Could WCW & WWE worked seperately if Vince owned both back in 1997?

[oogieboogie]

While reading some old skool WCW PPV reviews by KB, I noticed that during the high years for WCW that the PPV' had a lot of matches which had no reason to be on PPV. Now this was due to bad writing and no one knowing what to do with wrestlers and the direction to take.

So I started to think what if Vince was in charge and hired writers or even used the WWE ones to improve storylines and tidy up some of the PPV matches.

Now my question in all this is, if Vince was to have acquired WCW around 97, could he have kept WWE and WCW seperate and kept them both going? Would he have improved WCW storylines and PPV performances?

I reckon it would have been great! As he could keep the storylines going and change them when they started to become stale. He could have had drafts, which would have been awesome!
That way we could have seen Sting v Undertaker when both guys were in their prime. We would have also not have to put up with the finger poke of doom or even have David Arquette as champion.

 

[BigSexy The IndyKiller]

I would have to say no only because Vince's ego would not have allowed WCW to be considered equal to WWE. He had the chance to do this back in 2001 and ruined it with that horrible "Invasion" angle. Funny, as much as Vince loves money, his ego is far more important because he could have kept both companies running to create the image of competition, yet still made money from both of them as opposed to crushing everything that was WCW just to prove that he won the war...

 

[Derf]

No. If he had WCW in 97, he'd have done the same thing he did when he had it in 02. Milk the potential invasion storyline, then throw away the scraps. It just would have happened sooner.

 

[Iversen]

I doubt it. The Invasion storyline had far to much potential to be ignored. I know it didn't turn out right but it could have been one of the greatest things to ever happen in pro wrestling. It also screamed money. Vince knew that and I'm sure he'd just leap straight into it again even if he'd got his hands on WCW earlier.

 

[Syborgg]

The Invasion angle in '02 didn't work because the big names weren't contracted to wCw they were contracted to Time-Warner which meant they could do nothing and still collect a paycheck. I for one would have loved if Vince kept the buy-out hush-hush and atleast tried to run them as separate entities. Atleast at first, because that would have made any cross-branding seem alot less predictable.

However, on the topic of '97 vs. '02, I'm sure it would have played out fairly similar to the way it did 5 years later. There is the possibility that Hogan might have stayed on, and with HHH and HBK running things backstage, I'm almost positive that D-X would have had 2 new members in the form of Hall and Nash. That would probably have made for a better stable then the 2.0 version with the New Age Outlaws. But in the end things would have just been sped up and we would still be here wishing that WWE had competition to force them to be better and not fall back onto the lazy booking that we endure today.

 

[marklouis]

No, because Vince never would have allowed WCW to continue running. As someone else mentioned, Vince only wanted WCW for its video library, not the talent or writers or anything else. He would have quickly shut down WCW & proclaimed himself king of the wrestling world, much like he did a few years later. So, instead of a decade of a lousy product, wrestling fans would have been given 15 years of a lousy product.

 

[avi01]

doesn`t matter what he bought wcw, the outcome would have been the same... he would have never try to run both companies. Same thing if it was the other way around where WcW would have bought WWE...WWE would have been dead.

 

[whoopin' ass]

have to agree, with vince in charge it wouldn't have worked. just look at how raw and smackdown work today. vince still sees raw as "the show" and smackdown is very much a secondary product. if he thinks this way about 2 shows that are both his, no way wcw would have been given a real chance no matter when he bought it. having said that, if he had really turned control of wcw over to shane, it might have stood a chance of being somewhat successful.

one thing to remember is that 1997 or 2001, the new wcw would have still had one major problem - lack of stars. nash, hogan, sting, etc were all under contracts with turner, not wcw, so unless they were willing to buy out those contracts, we would have had a weaker wcw. plus i doubt anyone with a wwe contract would have gone over. what, you are going to send austin, rock, foley... to wcw? no way. wcw would have had to limp along for a few years and hope they were successful enough to either create new stars or to afford a few established ones. but again, this is all dependant on vince's ego being put aside and that just wouldn't have happened.

 

[oogieboogie]

Ok i see where everyone is coming from. I can understand if it wasn't popular and wasn't making money. But if WCW was making a LOT of money during this time and had their major stars, why would Vince bury it? Why not ride it out and once the money stops flowing then bury it.

