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So, the world is pretty hosed up and confusing right now, and I'm really upset lately about a lot of things. Very little makes sense in the world. Not only that, but pro wrestling itself is in a really odd spot. We're getting a pre-taped WrestleMania with no fans. AEW is going to keep running shows too, but their next big event is postponed indefinitely and it's not exactly clear how typical the shows are going to be. For all we know the promotion might want to at least somewhat tread water until things stabilize, and honestly, who could blame them? Things are seemingly starting to normalize in Japan, at least (hooray!), at least to some degree, but things still feel the furthest thing from stable. However, instead of wallowing, I decided to watch some of my favorite matches on the Network, some old classics. Predictably, I settled on The Shield vs. Evolution, and watching that was an interesting experience. It was the first time I've watched ANYTHING Shield in the better part of a year because it honestly kinda makes me sad in some ways that should be pretty obvious. I will go to my grave saying The Shield was the best trio in WWE history, and the way it ended was perhaps not quite as ignominious as it may have seemed right around the time of Mox's jump given that he and Rollins are apparently on good terms and Mox and Roman were always cool. However, it really got me thinking about the number of forks in the road that led to where we are now, and then it got me thinking, since "normal" wrestling probably isn't gonna happen for a while, why not go into the realms of hypotheticals? I debated whether or not this topic was really worth posting, but I really wanna write about wrestling right now, so in the end I settled on  , and hopefully you guys enjoy this idea as much as I did and it takes off! I'll start my three ideas off with what I consider the real flux point of the fracturing of the relationship between Jon Moxley and WWE, and therefore the hypothetical that birthed this idea in the first place.What If...Roman Reigns Never Had His Cancer Resurface? The man known at the time as Dean Ambrose has said he knew for a long time that he wanted to leave WWE once his contract was up. But honestly, in the alternate reality where the WrestleMania plans didn't get derailed by Roman Reigns's cancer reemergence, part of me wonders if he'd have been persuaded to stay. The heel turn on Seth Rollins was always planned. Matter of fact, to hear Seth tell it, the boys were actually given an option to wait and remain a team at least for a week or two given the emotional nature of the night, but they ultimately decided to go with the original plan. We all know what happened then. But if Roman had been healthy, at least according to Dave Metlzer, the plan was to have Roman Reigns vs. Dean Ambrose at WrestleMania. Win or lose, that would likely have been Dean's biggest Mania match ever, because I guarantee you Roman would have given him a hell of a lot more than Brock Lesnar did, and poo poo, the match may have even been for the Universal Championship. Would the build to that match have been better than "the fans are stinky"? Maybe not, but I certainly think it's a possibility, especially given the presumable magnitude of the match. Would that program have been enough to rejuvenate Dean Ambrose enough so that he wouldn't die so that Jon Moxley might live? To hear Jon tell it, I think probably not, but it certainly may have stood a chance. Would AEW be in as strong of a position? Probably so, at least mostly, but the show might not have Jon Moxley, who, as the first major "jumper", in my opinion has given AEW a real air of "holy poo poo, they're not loving around" that the promotion has really benefited from. What If...The Nexus Had Beaten John Cena's Team Of Stupid Idiots At Summerslam? This one is tricky. According to some, the Nexus was dead by like, week two or three, well before The Dumbest Match Ending Ever. However, for my money, I'm not so sure. Now let me be clear, I don't think The Nexus would still be going or would be talked about like The Shield or Evolution or The Four Horsemen or The Elite or anything like that, but I do think it's at least a reasonable assumption to say that the group may have remained hotter and made more stars than it did. The fact that both Edge and Chris Jericho, the latter of whom can do basically no wrong in terms of wrestling in 2020 (sans boosting Jake Hager) both lobbied for JCTOSI to put the new guys over and the fact that Cena has said in the years since he regrets refusing to do it lends credence to the idea. I tend to think at the very least Wade Barrett may have gotten a top run out of it. Would Justin Gabriel have perhaps become a good high flying babyface after eventually getting kicked to the curb by Wade? Would the real breakout star of the situation have been Me, Michael Tarver? What If...Vince Hadn't Been A loving Idiot About The Invasion? To me this one might be the biggest yet. I know WWE says they thought the guaranteed contracts of guys like Goldberg, The nWo, et. al. were too much at the time, but you know a decision was botched when even WWE produced fluff pieces have started to openly talk about how badly the company hosed up that golden opportunity. I can all but promise you if the WWE HAD immediately brought in those stars and booked it even one scintilla like how fans would have fantasy booked it, they'd have made their money back tenfold. What dream matches would we have gotten? Goldberg/Austin at the height of their stardoms? Sting/Undertaker before it would just be sad? Ric Flair vs. HHH perhaps years before the days of Evolution? It's a truly wild thought experiment. What sort of ripple effects might it have had? Would WWE perhaps not have run off so many Attitude Era rabid fans? Would Sting have a WWE Championship run to speak of? Those are just three I could initially think of. I'm sorry if this OP sucks or the topic isn't as intriguing to y'all as it is to me, but I hope this takes off because I think it could be fun! Post your own, weigh in on others, go hog wild! Just please don't be dicks. I like my threads to be happy places.  What say you all?
