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The problem with doing Starrcade in Chicago, was not that they were not over in Chicago. It was they alienated their home markets by running their biggest show in Chicago. Crockett worried too much about running shows on the West Coast and the Northeast, instead of keeping their home market strong.

 

Cornette said in Flair's book To Be The Man that if Crockett had went back to running 90% of the shows in the South they probably wouldn't have went bankrupt as fast. Then again, Dusty booking finishes that pissed off the fans on a repeated basis didn't help either.

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Thinking about the Undertaker streak and how he missed Mania X and 16. If he was not injured who would he been paired up against and would there be any chance that he loses?

Mania X I would think either Bigelow or Adam Bomb or maybe Earthquake returns as a heel.

16 it seemed like they were building to Undertaker vs Big Show before the injury. If that match happens does the four way main event become just HHH vs The Rock and Foley stays retired or does someone like Jericho get elevated into that slot?

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I don't think Jericho would have gotten elevated into that slot (they would have had to start pushing him earlier and faster). It probably would have just been HHH/Rock, maybe they make it a three way with Foley. Perhaps they do HHH/Foley at the Rumble and No Way Out like originally happened, except they hold off onto the retirement stipulation until WrestleMania.

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  • 3 weeks later...

What if when Flair walked out of WCW in March of 98 and had followed through with suing and had actually won? I see an inevitable title run with Austin but whatelse when does he retire?, how well does he adjust to the Attitude Era? 

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I love Flair as much as the next guy, but I don't see how he could work in the Attitude Era. One of the big selling points of the Attitude Era was that it didn't feature the old geezers that were all over WCW TV.

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Flair always seemed to be given a pass in the timeframe.  Wasn't he essentially one of the only two people (Goldberg being the other, I think) that consistently moved ratings when he was on-camera, back when that meant more than it does now?  In honesty, the only times I really heard anyone being negative about Flair in '98 was the never-ending Shane Douglas whining and one interview with DX-era Helmsley when he said he thought Flair was "too old" to make it in the fed.  Beyond that, guys like Ross, etc. were always positive & respectful and the crowds never gave him any particular hassle (especially with that "wooo" every time someone laid in a chop becoming noticeable during that era).

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Flair would've been a great anti-Austin heel. He was everything that Austin wasn't, he was well dressed, rich, rode in nice cars, surrounded himself with beautiful women and lived the high life. The fans could get behind the rich douche teaming with the boss to take down the common man. Jumping to the WWF in the late 90s would've given a nice jumpstart to his career.

 

Here's how I see it happening:

 

- Flair vs. Austin dominate 1998

 

- Rock turns heel at Survivor Series, becomes the Corporate Champion. Flair turns face in the process.

 

- Flair and Rock start feuding, Flair finally wins the WWF Championship on January 4th (resulting in Schiavone still stupidly spoiling it). Flair and Rock feud through St. Valentine's Day Massacre. 

 

- We end up with Flair/Vince at WrestleMania XV. 

 

- Crazy babyface Flair works through a lot of 1999.

 

The big loser here would be Mick Foley, who I don't see being pushed as hard in a WWF with Ric Flair on the scene.

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I read an interesting what if last night. I found it through some alternate history message board (yeah...its apparently a thing).

 

http://www.alternatehistory.com/Discussion/showthread.php?t=289798

 

A few of them were interesting. Most were far fetched. But this one had me thinking. It was about what if Mick Foley died at the King of The Ring by taking the throw off the top of the cell or the chokeslam into the ring and he ended up breaking his neck. How does wrestling recover from such a horrific thing?

 

 

We'd probably still be dealing with risky highspots, unprotected chairshots to the head and continuing to have a complete ignorance about concussions.

For as much bad press as the WWF got in the days after Foley's death (especially their decision to keep going with the show when it was obvious nobody in the audience wanted them to), it was Foley's autopsy that blew the lid off everything. Vince McMahon could have gotten away with business as more-or-less usual, sticking to his day-after statement of "a horrible, tragic, freak accident that could have happened during a simple body slam", but when the autopsy revealed that Foley had the brain of a 94-year-old dementia patient, well, that was harder to reconcile.

Instead, McMahon and Eric Bischoff in WCW had to make dramatic changes in an effort to stave off the potential of a Congressional hearing and a wrongful death suit by Colette Foley (both organizations settled with Foley before she filed). Chairshots to the head were immediately banned, as were most high-impact moves involving the head and neck. There was a push to ban all top-rope moves; the compromise was no top-rope moves to the floor, no topas and no top-rope moves inside the ring involving the head and neck of either the deliverer or the victim.

Paul Heyman sold ECW to Jerry Jarrett, who brought son Jeff in and began its transition to more traditional wrestling. Heyman considered retiring, but ultimately went to the WWF as a manager.

Interesting that it didn't have as much impact on the other edgier aspects of late-90s wrestling. Steve Austin was flipping middle fingers all the way to his passing-the-torch retirement match in 2010 with CM Punk. DX (Triple H, Eddie Guerrero, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall) told anyone and everyone to suck it, and blading was still acceptable until John Cena was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2004.

It's sad to think in these terms, but Foley did more to save wrestling by dying when and how he did than anything he could have done alive. If it wasn't him, if it wasn't SummerSlam, if it wasn't a head/neck injury, the push for reform may not have been as strong, and the bodies might still be piling up. People say putting the permanent WWE Hall of Fame on Long Island and giving Foley more room in it than Hogan, Austin, Rock and Andre combined was a thinly veiled method of CYA, but in the end, Foley did make the biggest (albeit most tragic) contribution to wrestling.

