"what if?"(warning: very long...)

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

"What if?"

 

Two very simple words that can seemingly open up a Pandora's Box of events that never happened. For instance, what if Micheal Jordan had missed that final jump shot at the buzzer during Game 6 of the NBA Finals 4 years ago? Would the Bulls have won or would Jordan have bowed out in defeat? Although he actually made the shot, it's thinking about what would have happened if he hadn't hit it that gets me thinking. This concept can even be applied to things outside of sports as in History(What if Abraham Lincoln had never been assassinated, would Reconstruction and the scandals in the later presidencies have gone differently?).

 

 

In the world of wrestling, the phrase "What if?" takes on a whole new meaning because the fates of many promotions hinged on one single defining event to shape whether it survives or joins the ever-growing wasteland of could-havebeens like the AWA. When you take a look back at the history of some of the greatest promotions that thrived in the US before 2001(the death of 2 out of the Big 3), one specific event(or in the WWF's case, three) determined the survival or failure of a wrestling federation, or the career of a once promising rising star.

 

 

Let's take George Hackenschmidt, for example: On April 3, 1908, Hackenschmidt was set to face Frank Gotch to defend the World Catch-as-Catch-Can Title, and during the match, Gotch constantly fouled him and even before the match, had oiled himself up so that George couldn't get a hold of him. Hackenschmidt gets frustrated and storms out of the ring and Gotch wins the title. The two later on have another match on September 4, 1911, which Frank also wins due to Hackenschmidt injuring his knee.

 

 

Now, what if Frank Gotch had never cheated and lost the match to George? Would wrestling history have changed that much? Some might say, "No way", but there is proof that even little things like certain people getting fired or injured have changed the course of wrestling history.

 

 

Now let's speed up the timetable to 1975 and a(then) NWA midcard heel named Ric Flair. Some people don't know that Ric broke his back in a plane crash in '75 and was sidelined for two years as a result. What if he had never recovered and had retired after only being the NWA TV Champion once? Sure, many people may say, "Well, Flair's been around forever and he's old.", yet they have NO CLUE about how much of wrestling's modern history revolves around this man and his lengthy career. What if Flair HAD retired in '75 and had never became the 16-time World Champion as many know him by today? What if all the wannabe wrestlers who watched NWA programing during Flair's glory years had never seen the guy who may have inspired them to become wrestlers themselves? Or, even better, what if he had retired and the NWA could never find someone to do what he did during his main event years in the NWA/WCW?

 

 

Flair is not the only superstar who has significantly revolutionized the business just by his mere presence. Hulk Hogan, who is considered by many to be the best wrestler ever, has shaped the fates of every single federation he has ever had a job in. If you go back to 1983 during the rejuvenation of the AWA, you'll notice a certain mega-over babyface who was constantly getting screwed out of the World Title because Vern Gagne was too stubborn to recognize that the old ways weren't drawing in the 80's and that giving the AWA World Title to Hogan at "Super Sunday" would have both drawn buckets full of money and would have helped keep the promotion alive, but it was not to be.

 

 

Oddly enough, Hogan's exit from the AWA opens up another can of worms. Undefeated since winning the WWWF Title(renamed the WWF Title later on) in 1979, Bob Backlund had been a popular champion for years, but to Vince McMahon, Jr., he was considered to be a mid-level draw compared to the millions of dollars that "WWF Champion Hulk Hogan" could make for him, so in December of '84 during a routine title defense against the Iron Shiek, Backlund's manager(Arnold Skaaland) threw in the towel after Shiek locked in his Camel Clutch submission and won the match and the title. Although there has been some dispute as to whether or not the whole thing was a shoot, Backlund was still screwed and Vince had his first opponent for Hogan to claim his first WWF Title. See? Little events(Gagne not giving Hogan the title) trigger promotion-altering events(Hogan joining the WWF and winning the title while Backlund got screwed). But what if Hogan had gotten the AWA World Title like he wanted back in 1983? Would he have stayed on with Vern? Or would he have jumped to the WWF eventually?

 

 

Sadly though(for WCW), that wasn't the last time decisions Hogan made caused the future death of a promotion.

 

 

Okay, just about EVERY internet wrestling fan is familiar with the events surrounding Hogan's termination in the WWF, but little did Vince know that he indirectly created the superstar that would later on save his WWF from dying the same painful death that the AWA suffered. Let's take a lil look back now, shall we?

 

 

The year is 1993. The event is WrestleMania IX at the conclusion of the main event of Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna. Bret has just been cheated out of his WWF Title by Yoko and the Hulkster comes out. He lays down a challenge and Yoko accepts and the match begins immediately. The "match" lasts not even 2 minutes before Hogan has once again won the WWF Title and there is a pretty bad fan backlash against the entire ordeal. See, eariler, Hogan went to Vince and demanded to win the WWF Title and retire with it, something Vince WASN'T going to allow. So, in order for Hogan to get the title, he would have to first agree to job the belt to Bret at KOTR in four months and then he could retire. Hogan agrees and the match is changed. Immediately, Hogan says that he will not be jobbing to Hart and takes a couple of months off to film more movies. This pisses Vince off and at King of The Ring, Hogan is beaten down and humiliated by Yokozuna, even pinned by his own finisher, the legdrop.

