WWF and Vince McMahon, it is no secret that Vince had put a lot of money into the show and a lot of it wasn’t his own. If WrestleMania didn’t work then the WWF went out of business, it is as simple as that.

If WrestleMania didn’t work then nationalization of the wrestling business would be considered a failure. It is possible that wrestling would go back to its territorial nature, with the NWA at the forefront leading the way once again. But with society changing and television changing, and the advent of cable TV, nationalization was clearly always going to happen. Jim Crockett Promotions was still aligned with the NWA at the time, and Jim Crockett was the President of the NWA and had envisioned a united NWA to counteract what the WWF was doing at the time. With the WWF out of the way Crockett could have done it, and could have been the biggest show in town. But the NWA was a completely different beast compared to the WWF, there was much more of a wrestling focus and had less of the flash and pizzazz the WWF had in the 80’s. Whether it would have worked or not will never be known, but that is the most likely scenario to happen due to the death of the WWF. And with the influx of ex-WWF stars the NWA had an even stronger backbone than it did previously.

But Ted Turner always wanted to get into the wrestling business, even back in the 70’s. With Vince bankrupt, maybe he would have accepted a helping hand from Turner? McMahon refused Turner’s offer to buy his business, but that was because it was successful. If Vince was a failure due to WrestleMania, then Turner’s offer would be much more appealing. And now we have the 90’s Monday Night War all over again, just from the opposite end. The NWA, which would have had to change its name, was the success and WWF are the ones who nearly died.

I don’t think things would have gotten as big or popular without WrestleMania. No Hogan v Andre in front of 93,000 people means there is no wrestling boom, there is no 33 Million people watching Saturday Night’s Main Event for the rematch. Maybe Turner and McMahon would go all out and rip the NWA to shreds, and I fully believe they could as McMahon is a genius and thrives in a fight. And Tuner is the exact same, only he has billions of dollars to spend on anything he wants. The wrestling world would be completely different, but I think in the end Vince would still be standing, just not as tall.

And that is all for this week! Any suggestions for next week, by all means leave them in the comments!