What if: The A.P.A. Never Broke Up?

[MikeKillam]

Once upon a time, Farooq (Ron Simmons) and Bradshaw (JBL) were a tag team known as the A.P.A. They held the WWF Tag Team Titles 3 times and ran programs against tag team greats such as the Dudley Boys and Team Extreme. At the end of their run as a tag team, they lost a "Lost and You're Fired" tag team match. However, Paul Heyman told Bradshaw that if he forgot about Farooq and focus on himself, he could keep his career. Bradshaw took the offer, turned heel, and focused on his singles career. The then 18-time Hardcore Champion set his sights on being a true-blooded American hero, and won the right to face Eddie Guerrero for the title, which he eventually won. JBL then held the title for over 9 months, the longest WWE Title reign in over a decade.
In the end it was John Cena who ended the streak of JBL and won his first World Title at Wrestlemania.
So what if? What if the A.P.A. never split as a tag team, JBL was never pushed, and Cena never beat him to become champion at Mania?
-As much as I don't care for JBL in the last few years, when he had his long reign as champion, he played a great heel and brought a lot of guys to the top. He brought the best out of people like Kurt Angle, Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero, John Cena, Rey Mysterio, etc. In the end JBL sucked, but he knew how to get people over.
-Would Cena have been pushed as hard if he hadn't run a program against JBL?
-Who would have been champion for the better part of an entire year?

What do you guys think? Did the breakup of APA produce the megastar that is John Cena? Would Farooq have become the biggest joke of 2008? Or would none of it matter?

 

[Dagger Dias]

What do you guys think? Did the breakup of APA produce the megastar that is John Cena? Would Farooq have become the biggest joke of 2008? Or would none of it matter?

If the APA never broke up then they would have been able to find someone else to have that long title reign in 2004. Cena would have become the face of the company no matter what the situation was. It was his destiny to be the top star of WWE. It just would have been someone else's long title reign that he would have ended at Wrestlemania 21. I'm pretty sure that they had planned this out even before JBL became champion. Cena was going to become the top star but they needed a great way to push him further, so they needed a heel who NO ONE could beat because he always found a way to somehow retain the title. Then everyone would want to see him beaten by a great face, which ended up being Cena. Even if the APA was still together, then some other upper midcard heel would have gotten the long 2004 title reign instead, and gone on to feud with Cena at Wrestlemania 21.

On the other hand.... we would have missed out on one of the best heel characters in JBL.... Although he sucked in the ring, he was one of the greatest heels on the mic. That man could make almost anyone angry at him simply by talking. That alone made up for what he lacked in the in-ring ability department. If the APA never split up then we would have missed out on this character, and we also would have probably not seen Simmons' "damn" character either. Basically, if they had stayed as the APA then eventually interest in them would have died down. They both needed a change in character in the end.

So.... in Cena's case, not a lot would have changed as much, but the APA splitting up did some good in the end for both of them, especially for JBL.... so yes, it would have mattered if things had gone differently.

 

[Blade]

If they'd never broke up, Ron Simmons would've been relevant for a bit longer and JBL would have retired a bit sooner without ever having a WWE championship or US championship reign. Let me break it down for you.

The APA were a fairly over tag team. They were never on the level of the TLC three or the New Age Outlaws, but they were over. In their bodyguard gimmick, they were over, anyway. After the Hardys had split up, and Edge and Christian had split up and the Dudleys left, APA would've shot straight to the top of the tag division for a good while. Firstly because they were a tag team from the Attitude era and were still over and secondly because there were no other tag teams around in 2002 onwards that were as over as APA were in their prime, until maybe The Miz and Morrison.

So, after Hardys/E&C/Dudleys were all gone from the division, the APA would've ran the division as THE team until an actually decent new tag team came along. Ron Simmons would still be relevant, rather than a catchphrase. He's be one of the kings of the tag division. JBL would be much less relevant. Obviously, if he had been in the tag team, he never would've won the WWE championship. And, as we know, being WWE champion gives you nice, fat paychecks, which JBL got 9 months of, including a Wrestlemania headliner paycheck, which is always massive. Without those huge paychecks, JBL wouldn't have stuck around as long as he did. All the money he was making from his investments and such would've taken priority over the wrestling if he was only in a tag team. He would've left to focus on investments much sooner than he actually did.