Wrestling What Ifs

[Brian Fowler]

I know Taker has said if UFC had been a thing when he was young, he probably would've tried it, and there's certainly ample evidence that he's tough, but man, getting under 265 seems like it would be real difficult for him, and, to the best of my limited knowledge, there's not much history of 6'9"(ish) dudes being effective in MMA. ( @Elsalvajeloco?)

That's before taking into account he'd have already been in his mid-30's, and with a litany of injuries (his Biker Taker return was, iirc, coming off a torn groin.)

Point is, I don't think even lower level MMA stuff would've been a good idea for him at that time frame, unless he got matched up with guys who legit had no business fighting.

[AxB]

1 hour ago, Brian Fowler said:

I know Taker has said if UFC had been a thing when he was young, he probably would've tried it, and there's certainly ample evidence that he's tough, but man, getting under 265 seems like it would be real difficult for him, and, to the best of my limited knowledge, there's not much history of 6'9"(ish) dudes being effective in MMA. ( @Elsalvajeloco?)

That's before taking into account he'd have already been in his mid-30's, and with a litany of injuries (his Biker Taker return was, iirc, coming off a torn groin.)

Point is, I don't think even lower level MMA stuff would've been a good idea for him at that time frame, unless he got matched up with guys who legit had no business fighting.

Stefan Struve and Semmy Schilt are both 7 footers and made 265 no problem. Tim Sylvia is 6'8" and used to make 265 in the UFC, but then started showing up at like 380 once he was dumped back to the regionals.

There's no shortage of MMA Heavyweights who legit have no business fighting, BTW.

Here's a what if: What if, on January 1st 1990. Giant Baba announced that from that point on, the Piledriver, Vertical Drop Brainbuster and 'other headfirst landing moves' would be illegal in AJPW, and using them would result in a disqualification loss. Does this make 90s AJ suck, or does it make it better?

[BurningBeard]

It would have least gone back to the hard hitting, snug NWA style of the 80s (aka my fave style). I don't know if that translates well into the 90s though

[olythegreat89]

Probably would've made it more submission and striking based then it already was. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

3 hours ago, AxB said:

Stefan Struve and Semmy Schilt are both 7 footers and made 265 no problem. Tim Sylvia is 6'8" and used to make 265 in the UFC, but then started showing up at like 380 once he was dumped back to the regionals.

There's no shortage of MMA Heavyweights who legit have no business fighting, BTW.

Here's a what if: What if, on January 1st 1990. Giant Baba announced that from that point on, the Piledriver, Vertical Drop Brainbuster and 'other headfirst landing moves' would be illegal in AJPW, and using them would result in a disqualification loss. Does this make 90s AJ suck, or does it make it better?

To me, Taker doing MMA is the same as someone like Meng doing MMA or a bunch of other notorious tough guys in wrestling doing MMA.

There wasn't ever a window where guys who had football and basketball backgrounds just jumped into MMA because the transition made sense. Yes, you have someone like Walt Harris (basketball) and that season of TUF where they had a bunch of heavyweights from a football background like Brendan Schaub, Wes Shivers, Marcus Jones, etc as exceptions. However, they're not actively scouting legit football or basketball players fresh out off their playing career unless it's a Greg Hardy thing where the circumstances allow him to fall into your lap. Guys like Herschel Walker, Marcus Jones, and Carlton Haselrig were several years removed from the sport. They have Eryk Anders now, but they were not looking for him specifically. My point being that if those guys were extremely successful at something else before MMA, tall or not, chances are they are not coming into MMA where the money is extremely low at the entry level unless you're a Olympic medalist who can fight in Japan, a Bubba Jenkins or Team Takedown scenario where some money folks are paying you six figures just to train, Brock Lesnar, or you're a Gracie family member. Other than that, I don't see why you would be doing it with a lucrative way to make money. I mean Jarrell Miller is about to get $6.5 million to fight Anthony Joshua in June. This is someone who could have been in the UFC right now if he was willing to take a lowball amount and/or fight on TUF contract when he was just a K-1/Glory kickboxer and the UFC were looking at him. Chances are, unless Miller won a UFC belt and become a big attraction for them, he would have never got that type of money to be a UFC fighter. It's nice that Taker said that, but I don't think about it that seriously because it would take him sucking at pro wrestling bad for him to even sniff a MMA career. I don't ever see a point where someone like Undertaker doesn't have a great spot in pro wrestling waiting for him. Angle is an interesting prospect to think about, but he is like a Jordan Burroughs where I doubt seriously he wanted to get punched in the face in the first place. MMA has had a history of folks like Randi Miller and Mark Ellis who get a taste of what fighting is and then disappear into the ether not too long after.

