DBWI: What if the WWF won the Monday Night Wars?

ooc: i'd assume he would have gone through the indies potentially and get in cause of joe or he just does something else entirely (cause he did nearly get fired anyway iotl), maybe he is in the CFL?

OOC: I doubt he'd jump to football. Wrestling is his passion, even if he doesn't go to WCW, he'd probably be an indie mainstay on the east coast scene, working at Beyond maybe.)
 
OOC: I doubt he'd jump to football. Wrestling is his passion, even if he doesn't go to WCW, he'd probably be an indie mainstay on the east coast scene, working at Beyond maybe.)

OOC: True, he started off in UPW but was shortly called up to the WWF after. So maybe he's in the WWF in Ohio Valley, cause Ohio Valley, despite the affiliation with WWF, still exists, so he's there for a few years where he could remain.

How about changing it up then and have him go have a run in Mexico (CMLL or AAA), Japan (All Japan) or an independent company that isn't ROH.

Maybe he one of the major TNA guys that stay on (comes in from OVW in 02-03 ish) and don't go to ROH and instead is built up as a main champion and then afterwards, leaves for Mexico and Japan in 2010 after TNA goes bust.

timeline wise:

1999-2001: UPW
2000-2002/3: OVW
2003-2010: TNA
2010-: AJPW, AAA, LU, PWG, Various independent wrestling promotions like Beyond, AAW etc

Also, maybe he can be a celebrity still that breaks into hollywood and becomes a bit of a star in Mexico and Japan.
 
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Oh man, digging through the Gooker awards and man, some of these are doozies.

Hogan Arrives in TNA: 2003 was a rough year for TNA, really still trying to gain some traction and I can see the logic of trying to get Hulk Hogan signed on to draw ratings for Impact on Spike. But by this point, Hogan was a shadow of the shadow of his former self and his feud with John Cena, who was just not ready for that kind of push, lead to terrible matches and damaged both of their drawing powers. It's no surprise Hogan retired after this and became a VH1 reality "star"

Jonny Fairplay: And speaking of reality "stars", does anyone else remember when Jonny Fairplay made it to the Impact Zone in 2004? Best I can still say about that was the ICP beating the crap out of him on an episode. That was fun to watch, but the rest of his run was abysmal and they dragged Randy Orton into the thing when Orton really didn't need that hurting his upper midcard push.

Trytan the Terminator: And the TNA hits just keep coming. In a move of stalling out another upcoming star's career, this year it was Monty Brown with his feud against Trytan, a terrible wrestler with a crap Terminator gimmick, putting Brown on ice for most of 2005 afterward. The guy sucked in the ring and sucked on the mic. It's good that like Orton and Cena, the Alpha Male was able to recover and get a run with the TV title.

The Orlando Screwjob: The 2006 Gooker winner gives TNA another turkey with a terrible recreation of the Screwjob where Jarrett reclaimed the TNA World title by putting a figure-four on Eric Young and Eric feigned outrage. No one really understood the need for this almost ten years later and it killed EY's momentum (noticing a pattern?)

Pacman Jones: I know people thought 2007 should've been the Dylan Diamond TNA Commissioner run, but I thought he was an entertaining heel authority. A fast-talking, obnoxious little bastard that you wanted to see punted across the Impact Zone. Him feuding with Eric the Midget from the Howard Sten show was terrible, but it still didn't match bringing in Tennessee Titan Adam Jones during his suspension from football to work as a manager for Truth and Consequences. Thankfully, they were already tag champs and were a hot commodity for TNA, so they weren't hurt that badly by this.

(Career) Suicide: To hype the TNA video game, the brilliant idea was decided upon to make Suicide, an in-game character, into a real wrestler (portrayed by Frankie Kazarian.) It was cool that his feud on TV matched the ingame storyline, but it still didn't make much sense and didn't push sales for the game. I'm glad they canned this gimmick after the copy of the game's storyline wrapped up and they unmasked Kaz.

I don't think WCW's held the Gooker since back in 2002. I'll need to double-check, though.
 