 

Also WrestleCrap apparently has or had a running series of Wrestling What If's. I thought this was a good one. Bruiser Brody if he wasn't murdered in Puerto Rico. Written as if he was doing a shoot video and he talks about the rest of his career from about 1988 to 1997 when he retires.

 

http://www.wrestlecrap.com/more/rewriting/what-if-bruiser-brody-hadnt-died/

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Wasn't the gun just something Hogan said, along the lines of "I thought he had a gun because NO ONE steps up to Andre without a gun"?

 

Think Bret mentioned it in his book as well, about them being in Japan, and them stopping the tour bus for it to be sorted out.

 

In the context that Andre is forever remembered as a racist, rather than murdered by Hulk Hogan, whilst Bad News becomes Nth America's Invader II is sort of a weird ideal.

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Wasn't the gun just something Hogan said, along the lines of "I thought he had a gun because NO ONE steps up to Andre without a gun"?

 

Think Bret mentioned it in his book as well, about them being in Japan, and them stopping the tour bus for it to be sorted out.

 

In the context that Andre is forever remembered as a racist, rather than murdered by Hulk Hogan, whilst Bad News becomes Nth America's Invader II is sort of a weird ideal.

 

Hogan's statement is just to show how dangerous Andre and Allen were, and the enormity of even the possibility of an all out shoot between the two. The idea of a foreigner having a gun in Japan is very slight, and I assume that Bad News would have wanted to handle this hand-to-hand. C'mon, people, don't diminish one of the great road stories!

-ISRTMD! (It's Still Real To Me, Dammit!),

RAF

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I read an interesting what if last night. I found it through some alternate history message board (yeah...its apparently a thing).

 

http://www.alternatehistory.com/Discussion/showthread.php?t=289798

 

A few of them were interesting. Most were far fetched. But this one had me thinking. It was about what if Mick Foley died at the King of The Ring by taking the throw off the top of the cell or the chokeslam into the ring and he ended up breaking his neck. How does wrestling recover from such a horrific thing?

 

 

We'd probably still be dealing with risky highspots, unprotected chairshots to the head and continuing to have a complete ignorance about concussions.

For as much bad press as the WWF got in the days after Foley's death (especially their decision to keep going with the show when it was obvious nobody in the audience wanted them to), it was Foley's autopsy that blew the lid off everything. Vince McMahon could have gotten away with business as more-or-less usual, sticking to his day-after statement of "a horrible, tragic, freak accident that could have happened during a simple body slam", but when the autopsy revealed that Foley had the brain of a 94-year-old dementia patient, well, that was harder to reconcile.

Instead, McMahon and Eric Bischoff in WCW had to make dramatic changes in an effort to stave off the potential of a Congressional hearing and a wrongful death suit by Colette Foley (both organizations settled with Foley before she filed). Chairshots to the head were immediately banned, as were most high-impact moves involving the head and neck. There was a push to ban all top-rope moves; the compromise was no top-rope moves to the floor, no topas and no top-rope moves inside the ring involving the head and neck of either the deliverer or the victim.

Paul Heyman sold ECW to Jerry Jarrett, who brought son Jeff in and began its transition to more traditional wrestling. Heyman considered retiring, but ultimately went to the WWF as a manager.

Interesting that it didn't have as much impact on the other edgier aspects of late-90s wrestling. Steve Austin was flipping middle fingers all the way to his passing-the-torch retirement match in 2010 with CM Punk. DX (Triple H, Eddie Guerrero, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall) told anyone and everyone to suck it, and blading was still acceptable until John Cena was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2004.

It's sad to think in these terms, but Foley did more to save wrestling by dying when and how he did than anything he could have done alive. If it wasn't him, if it wasn't SummerSlam, if it wasn't a head/neck injury, the push for reform may not have been as strong, and the bodies might still be piling up. People say putting the permanent WWE Hall of Fame on Long Island and giving Foley more room in it than Hogan, Austin, Rock and Andre combined was a thinly veiled method of CYA, but in the end, Foley did make the biggest (albeit most tragic) contribution to wrestling.

 

Also WrestleCrap apparently has or had a running series of Wrestling What If's. I thought this was a good one. Bruiser Brody if he wasn't murdered in Puerto Rico. Written as if he was doing a shoot video and he talks about the rest of his career from about 1988 to 1997 when he retires.

 

http://www.wrestlecrap.com/more/rewriting/what-if-bruiser-brody-hadnt-died/

 

Had me up until Eddie Guerrero in DX, which really makes no sense.

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Problem I have with that what if is its not another 4 years until Dr. Bennet Omalu finds the link between CTE and concusions.

 

This.

 

I'd say that Foley dying in the Hell in a Cell match just results in the gimmick being retired. That "what if" is a do-gooder fantasy that ignores A LOT of realities. 

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What if Robert Gibson has a career-ending injury in 1987?  What happens to Ricky Morton?

 

He turns heel as part of Dark Journey Incorporated. She carries around a Dynamac that predicts the endings of his matches but with only 1MB of RAM, the match is over before the computer finishes its prediction.

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What if Luger stays in the WWF, and doesn't take the low ball offer from WCW.

 

Him coming out and making the save at Summerslam 95 is weird in the context that Vince thought he was staying. No-one really wanted to see a Sir Mo-Luger feud. Does he turn heel with DBS as well? Feud with DBS? Program with Nash? A god awful Nash/Luger vs. MOM main event at an IYH?

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I'd guess you would have seen a lot of Diesel/Luger vs Bulldog/Mabel on house shows. He'd have never gotten a serious main event push though, the ship had clearly sailed on him by the time he left.

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