The way i would see it if you are a smart business man, then if you owned 2 major companies and both were raking it in, why change that? I can see if and when 1 company starts to become stale and no money is coming in then change it.

I guess this is something we will never ever know.

 

[EastCoastFan]

No. Having the WWF team would have helped WCW's writing and eliminated some of the politicking that eventually killed them, but it would have boiled down to Vince showing favoritism to WWF over WCW, because WWF was "his baby". The 2001 Invasion was living proof of Vince's bias. He refused to make WCW look like a threat and as a result, the potential "greatest storyline in wrestling history" never fully reached the heights it could have.

Nowadays, Raw is considered "Vince's favorite" and the flagship of WWE. When the brand extension began, Raw was a "sports entertainment" show while Smackdown was a "pro wrestling" show with Paul Heyman as its head writer. SD actually got better ratings and it was then decided that SD needed to be "more like Raw".

 

[MMK]

As Vince would say, "No chance in Hell!"

I know everyone dogs WCW for how horribly it was managed, but for those two years in 1996 and 1997 they presented the best wrestling product I had ever seen. If Vince had been in charge he would have ruined it.

Sorry, but for all the praise he gets, in my opinion Vince is VERY overrated. He could have never came up with the stuff WCW was doing back then. Not on his best day.

Vince hates cruiserweights. If Vince was in charge of WCW in 97, then you can kiss all those classic cruiserweight matches goodbye.

WCW managed to combine traditional technical wrestling with a bit of an attitude that attracted audiences old and young alike, without having to resort to cheap trash tv spots involving graphic violence and sexuality like ECW and WWF were doing at the time.

They were popular not due to sex and violence, but because of fantastic wrestling from the cruiserweights and very compelling weekly storytelling with the WCW vs NWO storyline.

Vince THOUGHT he could run ECW in his own image. He failed. Look at horrible he ran HIS ECW, just imagine how lame HIS WCW would have been. All Vince knows is his own tired, played out formulas. Vince has a formula for how he runs his wrestling shows. Its the same formula he's been using for ages. Superhero roided up babyface beats up monster of the week. Whether its Hogan, Warrior, Austin, Rock, Cena or Orton. Its the same formula just with different actors playing the parts. And it always works because there's always a new group of youngsters who werent around to experience the previous incarnation of Vince's formula. No different than how boy bands will always be around because theres always a new generation of little girls who weren't around to see the last one.

I don't care that WCW ultimately died. Everything dies. Nothing last forever. And nothing should. WWE's like a movie that never ends. The reason I watch a story is to see how it ends. Im glad WCW ended.

Long story short, If Vince were in charge, it would have sucked.

 

[duckbutter]

I don't think it would have been the same in most respects, mostly because The Attitude Era came in response to things that happened DURING 1997. We may not have had DX, which started in August '97. Bret Hart would have never left the WWE, so there would have been no Montral controversy. Mick Foley may not have ever been crowned champ because of the now crowded talent roster, so Bischoff would not have been able to spoil that live on the air which caused thousands of people to turn the channel to Raw. Most of whom stuck around because it was simply better TV than what WCW was putting on at the time. There also may have been no Goldberg or no cruiserweight division, which highlighted a lot of future stars like Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero.

I guess what I'm getting is that a lot of the stuff that drove that era of wrestling history to be what it was would have never happened. In that case, there wouldn't have been as much heat between the companies and, therefore, no need for an "invasion"-type story line. Sure, the battle got started when Hall & Nash defected, but it didn't really get into full swing until Wrestlemania 14 (1998), when Austin was crowned champ, so most of the moments that made wrestling what it was during that time may have never occurred.

Just my thoughts. It's all speculation, of course, but a good topic, nonetheless.

 

[wrestling89]

I agree with Duckbutter. 1997 is just a bad time to place this what if question. If you were actually watching wrestling back in 1997, you remember that the WWF was still far behind in the wars. It only started to gain ground when Bret reformed the Hart Foundation which was around the summer of 97, and didn't really take off until after the Montreal incident, which was in November of 97. At the time Vince and his WWF was just trying not to die.

If you had said 1999, then that would be a different question all together.

In other words, had Vince bought out WCW in 1997, would he had made it seperate and run with it? Nope. Why? Well obviously Vince destroys anything that is not his or his creation. End of discussion.