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Mar 23, 2020 09:38
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I did a big fantasy booking alt-universe take on the Invasion in the old Fantasy Booking Thread, I'll see if I can dig that up. Until then, one of the biggest What If's? in wrestling to me would be "What If Hogan had done the job clean to Sting at Starrcade 97?" 18 months of build thrown in the toilet trying to capitalize on Montreal and Hogan's ego led to Sting's run as Top Guy being aborted before it was truly born. What if it had gone differently? Paul Heyman said in the Monday Night Wars documentary that when Sting won the title WCW had something truly unique: a world champion who was a complete mystery. How could you capitalize on that intrigue? What was next for the New World Order now that their leaders had both been decisively vanquished? What could have been done differently with Bret, or Goldberg, or Dallas Page in a world where The Icon was allowed to truly run with the ball? Another big one is also Sting Related: What If WWE had pushed Dolph Ziggler after Survivor Series 2014? It is well known that originally Roman Reigns was supposed to run roughshod over the main event of Team Cena vs Team Authority, but Roman was injured. In a bizarre twist, rather than change the booking of the match in any way, they kept the booking the exact same and slotted then-fan-favorite Dolph Ziggler into Roman's hero slot. And Dolph ran with it in what would prove to be one of the best performances of his career. Dolphs unexpected heroism blew the lid off the arena, fighting 1 on 3 against the Authority's biggest guns including young hotshot Seth Rollins and all of Triple H and Stephanie's power to cheat without consequences. The Show-Off was a world beater in that match, and after almost a decade of start-stop pushes the fans were hungry for it, even more so when he got the rub from Sting's WWE debut to secure the victory and send the Authority off TV, the come-uppance fans had waited for literal years to see for those dastardly heels. Shortly after that match ended Dolph was buried, in fact his role in the match wasn't even mentioned after that night. What if instead WWE had seen that reaction and for once in their lives struck while the iron was hot?
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Mar 23, 2020 10:27
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What if... the Kurt/Steph/HHH love triangle had finished in ANY other way? Like, don't get me wrong, Kurt was being a huge dick going after Stephanie in any case etc but anything, absolutely anything, would have been better than the angle ending with Triple H just unceremoniously beating Kurt and then aggressively kissing Stephanie while covered in blood (from memory) then kind of stomping off up the ramp and... that was it? There were so many different ways they could have taken it that would have worked, not least of all which would have been Stephanie lambasting them both for treating her like a prize to be won, or Kurt being shown up for toying with her emotions in order to get a rise out of Triple H, or Triple H beating Kurt but ultimately losing because Steph took pity on Kurt etc.
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Mar 23, 2020 10:37
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What if...Kota Ibushi and/or Zack Sabre Jr. stuck around in WWE after the Cruiserweight Classic Tournament? Before the obvious answer of “Cuck Angle #3452” or “One or two major title chances before jobber obscurity,” let’s think for a second. Both Ibushi and ZSJ were huge names going into the tournament, and if they had signed contracts it’s likely one of them would have won the whole thing, possibly against the other. Would that push have merited them both being the faces of 205Live instead of the cast of characters we ended up with? Moreover, does that possibly derail the Neville heel turn/creation of Bastard PAC? Would Ibushi have gotten a spot similar to Nakamura (major Japanese star w/ occasional title push)? Part of me thinks they’d both do okay for a bit, particularly Ibushi (sadly, I think ZSJ would be relegated to the same creative-has-nothing-for-you hell that other technical wrestlers continuously find themselves in, but who knows?). FWIW both made the right call in not signing.