[HumanChessgame]

What if The Steiners stayed in WWF in 1994 instead of going to ECW and then WCW? Do they eventually get split up to groom Scott for a singles run? If so does he become Big Poppa Pump?

[AxB]

26 minutes ago, HumanChessgame said:

What if The Steiners stayed in WWF in 1994 instead of going to ECW and then WCW? Do they eventually get split up to groom Scott for a singles run? If so does he become Big Poppa Pump?

He was always Big Poppa Pump. The whole ;white meat babyface who can't talk' routine was a work.

Undertaker was born too late to get into MMA. UFC 1 was 1993, he was already 28 then, and with no legit combat sports background... I'm not saying he wouldn't have tried it necessarily, I'm saying he wouldn't have succeeded at it if he had tried it.

Now, if you ask What if UFC 1 happened in 1893, not 1993, then the whole history of Pro-Wrestling (and Pro Boxing & Kickboxing, Olympic Judo & Taekwondo and possibly American Football and Ice Hockey as well) changes dramatically. What if MMA, not boxing, was the biggest combat sport throughout the 20th century?

[Elsalvajeloco]

37 minutes ago, AxB said:

He was always Big Poppa Pump. The whole ;white meat babyface who can't talk' routine was a work.

Undertaker was born too late to get into MMA. UFC 1 was 1993, he was already 28 then, and with no legit combat sports background... I'm not saying he wouldn't have tried it necessarily, I'm saying he wouldn't have succeeded at it if he had tried it.

To be fair, some of the guys who fought in the first several UFCs didn't have a combat sports background either to be truthful.

37 minutes ago, AxB said:

Now, if you ask What if UFC 1 happened in 1893, not 1993, then the whole history of Pro-Wrestling (and Pro Boxing & Kickboxing, Olympic Judo & Taekwondo and possibly American Football and Ice Hockey as well) changes dramatically. What if MMA, not boxing, was the biggest combat sport throughout the 20th century?

I don't think there would have been a catalyst for that to happen though. If boxing was frowned upon at the turn of the century and much the early 20th century, I highly doubt MMA would get a pass. Plus, Helio Gracie vs. Masahiko Kimura didn't happen until over 50 years later. Boxing would have had a headstart of about 70 years by that point.

Now if it was what if MMA was the biggest combat sport in 1963 instead of boxing, you can think of all types of crazy scenarios that would could happen.

[AxB]

Especially when you consider that in the 60s, Boxers made more money than NFL players. Having said that, Danny Hodge was 31 in 1963. He'd be a way more legendary figure had there been a legit sport for him to compete in at that time.

[Elsalvajeloco]

18 minutes ago, AxB said:

Especially when you consider that in the 60s, Boxers made more money than NFL players. Having said that, Danny Hodge was 31 in 1963. He'd be a way more legendary figure had there been a legit sport for him to compete in at that time.

I could see lots of people who ended up as luminaries in their respective fields doing MMA if the money was right before Vince going national and the heyday of Crockett Promotions.

Richard Fliehr: MMA Fighter, anyone?

[SorceressKnight]

The big problem with that is more a historical sense of MMA more than anything that killed it.