Oh man, digging through the Gooker awards and man, some of these are doozies.

Hogan Arrives in TNA: 2003 was a rough year for TNA, really still trying to gain some traction and I can see the logic of trying to get Hulk Hogan signed on to draw ratings for Impact on Spike. But by this point, Hogan was a shadow of the shadow of his former self and his feud with John Cena, who was just not ready for that kind of push, lead to terrible matches and damaged both of their drawing powers. It's no surprise Hogan retired after this and became a VH1 reality "star"

Jonny Fairplay: And speaking of reality "stars", does anyone else remember when Jonny Fairplay made it to the Impact Zone in 2004? Best I can still say about that was the ICP beating the crap out of him on an episode. That was fun to watch, but the rest of his run was abysmal and they dragged Randy Orton into the thing when Orton really didn't need that hurting his upper midcard push.

Trytan the Terminator: And the TNA hits just keep coming. In a move of stalling out another upcoming star's career, this year it was Monty Brown with his feud against Trytan, a terrible wrestler with a crap Terminator gimmick, putting Brown on ice for most of 2005 afterward. The guy sucked in the ring and sucked on the mic. It's good that like Orton and Cena, the Alpha Male was able to recover and get a run with the TV title.

The Orlando Screwjob: The 2006 Gooker winner gives TNA another turkey with a terrible recreation of the Screwjob where Jarrett reclaimed the TNA World title by putting a figure-four on Eric Young and Eric feigned outrage. No one really understood the need for this almost ten years later and it killed EY's momentum (noticing a pattern?)

Pacman Jones: I know people thought 2007 should've been the Dylan Diamond TNA Commissioner run, but I thought he was an entertaining heel authority. A fast-talking, obnoxious little bastard that you wanted to see punted across the Impact Zone. Him feuding with Eric the Midget from the Howard Sten show was terrible, but it still didn't match bringing in Tennessee Titan Adam Jones during his suspension from football to work as a manager for Truth and Consequences. Thankfully, they were already tag champs and were a hot commodity for TNA, so they weren't hurt that badly by this.

(Career) Suicide: To hype the TNA video game, the brilliant idea was decided upon to make Suicide, an in-game character, into a real wrestler (portrayed by Frankie Kazarian.) It was cool that his feud on TV matched the ingame storyline, but it still didn't make much sense and didn't push sales for the game. I'm glad they canned this gimmick after the copy of the game's storyline wrapped up and they unmasked Kaz.

I don't think WCW's held the Gooker since back in 2002. I'll need to double-check, though.

Hogan retired for all of 6 years, then went into finish off TNA with Nash and Hall in tow, for good this time though. Cena though, It took him a while but he did end up at the top of the brand around 06-07 but you are right that it must have done some damage because WCW never has shown a lot of interest

Also luckily Kaz and Daniels went to WCW not too long after that, they probably should have gone their in 06 like the rest of the ROH crew. Luckily he wasn't their for the 2nd Hogan run or else he would have been buried like the rest of them. Cause if Kaz & Daniels along with Beer Money got buried with guys like Cena, Orton etc then who knows if WCW would have had the great tag team division it has now.

Fairplay was the guy that was on survivor right? Also yeah from what i saw, Trytan was just slow as anything, green and couldn't move.

Young in a way did benefit, he left TNA for ROH and had a ROH world title run before going to WCW in 2009 and has been a mainstay in the midcard over there.
 
ITTL, what has become of Dean Ambrose and other wrestlers who came up through the ranks of Combat Zone Wrestling IOTL?

John Moxley (Dean Ambrose from OTL) is one of the top stars in WCW, somewhat of a Pillman meets Austin meets Raven character (so similar to his CZW shtick). Came to the company around 2011, along with Steen, Cole, Black and Generico, they're the new main eventers that WCW have built up over the last 3 years pretty successfully.
Sami Callihan is there also, but as more of a midcarder and occasional upper mid carder (and having feuds with Moxley of course). Came same time as Moxley.
Claudi Castagnoli and Chris Hero are a mainstay tag team and one of the top tag teams in the world and have been for a decade (racking up an impressive 8 WCW tag team titles, most in the company's history). Both men have won mid card gold throughout their careers and Castagnoli even won the WCW World title once.
All the ROH talent who appeared in CZW are basically on WCW.
Eddie Kingston. TNA as well as AAA and Big Japan (somewhat appropriate) as well as PWG.

