Without Steve Austin, how'd wrestling be different?

[I'll See Ya Kia]

I recently watched :finger: HOF ceremony and I admit it brought tears to my eyes to see someone get such a touching ovation for his contribution to wrestling.

Given that there were 3 companies fifteen years ago with great support, I ask you guys what might have happened had :finger: never existed.

It's easy to say WCW was ruined and ECW had $ difficulty but without :finger:

Would all 3 companies still exist? How would your viewing pleasures be different?

 

[Farooq]

ECW would still be gone due to bad funds, WCW would have been gone also since : and his gimmick pole was around, so most likely WWE would still be around. Maybe not a lot of memorable stuff as Stone Cold did, but I think they had enough people to win the ratings.

 

[Matt]

its difficult to know what could have been. maybe they would have found somebody else that had the impact that Austin did. i don't want to pretend like I'd know how things would have turned out

 

[Leo C]

I don't know. Well, there are those rumors that say HHH was supposed to win KOTR in '96. Maybe he would've gotten a similar push... I'm not sure, really.

 

[Dolph'sZiggler]

I don't think much would have changed. WWE was always destined to win the Monday Night Wars.. SCSA's emergence probably just accelerated the process.

 

[I'll See Ya Kia]

Maybe I was told wrong, but I heard WWE was in serious financial difficulty in '96, which is why Bret Hart was let go. Things with Shawn and Diesel (as champions) didn't go well and they had to cut back on salaries of all their workers. This led to many jumping to WCW and the terrible ego fight between Bret and Vince. The steroid scandal and the BodyBuilder venture set Vince back a pretty penny.

I don't have the numbers backing this, so I didn't post sooner .

 

[Dolph'sZiggler]

I have no facts or figures to back up this hypothesis, but I would imagine that 'serious financial difficulty' is an exaggeration. They let go of Bret Hart because he had a ridiculous 10 year contract worth idk how much. Way more than Hart was worth. They had bad years in 95 and 96 while WCW was peaking, but WWF had a muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch smarter business model than WCW. WCW was just burning through Ted Turner's money like crazy. They had dozens of guys in the locker room making bank that never were shown on TV.

WCW was never going to sustain their success the way they were being run

 

[Leo C]

Yeah, WCW got worse and worse by itself, WWF got better and better and although the AE brought many more fans to the product, WCW still did some pretty stupid stuff by itself. They spent lots of money.

 

[Dolph'sZiggler]

Here is an excellent write up of some of WCW's follies by some random dickhead on another forum:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3246153

This company would have drove itself out of business even without Vince McMahon's help

 

[Lockard 23]

How I'd miss this thread?

As far as the Bret Hart thing goes, Vince has admitted that he lied about letting him go because of "financial problems." He said in an interview on Off The Record in February 1998 that he felt Bret was becoming a nuisance backstage and he also felt he lost a step in the ring. He was also already shopping his company around Wallstreet (looking to make it a public company) and the investors he was talking to suggested getting rid of any long term financial commitments (such as Bret's ten year contract.)

As for the topic, WWE would have still won the war. Vince himself stated in 2007 that WCW did more to drive themselves out of business than WWE did. Obviously, things would have happened a bit differently at first (since Austin was the main factor in shifting momentum to the WWF's side), but I think they most likely would have pushed Triple H sooner, especially when he become leader of DX after Shawn left. They also would have still been able to count upon The Rock eventually.

 

[Danielson]

I personally think if SCSA never existed the wwe would have been fine and WcW would have imploded on their own just like they did.

 

[Dolph'sZiggler]

They also would have still been able to count upon The Rock eventually.

People forget that the Rock was drawing more in 2000 than Austin ever drew in 98 or 99.

 

[Lockard 23]

People forget that the Rock was drawing more in 2000 than Austin ever drew in 98 or 99.

That's probably more to do with the WWE in general getting hotter with every passing year (like the way 1999 was a better year for business than 1998) than Rock being superior to Austin, although 2000 was the Rock's prime.

 

[Dolph'sZiggler]

I wasn't trying to say Rock > Austin, just saying Rock became the bigger draw. Rock was going to be the man regardless of anything to do with SCSA