What if Vince kept WCW seperate?

[corndog]

Obviously everyone knows competition helps business. Two of wrestling's recent hot periods were the late 90s and the early to late 80s. WCW and the WWF went neck and neck for the last part of the last decade, and in the 80s the WWF and Jim Crockett Promotions were pretty solid competitors also(obviously the WWF was far more sucessful, but the NWA's numbers from 83-88 were very solid and comparable to the WWF in the attitude era. ) What I think Vince should have done was buy WCW, but not make the sale public. Hopefully he could have convinced Time Warner to let WCW remain on the Turner networks, but he would financially back the company and own all rights. He would also have to purchase the air time like any other company. Basically the programming would still appear to compete with the WWF and actually would in a way, except all profits go to McMahon. He could have Shane or Stephanie run the company but be completely backstage so the veiwers wouldn't know and they would even occasionally appear on WWF television. To get away with this they would hire a "puppet manager" to appear to be running the programming. Possibly keep Russo around, rehire Bischoff, Paul Heyman or have another Executive VP that would seem realistic(obviously it couldn't have been Steve Austin or Ric Flair). The talent would probably stay the same, but to help WCW maybe they could move a couple of major players to WCW like Jericho, Edge, the Big Show, or Kurt Angle. But they would make press releases saying the wrestler has left the WWF and even wait a couple months to make it seem realistic. I think this might have helped the WWF/E in the long run because the competion would still be there and keep interest in wrestling. Also Vince would have two programs that would come off as legitimately seperate, unlike Raw and Smackdown. Does anyone else think this would have worked.

[Bobby Womack]

i would have loved that but i dont think they would have been able to pull off keeping it secret, and i can totally see fans finding out about it and refusing to watch either out of anger at being treated like suckers

[x]

The brand split a year earlier.

Why would you have two shows running at the same time anyways? You'd split everything. Plus only like 20something guys came over from WCW anyways. You'd have a terrible product until the Turner contracts expired.

[corndog]

Feb 11, 2009 3:31:12 GMT -5 @x said:

The brand split a year earlier.

Why would you have two shows running at the same time anyways? You'd split everything. Plus only like 20something guys came over from WCW anyways. You'd have a terrible product until the Turner contracts expired.

You have a good point, but let's assume Vince found a way for guys like Sting, Goldberg, Nash, Steiner and Flair to stick around. Actually let's say one of the deals with Time Warner was that the wrestlers they still had under contract had to perform under Vince. Plus maybe he could have put Benoit, Jericho, and the Big Show on the WCW roster after a couple months. Also it is true somehow and some way the internet fans would find out. BTW didn't Vince end up splitting everything with the Raw/ Smackdown draft, but it didn't help him and the WCW brand would still be built towards the southern wrestling fans and would be based in Atlanta. Heck if he was smart he would have more blood and gimmic matches like JCP used to have(which ECW used to their advantage, and sold out alot of the old mid atlantic territories's main stays along with their northwest spots). Plus the drawing ability of wrestlers like Flair and Sting would help.

[x]

Feb 11, 2009 5:10:53 GMT -5 corndog said:

Feb 11, 2009 3:31:12 GMT -5 @x said:

The brand split a year earlier.

Why would you have two shows running at the same time anyways? You'd split everything. Plus only like 20something guys came over from WCW anyways. You'd have a terrible product until the Turner contracts expired.

You have a good point, but let's assume Vince found a way for guys like Sting, Goldberg, Nash, Steiner and Flair to stick around. Actually let's say one of the deals with Time Warner was that the wrestlers they still had under contract had to perform under Vince. Plus maybe he could have put Benoit, Jericho, and the Big Show on the WCW roster after a couple months. Also it is true somehow and some way the internet fans would find out. BTW didn't Vince end up splitting everything with the Raw/ Smackdown draft, but it didn't help him and the WCW brand would still be built towards the southern wrestling fans and would be based in Atlanta. Heck if he was smart he would have more blood and gimmic matches like JCP used to have(which ECW used to their advantage, and sold out alot of the old mid atlantic territories's main stays along with their northwest spots). Plus the drawing ability of wrestlers like Flair and Sting would help.

Then you'd also be missing out on WWF vs WCW which should have been the greatest time period in wrestling history if Titan didn't bury everyone they faced. And if they didn't turn it into Vince vs Shane/Steph.

[willywonka666]

I really don't think fans would tune out out of protest for being lied to on a wrestling program

[Dave at the Movies]

I think this is originally what they wanted to do but it just didn't happen because they couldn't find a network that would pick up WCW.

[willywonka666]

I recall hearing that WCW was possibly going to be a saturday night show on Spike tv when the E was still on that channel

[samoanswatteam]

I've been saying for years that this is what they should've done. Kept it going, kept it secret. Except what I would've done is just have them say Flair bought it and eventually 2 years down the line have a supercard event without a big invasion angle.

[Triple Kelly]

Wouldn't have happened. Too many large egos involved prevented anything like that from happening.

[Dave at the Movies]

The only reason I don't think it would have worked is because all the big names in WCW with their big contracts such as Nash, Hogan, and Goldberg wouldn't have been on it.

Booker T was about the only relevant main eventer that they signed at the time along with DDP who showed up a bit later.

[Single H]

I like the idea and I think this is what they originally had planned (similar to the original 'draft split') but it didn;t work out. . If it was to work it would have been great but there was too many 'egos' involved plus most of the WCW big names were gone by this point and we all know what the McMahon's are like for TV time. Also9 the WWF VS WCW angle should have been the single hottest and best angle In WWF/WCW history. What they could have done (if the idea could have worked) is a cross promotion super card every year. Build it over the month of July called Clash Of The Champions WWF VS WCW. That would have been awesome if they could have worked an idea like that back in the day (97/98 time).
Even a cross promotion war between NWO and DX would have been awesome. During the time where DX tired to 'invade' WCW . Have two blow off matches one i9n a WWF PPV and one on a WCW PPV. Would have been awesome for both companies.

[shangosvoodoo]

There is no way that the sale of WCW to the WWF could have been kept a secret. Time-Warner, which owned WCW at the time, is a publicly traded company. What this means is that they would have disclosed the sale of WCW to its investors and then the cat would have been out of the bag. Also, if WCW still had television slots, the sale price might have been prohibitively high for the WWF. As terrible as WCW's product was at the time of its sale, it still would have been worth a lot of money if it had those two guaranteed Monday night and Thursday night time slots.

[bretclark]

It would have been WWE's F or G show airing at 3 AM Wednesday nights.

- bretclark