CZW still exists (have to get the fill of hardcore somehow) but is more akin to the ECW style than it is ultra hardcore. Most of the former CZW alumni are still wrestling there as well as wrestling in various independents (AAW, Beyond, PWG etc).
 
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Also, what did Jim Cornette say about the demise of the WWF?

As per usual, Cornette blamed Russo and describe Russo in a way only Cornette can. He didn't really blame Vince other than saying that Vince McMahon was naive to think Russo had any talent for booking. Cornette also bemoaned the fact that they took the 'rasslin outta rasslin' and had more backstage segments, pillow fights and on a pole matches (which ensued another 5 minute rant on russo, no wonder their is a restraining order).

Basically, Cornette said 'The people didn't buy into the bullshit' and that the gratuitous violence, lack of show structure all together and excessive car crash tv etc let to people being turned off.

Granted he is mostly right (ignoring his hatred of Russo, which to be fair he takes a lot of blame for WWF's failure) but WCW did implement things from ECW but i think they did so in moderation rather than the WWF who tried to be a cheap imitation of it, without nearly half the charm.
 
Thinking about it, they should have had Austin win the title at Wrestlemania 14 as opposed to winning it the next month at Unforgiven. I know they wanted mainstream attention, but Austin vs Tyson was an atrocious match (the show was barely saved by the amazing Michaels vs Owen Hart match, but even that ended with a ridiculous double DQ).
 
Thinking about it, they should have had Austin win the title at Wrestlemania 14 as opposed to winning it the next month at Unforgiven. I know they wanted mainstream attention, but Austin vs Tyson was an atrocious match (the show was barely saved by the amazing Michaels vs Owen Hart match, but even that ended with a ridiculous double DQ).

It did get a lot of attention though but i think they wanted Austin vs Tyson as a title match for some reason (also Micheals vs Hart was probably one of the best matches of all time, so despite the rest of the show being bad, i think that's what most people remember the match and that stupid finish, no wonder Owen left to WCW).

Honestly when Austin went to WCW in early 02, that was arguably his 2nd best run (obviously Austin going after McMahon will be the top). Austin going after Bischoff and a Hollywood Rock was an amazing feud. Bischoff actually knew (the 2nd time) what he was doing with him at least (or at least, creative did). Also bringing in that real element that Bischoff fired Austin also was great as it led to Bischoff getting stunnered frequently. Best thing is, title changes, losses and every action inbetween, i'd say was timed perfectly, they didn't really leave it too late or too early.
 
Got a few more Gooker winners to look through. Let's see what we got on here.

Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca: -5 Stars. One of the worst matches in TNA history. Putting Booker T's untrained wife and even less trained reality "star" Jenna Morasca in a match on the 2009 Victory Road. I know this was a tough vote between this match and the Main Event Mafia, but at least then you had the TNA Originals standing triumphant and Orton/Batista vs. Booker/Steiner was pretty fun. There was no fun here.

The New Monday Night Wars: As I mentioned, TNA was just not in the position to compete with WCW. WWF had decades of following behind them and were pulling hot ratings for USA. And while Impact's USA ratings were good, when they got put against WCW, they got slaughtered for ten weeks straight and USA basically forced them back to Wednesdays and by that point it was over.

GFW Genesis 2011 Main Event: So Jeff Hardy had a bad run after WWF's closure. His drug habits had cost him a job in WCW (which had opened doors for Matt as a singles star) but he was a major player for TNA so when GFW launched their Genesis show to crown a new champion with Hardy going against Ken Anderson, only for Jeff to come out to the ring completely stoned out of his gourd, forcing them to improvise a finish where the heel Anderson had to quick finish the match to the silence of a shocked crowd. GFW had to refund the crowd at the Impact Zone and give the next PPV free to pay it back. It put GFW on a bad foot to start and I won't be surprised if the company ended up dead soon too.