Mixed Martial Arts was still there (Theodore Roosevelt put on MMA bouts in the White House for his amusement in the early 1900s), but by and large, there was so little unification between countries and their martial arts that an MMA league couldn't have existed until the world got smaller. It took World War II to make GIs come home and say "these Japanese people had this 'karate' thing and it looked badass" enough to get that- and that was as big a deal with boxing being so big. In the modern day, we know that a martial art which is solely based on punching and where you can't even use your legs or punch anywhere but the top half of someone's body, would make you a sitting duck against pretty much any other martial art in the world, but boxing was so big for so long in America because Americans just didn't know what other countries had for martial arts (and when we got "Boxing vs. Karate" matches in the 1950s, the boxers universally got clobbered.) 

MMA could not exist until the 1990s not just because it wasn't there, but because the world got small enough so that people would be able to fight all these different styles of fighting- and it couldn't be perfected until the 2000s because people had enough time for trial and error to know just what styles had the best strikes and grappling, and put them together to get the "MMA style".

[Elsalvajeloco]

14 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

The big problem with that is more a historical sense of MMA more than anything that killed it.

Mixed Martial Arts was still there (Theodore Roosevelt put on MMA bouts in the White House for his amusement in the early 1900s), but by and large, there was so little unification between countries and their martial arts that an MMA league couldn't have existed until the world got smaller. It took World War II to make GIs come home and say "these Japanese people had this 'karate' thing and it looked badass" enough to get that- and that was as big a deal with boxing being so big. In the modern day, we know that a martial art which is solely based on punching and where you can't even use your legs or punch anywhere but the top half of someone's body, would make you a sitting duck against pretty much any other martial art in the world, but boxing was so big for so long in America because Americans just didn't know what other countries had for martial arts (and when we got "Boxing vs. Karate" matches in the 1950s, the boxers universally got clobbered.) 

MMA could not exist until the 1990s not just because it wasn't there, but because the world got small enough so that people would be able to fight all these different styles of fighting- and it couldn't be perfected until the 2000s because people had enough time for trial and error to know just what styles had the best strikes and grappling, and put them together to get the "MMA style".

I wouldn't say it wasn't there. I think it could have existed post Bruce Lee as a tiny niche sport and then took off 15 years later during the advent of PPV. I think the curiosity definitely existed, but the money didn't at that point. By the late 80s/early 90s, the whole vale tudo thing was big in Brazil so it was going to arrive on America shores at some point. Plus, in Japan you obviously saw where wrestling was deviating from the formula in the 1980s and trying to prove itself as real. So feasibly, I would say the early to mid 80s would have been a decent kickoff point.

[Ace]

I find it weird that people say Bret wouldn't have worked with Austin after SummerSlam '97. I could swear that even Bret acknowledged that Owen was in the wrong for not talking to Austin afterwards.

 

[SorceressKnight]

3 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I wouldn't say it wasn't there. I think it could have existed post Bruce Lee as a tiny niche sport and then took off 15 years later during the advent of PPV. I think the curiosity definitely existed, but the money didn't at that point. By the late 80s/early 90s, the whole vale tudo thing was big in Brazil so it was going to arrive on America shores at some point. Plus, in Japan you obviously saw where wrestling was deviating from the formula in the 1980s and trying to prove itself as real.  So feasibly, I would say the early to mid 80s would have been a decent kickoff point.

Yeah. The early-mid 1980s is pretty good as well, but ultimately the same thing was there: The world had to get small enough to make it possible to see the top martial artists of different forms.

Ultimately, it would have been better less for sports and more for movies- this would coincide with the era of "random martial artist...or badass looking dude...hell, you want a gymnast or ballerina? Whatever...just have them fight a badass army with nothing but the power of their athletic skill" movies. A UFC coming up in the early-mid 1980s would have been GOLD for that movie genre...we could have gotten so much enjoyable crappy movies.

[Curt McGirt]

4 hours ago, olythegreat89 said:

Probably would've made it more submission and striking based then it already was. 

Yeah. It turns into BattlARTS. Which would have ruled

[Elsalvajeloco]

24 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

Yeah. The early-mid 1980s is pretty good as well, but ultimately the same thing was there: The world had to get small enough to make it possible to see the top martial artists of different forms.

Ultimately, it would have been better less for sports and more for movies- this would coincide with the era of "random martial artist...or badass looking dude...hell, you want a gymnast or ballerina? Whatever...just have them fight a badass army with nothing but the power of their athletic skill" movies. A UFC coming up in the early-mid 1980s would have been GOLD for that movie genre...we could have gotten so much enjoyable crappy movies.

