A What-If

[AJ1981]

Originally Posted by DarkLordFett

I didn't know they were trying to do that. Personally, I would tend to think that people didn't get on board as they had a WCW title match between a decent top level guy and Bagwell. Buff was fun to watch in the way you do puppies rolling around. He was comedic. Okay skill in the ring, not bad on the mic.I always felt he was better as part of a tag team. But that's my opinion. Lance Storm would have been a good option. Not sure who else was left. Sting probably would have left, not wanting to wrestle in a WWE product. Who knows.

The main problem the WWF faced at the time was that none of the WCW main event talent were part of the deal. For about $2.5 million McMahon bought the rights, video library and 24 undercard wrestler contracts. Although many of the WCW main event guys Hogan, Flair, Nash, Hall, Goldberg etc would end up in WWF/E at the time they were under guaranteed contracts from Time Warner. They had the choice to either accept buyouts (that were less than the contracts worth) or sit out their deals and as they were on mega money most did, except DDP who lost about half his guaranteed money to go to the WWF to be 'Taker's stalker. AOL/Time Warner did try to negotiate with them to accept buyouts because they wanted them off the books. Without the top guys a seperate WCW had little chance of succeeding

[justtxyank]

Originally Posted by DarkLordFett

I didn't know they were trying to do that. Personally, I would tend to think that people didn't get on board as they had a WCW title match between a decent top level guy and Bagwell. Buff was fun to watch in the way you do puppies rolling around. He was comedic. Okay skill in the ring, not bad on the mic.I always felt he was better as part of a tag team. But that's my opinion. Lance Storm would have been a good option. Not sure who else was left. Sting probably would have left, not wanting to wrestle in a WWE product. Who knows.

That match didn't happen until July or so. Vince had already failed to find a tv slot for WCW by then .

[TheHorndogSays]

Ok, first of I agree with the above poster who mentioned that Vince originally wanted to treat WCW as a separate program but didn't like Bagwell's style. However for the sake of arguing, I'll play along with the "what if?" scenario. My first issue with it is that the majority of WCWs main eventers did not come along initially. DDP, Hogan, Nash, Flair, Sting, Goldberg all originally nixed the idea of coming over hence why Austin had to "turn" on WWE to give the alliance some actual star power. Would Austin had to go to WCW under your scenario? Who would WCWs main event players be? In my opinion, for this to work several top WWE guys would eventually have to go to WCW in which case it isn't ANY different from the brand extension other than the names of the programs. Plus let's be honest, by this point WCWs name was TRASH. It had been completely run into the ground over the past 3 years. However my largest issue with the concept is that THE FANS had been wanting WWE vs WCW for YEARS. Look at DX invading Nitro as a top moment of Raw. It would have made no sense to have Vince acquire WCW then run it completely separate from WWE when the fans wanted the war for so long