Starrcade 2012 Main Event: It took ten years for WCW to do something worthy of the Gooker, but the Rock in the main event and beating CM Punk, ending a two-year reign as champion? That shit was not gonna fly, and that was with the tough competition of the GFW Claire Lynch angle where Ken Anderson tried to convince people that Jeff Hardy knocked up another addict in rehab, taking up too much time during the much better Deadman's Hand angle that Anderson was running as leader, but at least that got fixed when Lynch was retconned to be really the newest member of DMH and when Lynch (now known by her ring name, Sara Del Ray) won the GFW Knockout's title. Rock winning WCW World Title benefitted no one and left a sour note to end another otherwise good show.

Heel Dixie Carter: GFW turning Dixie Carter heel was a mistake. Carter has all the emotional range of a spoon and the Dixieland stable just didn't have the same power behind it as the Dead Man's Hand, even with how good ECIII is to watch, but Magnus vs. Jeff Hardy was a poor match and a bad end to Jeff's run with the company.
 
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Got a few more Gooker winners to look through. Let's see what we got on here.

Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca: -5 Stars. One of the worst matches in TNA history. Putting Booker T's untrained wife and even less trained reality "star" Jenna Morasca in a match on the 2009 Victory Road. I know this was a tough vote between this match and the Main Event Mafia, but at least then you had the TNA Originals standing triumphant and Orton/Batista vs. Booker/Steiner was pretty fun. There was no fun here.

The New Monday Night Wars: As I mentioned, TNA was just not in the position to compete with WCW. WWF had decades of following behind them and were pulling hot ratings for USA. And while Impact's USA ratings were good, when they got put against WCW, they got slaughtered for ten weeks straight and USA basically forced them back to Wednesdays and by that point it was over.

GFW Genesis 2011 Main Event: So Jeff Hardy had a bad run after WWF's closure. His drug habits had cost him a job in WCW (which had opened doors for Matt as a singles star) but he was a major player for TNA so when GFW launched their Genesis show to crown a new champion with Hardy going against Ken Anderson, only for Jeff to come out to the ring completely stoned out of his gourd, forcing them to improvise a finish where the heel Anderson had to quick finish the match to the silence of a shocked crowd. GFW had to refund the crowd at the Impact Zone and give the next PPV free to pay it back. It put GFW on a bad foot to start and I won't be surprised if the company ended up dead soon too.

Starrcade 2012 Main Event: It took ten years for WCW to do something worthy of the Gooker, but the Rock in the main event and beating CM Punk, ending a two-year reign as champion? That shit was not gonna fly, and that was with the tough competition of the GFW Claire Lynch angle where Ken Anderson tried to convince people that Jeff Hardy knocked up another addict in rehab, taking up too much time during the much better Deadman's Hand angle that Anderson was running as leader, but at least that got fixed when Lynch was retconned to be really the newest member of DMH and when Lynch (now known by her ring name, Sara Del Ray) won the GFW Knockout's title. Rock winning WCW World Title benefitted no one and left a sour note to end another otherwise good show.

Heel Dixie Carter: GFW turning Dixie Carter heel was a mistake. Carter has all the emotional range of a spoon and the Dixieland stable just didn't have the same power behind it as the Dead Man's Hand, even with how good ECIII is to watch, but Magnus vs. Jeff Hardy was a poor match and a bad end to Jeff's run with the company.

at least the Sharmell vs Jenna Morasca match lead to the minus 5 star rant.

That starrcade main event led to a downright revolt and Punk shooting on Bischoff (who apparently changed the result, as Heyman had Punk winning, like a logical person would). It only led to Punk getting even more over and cementing himself (and Danielson) as the two top draws, also the rock getting booed out of Starrcade was pretty funny, since he was meant to be the face. everything else on that card was really good to be honest.
 
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