 

 

Hogan and his friends are fired after the show and Hogan takes a year off to make a couple of more movies before WCW offers him a big contract and winning the WCW World Title in his first match with the promotion. At this point, you are probably asking, "Yes, we know all of this, why go over it again?". The answer is simple if you keep on reading, silly.

 

 

Well, it is now 1994 in WCW and the company is taking a turn for the better with Ric Flair as booker after TERRIBLE year in '93. Flair is champion after beating Vader at Starrcade '93 and is grooming a young future superstar to be world champion by going over Flair himself. The signing of Hulk Hogan in '94 killed that booking plan right out of the blocks as Flair stepped down as booker and did a hasty heel turn to be Hogan's first opponent and beat him for the WCW Title. Of course, Hogan wins, and later on imports all his friends from the old WWF while forcing WCW loyalists like Sting and Lex Luger to be buried while "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, Honky Tonk Man, and Ed Lesile run amok and drive fans off in droves. During this time, the young superstar that Flair was grooming was US champion at the time and was coming off a heated feud with Ricky Steamboat(which was also Steamboat's last matches, unfortunately). He is given the US Title at Fall Brawl and then informed that he has to defend against Duggan, which results in him jobbing in 30 seconds to a friggin ROLL-UP OF ALL THINGS! The former champ gets a rematch at Halloween Havoc and loses again via DQ.

 

 

All of this results in the wrestler in question being sent to Japan to avoid hearing him complain and his later firing by fax by Eric Bischoff, joining up with ECW and mocking WCW in very memorable promos, and eventually signing with the WWF in 1995 as a midcard heel named the Ringmaster(get the picture yet?). He tolls away in the midcard til winning the King of the Ring in 96 and creating a catchphrase that made him into a superstar, nationwide celebrity, AND a 6-time WWF Champion.

 

 

The guy I'm talking about? Why it's Stone Cold Steve Austin, foo'!

 

 

Steve Austin is living proof that even the little things that seem insignificant at the time can become something huge, but then again....

 

"What if?"

[Guest]

Always Pissed Off,

 

Not a bad column.  I haven't read any of your other stuff, but I have to say it didn't really go anywhere.  You pose a lot of 'what if?' questions without giving any of your own theories in response to it, which leaves the column a little on the pointless side, in my opinion.  If you had just left the column as a restrospective look at apparently insignificant events, which ended up having a huge effect on the business that would have been fine, but when you base the column around 'what if?' scenarios, you really have to anser the questions you pose.

 

Hackenschmidt cheated in the match against Frank Gotch.  What do you think would have happened if he hadn't done that?  Wrestling would have less heel-type characters today and be more purely athletically based?

 

Flair broke his back in 75.  What do you think would have happened to the NWA if he hadn't?  Hogan refused to job to Bret Hart in 93.  What do you think would have happened to either Hogan, Bret or the WWF if he had done as he said?  Austin was held back in WCW after Hogan arrived.  What do you think would have happened to wrestling if Hogan had just retired in 93 and Austin had his run as WCW World champion?  Austin 3:16 would never have happened, wrestling wouldn't have launched back into mainstream awareness the way it did, and neither Hogan or Austin would be as wealthy as they are today.

 

Or maybe they would have been anyway.  You can wonder about 'what ifs' until the cows come home, but the cookies didn't crumble that way, so sepnding too much time thinking about it is a pretty futile exercise.  Maybe the sun won't come up tomorrow if you don't wash your hair.  

 

Major events happen not just because of one specific incident, but because of a multitude of events occurring at once within a given time frame.  There's so many variables to take into consideration that predicting the future - whether it be politically, financially, or wrestling related - is an impossible task.  That would be Chaos Theory for you.  

 

Over here in the UK, the Queen Mother just died.  Her husband George only became British King back in the 1930's when his elder brother Edward abdicated so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.  It later transpired that Edward was a nazi-sympathiser who had meetings with Hitler.  What if King Edward had never met Wallis Simpson and had remained monarch as we went into World War Two?  The chances are that the whole of Europe would be speaking German right now and the world would be a very different place indeed.

 

Luckily enough, Edward fell in love with an American divorcee, and as a result we don't live under the Third Reich.  Is it that simple?  Of course not.  And was it that clear cut at the time?  Of course not.  

 

The passing of time makes it easy to believe we can make sense of why specific events shaped things the way they did, and how things would have transpired differntly had those events not happened.  But the bottom line is, we don't know.  Offering an alternative scenario of history can be an interesting exercise, but merely asking the 'what if?' question is pretty obvious.

 

However in saying all that, I would be interested to hear how you think fate would have played out had any of the events you listed gone down differently to they way they did.