I think it's more there being more money for live sports then the necessity of seeing the best fight the best. The UFC wasn't that for several years (1998/1999 if we're being nice, post PRIDE if we're being honest) and just a place where the Gracie family can built their rep off Royce Gracie. Then, you had Rickson with his exploits in Japan. I think PRIDE/early Pancrase would have existed long before UFC/Extreme Fighting because folks had already gotten use to the pageantry with boxing and pro wrestling. I think if you look at boxing post Ali and pre Tyson, you have a six year window where you can exploit there being a hunger for a big combat sports star. Guys like Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Salvador Sanchez, Aaron Pryor, Alexis Arguello, Boom Boom Mancini were able to exploit that because Gerrie Coetzee, John Tate, Mike Weaver, Greg Page, Michael Dokes, Larry Holmes (sadly), and Michael Spinks weren't above and beyond bigger stars than the rest of the field. That's why you end up with Gerry Cooney. So if a Royce Gracie type figure comes around then especially with money bubbling up through closed circuit TV and eventually PPV, then all bets are off.

[Brian Fowler]

It's not really important, but I wasn't trying to say any 6'9" guy would struggle to get down to 265, just Taker in general, especially in the given time frame when he was wrestling at about 340. And that I'm not aware of many real successful fighters nearly that tall, but admitting upfront that my experience is pretty limited.

Kickboxing became a relatively popular niche sport in the US in the 80's, and I think Jean Claude Van Damme around the time of Bloodsport and Kickboxer could've easily been the catalyst for a mini MMA boom here if someone had tried.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Just now, Brian Fowler said:

It's not really important, but I wasn't trying to say any 6'9" guy would struggle to get down to 265, just Taker in general, especially in the given time frame when he was wrestling at about 340. And that I'm not aware of many real successful fighters nearly that tall, but admitting upfront that my experience is pretty limited.

Kickboxing became a relatively popular niche sport in the US in the 80's, and I think Jean Claude Van Damme around the time of Bloodsport and Kickboxer could've easily been the catalyst for a mini MMA boom here if someone had tried.

It would depend on who was working with him to get him down to 265/266. There are several guys who were 300+ lbs who ended up at 265 and below. If he has an inept team working with him, he is probably going to be a frequent weight miss type of guy. Otherwise, I don't see why he wouldn't be able to make 265.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

6 hours ago, AxB said:

Undertaker was born too late to get into MMA. UFC 1 was 1993, he was already 28 then, and with no legit combat sports background... I'm not saying he wouldn't have tried it necessarily, I'm saying he wouldn't have succeeded at it if he had tried it.

He was born...too late? 

[Raziel]

3 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

 

Kickboxing became a relatively popular niche sport in the US in the 80's, and I think Jean Claude Van Damme around the time of Bloodsport and Kickboxer could've easily been the catalyst for a mini MMA boom here if someone had tried.

I do remember in the aftermath of the 80's Martial Arts Movie boom and after Kickboxer, whatever Kickboxing promotion Alexio was working for got a deal with Showtime for a while and it was being promoted and presented on par to what Showtime was doing with Boxing (different announce crew, but Lennon was announcing, music walkouts, etc).  But we likely would've gotten where we are after the first few UFC's and Severn and Royce showing that all martial arts aren't created equal.

[Curt McGirt]

6 hours ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

He was born...too late? 

You're gonna make me have to underline the punchline aren't you

 

[Ace]

I remember John Cusack telling us kickboxing was the sport of the future in 1989.

 

[Brian Fowler]

2 hours ago, Ace said:

I remember John Cusack telling us kickboxing was the sport of the future in 1989.

 

I restrained myself, with great effort, from making a joke about that. One of my all-time favorite movies.

[AxB]

What if Diesel and Razor remained in the WWF, and instead the original Outsiders were Bret and Taker?

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

I'm probably not as disappointed that we never got Razor as a main event heel as a credible threat to Shawn in 96.