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Mar 23, 2020 18:24
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what if the steroid trial sent vince to prison i dont actually know anything about wrestling in that period, someone else would have to jump in here
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Mar 23, 2020 18:35
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Ad by Khad posted:what if the steroid trial sent vince to prison Supposedly he had Jerry Jarrett (I think?) lined up to take his place if that happened. I don’t know enough about Jerry to say what that would’ve meant for the company, nor do I know how long a prison sentence Vince might have faced, but I imagine 90s WWF would’ve ended up looking a lot more like 80s Memphis. It’s also reeeeeeally interesting to think what implications that would have on Jeff’s career, the Monday night war, and the founding of TNA. Cool thread Foochs!
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Mar 23, 2020 18:51
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What if Pillman doesn't get in the wreck? If you watch his press conference introducing him, they had plans for him. Pillman at full health vs HBK. Pillman vs Bret. And so on. What if Sting doesn't tear his ACL during his coronation vs Flair? What if Magnum TA doesn't get in a car wreck What if Hogan bails on the nWo heel turn
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Mar 23, 2020 19:01
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What if Vince McMahon went down in the steroid trial? Evidently Vince McMahon was going to entrust the running of the company to Jerry Jarrett in the event that he went to prison for the steroid trials. Judging from Jerry's role in TNA 7 years later it might be fair to say that the results would not have been good; his ceiling was booking 80's territorial wrestling, not a national wrestling company as was evidenced in TNA. The possibility of WWE not weathering the storm of WCW and the rise of the nWo is certainly there, questioning whether Jerry would have been up to changing with the times towards the edgier product that was a byproduct of the cultural zeitgeist of the 90's (rather than sliding into it as it was waning) is quite valid. And if WWE didn't survive it's very likely that by the early 2000s WCW would be dead anyway due to its utterly incompetent business structure and Ted Turner being phased out as part of the Time Warner/AOL merger. Beyond that; depending on the timeframe involved Shawn definitely would have been signed to WCW, creating a political apocalypse between the clique and Hulk Hogan which would have been accelerant on the fire. ECW wasn't going to take the throne because even without his roster getting pillaged the product Heyman was putting out was not palatable to networks or advertisers. So it's fully possible that professional wrestling in the United States would be dead on the national level unless another David Khan came along and threw enough money into the industry to create something whole cloth. Which would have been possible; the talent was absolutely there. El Gallinero Gros posted:What if Hogan bails on the nWo heel turn If it wasn't Hogan I think it was supposed to be Sting. A Sting led nWo very likely would have been successful for awhile but likely not successful enough to threaten WWE at the time (Unless Hogan squashed it like he did the Dungeon of Doom). Without an impetus to change it's possible that the "New Generation" would have persisted throughout the decade. It's also possible that Vince McMahon (his brain having not fully calcified at this point) would have had the wherewithal to change with the time, Austin's push and resultant popularity was largely independent of the rise of the nWo after all, and history would have gone on not terribly different then the history we're familiar with, it just wouldn't have been as memorable. I'll add one to the pile What if Owen Hart didn't break Steve Austin's neck? Austin's run up top would have lasted much longer for starters. Also Austin would have been willing to work a main event program with Owen (unless he didn't think much of Owen for other reasons). If that happened it was less likely that Owen would have been shunted to the midcard and stuck with the Blue Blazer gimmick. Which meant he might have lived. Of course it's more likely Vince would have refused to push him anyway due to spite and Owen's fate would not change. After all, even with Austin unwilling to work a program with him Owen was still one of the WWE's best assets in a time they needed him most and he STILL got stuck in that stupid gimmick. ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 19:04
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If convicted, Vince probably would've been sent to a "Club Fed" style prison, so while Jarrett would've been handling the day-to-day, hands on stuff, I could totally see Vince calling everyday to "advise".
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Mar 23, 2020 19:19
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ChrisBTY posted:What if Vince McMahon went down in the steroid trial? If WWF had collapsed during WCW's boom years of 97-98 and they had taken on-board the real powerhouse talent and more importantly the backstage people, could WCW have been saved? It is well known that WCW's death came down to three factors: management's inability to control prima donna talent, certain people business side wanting it to die because of personal distaste for the industry, and Russo's booking. Can any or all of those three be avoided with the influx of WWF's people? Could the sheer scale of business expansion to potential 6-8 point ratings have shut up dickhead executives who just wanted these carnies off their TV channel? Could people who had known and worked with Vince Russo have kept him in check, or depending on when WWF goes down could Vince Russo have never had main booking power? Could people with experience handling guys like Shawn and Hogan from the 80s and early 90s have had the key to reign them in so they could book a god drat wrestling show, or could the sheer number of top talents have given the Fed the leverage to FORCE Hogan to play ball or lose his spot? EDIT: also keep in mind that one of the reasons ECW's product was unpalitable to national networks and advertisers was because of the talent pillaging forcing him into a more extreme direction. If WWF folds he might have been able to maintain the type of product he was putting on in 97-98 with the likes of Taz and the Dudleys, which was edgy but not totally incompatible with the mainstream, at least with some tweaking. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 19:21
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Hogan's creative control was only half the problem with Hogan. The other half was Bischoff being fully crammed up his rear end making sure he never had to actually exercise it. Bischoff's creative vision being utterly myopic would have hamstrung their future since even in his book he wouldn't bullshit having ever been interested in pushing young talent to a main event level ('I pushed the old guys because the old guys were the draw' said Bischoff flat-out). Being that unprepared for the future would have really bitten them on the rear end no matter what.
ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 19:26
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What if Inoki doesn't have Ogawa attack Hishimoto during the rubber match or feed Nagata to Cro-crop?
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Mar 23, 2020 19:29
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SatoshiMiwa posted:What if Inoki doesn't have Ogawa attack Hishimoto during the rubber match or feed Nagata to Cro-crop? Along these lines: what if Akira Maeda "finishes" Andre the Giant off when he shoots on him? (For those unaware, Maeda lit Andre up for not cooperating with leg kicks and brought him to his knees, then looked at a second to see if it was a good idea to finish him off, and got a no, I assume he was gonna headshot him)
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Mar 23, 2020 19:36
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Magnum T.A. Would've had a serious push in the NWA, perhaps winning the World title instead of Ronnie Garvin. But as the NWA preferred a heel champ, would've quickly dropped it back. Vince would then sign him to the WWF, where, at best, Magnum would get a brief run with the IC belt (perhaps being the one to end Honky's reign), but he would rise no farther than a mid-carder. He would then return to the NWA/WCW, but by now would be overshadowed by the likes of Luger, Sting, and the Steiners, and he would never get back on track, since the audience would now view him as "old school".
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Mar 23, 2020 19:58
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Davros1 posted:Magnum T.A. Imagine his gold watch run as Magnum TNA
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Mar 23, 2020 20:05
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Great thread idea, op
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Mar 23, 2020 20:16
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What if Brock Lesnar signs with NJPW instead of WWE? WCW, WWE and New Japan were all after Brock in 2000. What if somehow New Japan wins the bidding? Does Brock burn out on wrestling as quickly or at all? How quickly is Brock sent to do MMA? Does he dominate with limited training and transition sooner? If he ever goes to UFC is he as big of a star without the WWE run? What does WWE look like in 2002 with no Lesnar? Does Austin "take his ball and go home" or do they manage not to piss him off without a monster to get over? The entire wrestling and MMA landscape could have changed if one guy makes a different decision.
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Mar 23, 2020 21:57
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Brock Lesnar vs. Bob Sapp in the main event of Wrestling World 2004 
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Mar 23, 2020 22:32
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Jerusalem posted:Brock Lesnar vs. Bob Sapp in the main event of Wrestling World 2004 Does Nagata get sent out to die if they have Lesnar? Or do even more people get sent out to die when they think Lesnar means guys like Nagata can definitely do it too!
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Mar 23, 2020 22:48
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SamuraiFoochs posted:What If...Vince Hadn't Been A loving Idiot About The Invasion? As promised I went back to the old Armchair Booking thread from 2017 and found the "What If," scenario I wrote out for an alternate Invasion. I share it here, for anyone so bored due to the plague that they're actually willing to read my wrestling fanfiction. quote:In the Year of Our Lord 2001, the midway point of Wrestlemania 17 sees the ultimate comeuppance for years of dirtbaggery from one Vince McMahon. His son, Shane, having stolen World Championship Wrestling from his father just hours beforehand, helps his mother revive from a catatonic state so she can boot Vince right in the jewels, and as Trish Stratus takes out the trash that is his sister, Shane places a some trash of his own against Vince's skull and delivers the Coast 2 Coast, securing a pinfall. The Boss has been humiliated. But the night is not over.
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Mar 24, 2020 01:21
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What if Tony Schiavone got promoted to Executive Producer of WCW in 1993 instead of Eric Bischoff?
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Mar 24, 2020 02:50
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MassRafTer posted:What if Brock Lesnar signs with NJPW instead of WWE? Wait, no, I want the world where WCW gets him.
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Mar 24, 2020 03:25
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Endless Mike posted:Wait, no, I want the world where WCW gets him. WCW spends a bunch of money on him, dies, then WWE picks him up once the guaranteed money is gone.
