Wrestling Roundtable #22 9/28/08 Part 4 - What Ifs continued

The panel continues our discussion of alternate universe scenarios.
-What if Vince McMahon went to jail on steroid distribution & sexual harassment charges in 1994?
-What if ECW(Extreme Championship Wrestling) hadn't signed a cable TV deal with The Nashville/National Network(TNN, now Spike TV) in 1999?
-What if Fuscient Media Ventures hadn't backed out of negotiations to buy WCW(World Championship Wrestling) from AOL/Time Warner due to Jaime Kellner canceling wrestling on the Turner Networks(TBS & TNT), meaning Eric Bischoff would have been in charge of WCW but without a TV deal?
-What if The Radicalz(Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko & Perry Saturn) hadn't left WCW in protest of Vince Russo being usurped in favor of Kevin Sullivan in January 2000?
All this & more. Plus, our big announcement about the Roundtable's future.
Hosted, written, edited, maintained & created by Eric Santamaria. Thank you all very much.

* The views expressed on The Wrestling Roundtable are solely those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect
the views of any other entity, person or organization *

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[morbidanjel44]

I'm sure you mentioned this somewhere before. But I was wondering am I the only one who continues to think about what type of impact that Vince has made on wrestling since the purchasing of WCW. I mean, you hear them bitching and moaning about how certaing guys have left for Hollywood and how they should be doing more for the business. But in some sick twisted way, am I right for thinking that McMahon is at fault for the business suffering? I mean, did he not unconsciously signal his own demise?

[WrestlingRoundtable]

@morbidanjel44 It's a weird paradox; the whole point of a business is to destroy your competitors(it certainly was in the WWF/WCW saga), but in doing so, Vince killed his own killer instinct, and he's more or less admitted as such. He laments in a "What have I done?" sort of way about how killing his competition has created an environment in his industry where there's a huge hole in terms of seasoning wrestlers, keeping him on his toes, etc. So yes, you're pretty much right, heh.

-E

[jradd160]

you guys are awesome

[WrestlingRoundtable]

Thank you kindly!

-E, Wrestling Roundtable

[roh1234]

god wwe are very pathetic, LONG LIVE THE WRESTLINGROUNDTABLE

[WrestlingRoundtable]

haha, thank you!

-E, Wrestling Roundtable

[skinwalkerxxx]

I was thinking about this: what if Austin wouldn't have left WCW. Imagine for a second that it's him in his jeans sitting on a chair in the middle of the ring waiting for Sting. Instead of a DDP.

Now I sort of liked DDP and he became a star. His character of a blue collar guy worked well. But with Austin you would have had a guy that's trully bad ass to fight the nWo.

[hamburgeler84]

I think Owen would be atleast a 12 time champion if the incident had never happened.

[mmmNickmmm]

What if Austin had to retire from wrestling after Summerslam '97? Can you imagine the WWF in the late 90's without him? Maybe he could have still had an on-screen role?

[Sweetguy9009]

@morbidanjel44 Is it that or are other promoters even before WCW's death were they just lazy? Because remember even after Russo left Nitro still looked the Diet Sierra Mist to WWE's Pepsi. Say what you will about WWE but WWE has been pretty consistent about who the champions are going to be, how they're going to be brought up, basically poster boys (i.e. Bret Hart, Savage, HHH, Cena etc.) The formats may have changed, the look has changed but WWE has run under what Vince wants it to be.

[TheXYZcrash]

what if Triple H had won king of the ring and not Stone Cold

[nwb954]

based on your theory that bret was not anything out of wwe, which of course i don't subscribe to looking at "great" matches others like hogan, etc had

but one other thing that could be looked at

if goldberg would not have injured and basically retired bret

and the real bret would have showed back now

which could wrestle

what would have happened ?

[Vthesurety1]

did sal die or something, hes never on the show anymore?

[SSj5Alan]

if beniot would of stayed in WCW then he would of had the title for a few wks and maybe become the man rather than jeff jarett

[NostalgiaWrestling]

Going back to the comment about Austin's neck injury I think the Attitude Era would have had more wrestling and less "soap opera" angles because of course, they we keeping Austin on screen via segments not matches and this influenced the rest of that Era.

[sk8terboyzify]

jamie kellner is a douche