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Mar 24, 2020 03:31
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WCW 2000 with Brock? loving incredible to imagine. ...or no, wait... that means that Brock is part of the WCW Invasion! :O
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Mar 24, 2020 03:31
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What if Seth Rollings didn't almost kill Sting? Would he have ever won a WWE match?!
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Mar 24, 2020 03:52
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MassRafTer posted:What if Brock Lesnar signs with NJPW instead of WWE? Young Brock vs CroCrop would be a fascinating fight as Brock would either completely out wrestle him or lose as quick as Nagata did and I'm not sure which would be more likely
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Mar 24, 2020 03:57
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What if... Genichiro Tenryu doesn't leave AJPW in 1990 to form SWS? What if... Art Barr had not died prematurely? Mere weeks after his landmark Hair vs. Mask tag match with Eddie Guerrero against El Hijo del Santo & Octagón, Art Barr was found dead in his home in November 1994. Eddie regarded Barr as a peer & mentor, and his absence was no doubt one of the more potent destabilizing factors of his life. With more time under Barr's tutelage, could Eddie have overcome enough of his self-confidence issues and demons that it all could've turned out differently, especially in regards to one Chris Benoit? Or, since Barr was a rapist on the lam and died of a probable drug overdose, would his presence would only serve to hasten Eddie's demise? What if... Kazuchika Okada received a stronger push while on excursion in TNA?
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Mar 24, 2020 04:11
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Coaaab posted:What if... Kazuchika Okada received a stronger push while on excursion in TNA? I wonder if wrestling fans even remember that there was a Green Hornet movie out when they did the Okada thing
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Mar 24, 2020 04:20
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Coaaab posted:What if... Kazuchika Okada received a stronger push while on excursion in TNA? It was an excursion and Okada was still a young boy. He might have had some really good matches and then Okada goes back to Japan and does Okada things. TNA would only have been able to capitalize so much even if they were on the ball. Alternately: Okada never bonds with the Bucks which prevents Bullet Club, The Elite and AEW from ever forming.
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Mar 24, 2020 04:35
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ChrisBTY posted:It was an excursion and Okada was still a young boy. He might have had some really good matches and then Okada goes back to Japan and does Okada things. TNA would only have been able to capitalize so much even if they were on the ball. This is the dumbest excuse. You can do a lot of cool things with a wrestler in over a year. Especially when you are told by their promotion that they are planning big things for this person and want him treated well. The freaking Dragon Lee/Hiromu feud got hot while Hiromu was on excursion. TNA buried a guy for no reason and now 10 years later New Japan still hates their guts and will never work with them even under new ownership in part because of that.
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Mar 24, 2020 05:14
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Hirez posted:What if Seth Rollings didn't almost kill Sting? Would he have ever won a WWE match?! I wonder if we would have gotten that Undertaker-Sting match.
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Mar 24, 2020 05:26
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So when WWE re-split the brands in 2016, they went on a signing spree, bringing in a ton of new talent in as well as bringing some old talent back to bolster the rosters a bit. This includes Jinder Mahal, who, outside of a funny (and simultaneously sad) bit with former 3MB partner Heath Slater on his first night back and a few meaningless wins on Superstars and Main Event, loses pretty much every match he has for the next 6 months. WWE, shortly after Wrestlemania 33, decide there are some plentiful overseas markets they could be tapping into and decide to focus on India first. Their big strategy for doing so? Spend the next several months building an Indian champion! The problem? They don't really have any Indian wrestlers! Proven draw Great Khali has at this point retired, the Singh Brothers are a cruiserweight tag team act and never going to be much more than that in WWE, AoP's Akam is, similarly, a tag team guy, and currently in NXT. They have a couple of performance center trainees but nobody with any real name value. But wait! We have (Canadian citizen) Jinder! Who then proceeds to inexplicably win a 6-way #1 Contender's match on Smackdown and get 3 weeks of TV wins in a row against guys he really shouldn't be beating for where he was a month and a half ago. Jinder then goes 8-2 in televised singles matches (with 1 loss being by DQ) before mercifully dropping the title to AJ, in what would end up being Jinder's best match as champion (and probably in general?) on a UK tour episode of Smackdown 2 weeks before Survivor Series. This is in order to avoid the much dreaded (or anticipated, depending on how into schadenfreude you were) scenario of the Champion vs Champion match being Brock vs Jinder. Jinder's title reign is dropped before they make it to the India tour, which got pared down to a single date due to low ticket sales, Jinder's match was losing to Triple H in the main event, and outside of some house show rematches with AJ and the occasional mention on commentary, Jinder's reign is promptly forgotten. My question is: What if WWE took its time with the Jinder push? What if they spent the summer building Jinder up as a legitimate contender, and had the India tour headlined by him challenging for the WWE title instead of hot-shotting the belt onto him and figuring out how to make it work later? What if they tried to make him a face, which you'd think would make for a better draw since the people you're trying to market to aren't being told their "representative" in your company is a cheating coward? Give him the Becky Lynch 2018 treatment, where he just racks up a series of modest wins over increasingly credible opponents, maybe stick him with a manager (except those don't exist anymore) so they can do the talking for him, since he's pretty so-so at it. Give him some kind of actual accomplishments and momentum before you throw your title with 50 years of history and prestige randomly on the first bearded brown guy who walks by your office. Would fans reject this? Would they see the writing on the wall as plainly as they did with Roman? Would a slow build even work for someone like Jinder, who most people already know isn't a good wrestler? There was a pretty sizable contingent of people at the time who were ironically rooting for Jinder because it was "funny" to have such a massive jobber as world champion out of nowhere (and because Randy as champ again was boring), though the sentiment of actively hoping for WWE to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot was definitely not as strong 3 years ago as it is right now. My prevailing theory is that if they tried to do it this way then Vince would've gotten bored with it/realized what a bad idea it was by the time the India tour rolled around and either dumped Jinder from title contention completely or just have him lose the match and not ever have been champion. TriffTshngo fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 10:08
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Jinder was bad but I personally saw him getting one of the largest reactions on a Smackdown here in Toronto due to a huge Indo-Canadian crowd in attendance, and that wasn't ironic cheering. That's something WWE could have definitely capitalized on. I really like the idea of having him chase the title on the India tour.
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Mar 24, 2020 14:08
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MassRafTer posted:This is the dumbest excuse. You can do a lot of cool things with a wrestler in over a year. Especially when you are told by their promotion that they are planning big things for this person and want him treated well. The freaking Dragon Lee/Hiromu feud got hot while Hiromu was on excursion. TNA buried a guy for no reason and now 10 years later New Japan still hates their guts and will never work with them even under new ownership in part because of that. Hell ROH didn't roll out the red carpet for Takaaki Watanabe, but they didn't treat him with utter disrespect like TNA did with Okada either. And now, everything is EVIL.
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Mar 24, 2020 14:47
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MassRafTer posted:What if Brock Lesnar signs with NJPW instead of WWE? wwf in 2002 likely is a whole lot of Undertaker and probably Shawn Michaels carrying the promotion. Smackdown is a completely different beast entirely because without Paul Heyman's creative input while he was managing Brock for the first six months of the year, who knows if he even gets the ball to book SmackDown at that point in time. No way of knowing how this ends up. Maybe it just lands in Bruce Prichards hands. This likely means no Smackdown Six, Cena slips through the cracks and is cut over being too green, Vince doesn't get spooked with the threat of "We're gonna build them up as these huge superstars then they just LEAVE!?" complex he got after Rock and Brock left in quick succession and we maybe dont get as hardcore of a "push the brand not the wrestlers" modus operandi they work with, there are probably crazy long term ramifications from this butterfly effect.
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Mar 24, 2020 15:37
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Coaaab posted:What if... Kazuchika Okada received a stronger push while on excursion in TNA? It's interesting to wonder if maybe NJPW would never have gotten cozy with ROH if this happened TNA making GBS threads on Okada and ruining a Wrestle Kingdom resulted in a grudge that still exists to this day
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Mar 24, 2020 15:46
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Ad by Khad posted:It's interesting to wonder if maybe NJPW would never have gotten cozy with ROH if this happened njpw was already one foot out the door with that relationship as it is, the treatment of No Limit, throwing Tanahashi and Nakamura on Xplosion when they were flown over for dates, doing IWGP title switches without permission
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Mar 24, 2020 15:50
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Yea you're right, the IWGP tag title stuff was pretty gigantically boneheaded
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Mar 24, 2020 16:05
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ChrisBTY posted:It was an excursion and Okada was still a young boy. He might have had some really good matches and then Okada goes back to Japan and does Okada things. TNA would only have been able to capitalize so much even if they were on the ball.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:22
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Ad by Khad posted:TNA (...) ruining a Wrestle Kingdom Wasn't the Naito-Hardy match so bad it derailed Naito's push?
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Mar 24, 2020 16:49
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