What If WWE Had Gone Out Of Business?

The Monday Night War, when WWE and WCW went head to head marked one of the most exciting periods in pro wrestling history. Both major companies caught fire with fresh storylines and a confluence of veterans like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and Sting at the end of their primes, and up and comers like The Rock, Triple H, and Chris Jericho first rising up to main event levels in the national spotlight.

As much as fans tend to remember this period fondly, there was the potential for some very stark outcomes. There were ways in which it was sad for WCW to go out of business—particularly for how many national level wrestling jobs it eliminated. However, it’s even more troubling to imagine what might have been had WWE gone under—a real potentiality of the time, according to a variety of sources. This article looks at five outcomes that may have resulted from WWE going out of business.

5. The Return Of The Territories

It’s easy for fans to imagine that if WWE had gone under, WCW would have carried forward on a similar path to what WWE has done in the last seventeen years. That probably wouldn’t have been the case, though, given the volatile state of WCW’s business, particularly after the Turner and Time Warner merger. Eric Bischoff claims that most of the corporate leadership didn’t want to be involved with the wrestling business, and it seems as though it was only a matter of time before WCW would have been out on its own, without a guaranteed TV contract even if they had outlasted WWE.

While WCW surely would have remained the biggest wrestling company in the world, without Turner’s money or TV exposure, the playing field would have fundamentally shifted. As a result, we’d more likely see an old school wrestling world take hold with smaller territory style promotions dominating the sports entertainment world.

4. The Undertaker As WCW Champion

The Undertaker may have become WCW World Champion.

WCW was notorious for taking top stars built by WWE, adjusting them to their needs and booking landscape, and putting them on top. The process worked reasonably well with talents including Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and The Outsiders, with relatively few real failures like the company’s usage of Bret Hart.

The Undertaker stands alongside Shawn Michaels as the biggest stars WWE had to offer in that era who never crossed enemy lines to work for WCW. While Michaels thought his career was over due to back issues, The Undertaker was still at around his prime and clearly had a lot of wrestling left in his tank (given he’s still working part-time seventeen years later). Had he made his way to WCW, there’s little question he would have been on top, and it might have been interesting to see how he—particularly in his Biker persona—night have done in the company at the time. Lkely as not, he’d have won at least one world title.

3. No John Cena

With no WWE, might John Cena have never become a household name?

More so than any other individual star to have arisen post-Monday Night War era, its difficult to imagine the wrestling landscape without John Cena. He was the man in WWE for over a decade, and remains a very capable part time performer to this day, who has successfully crossed over to movies in addition to his work in wrestling.

It's altogether possible Cena’s drive, talent, and physique would have ultimately gotten him a seat at the table with WCW or whatever other top promotions arose. However, WCW was infamously reticent to push guys who weren’t already established stars, and unlike a Randy Orton or Roman Reigns, Cena didn’t have a family legacy to get him a foot in the door. There’s a very real possibility that, without WWE, we’d have never seen Cena rule over the wrestling world.

2. Vince McMahon Starts Another Wrestling Company

Would Vince dust himself off and try again?

At the peak of WWE’s run in the Attitude Era, Vince McMahon launched the XFL—his own professional football league drawn up to be an edgier, rougher, alternative to the NFL. The league floundered and most folks wrote it off as a mistake. It’s telling, however, that fifteen years later Vince McMahon announced he’d make another go at it by relaunching the thing.

There’s a possibility that if WWE went under, Vince McMahon would have wound up working for WCW. There’s also a very real chance, though, that like he did with football, he’d show the dogged commitment to his vision and to competition to lick his wounds and wind up trying again. Would a new McMahon wrestling company have done as well as WWE? It’s tough to say, but if anyone could pull off founding another national wrestling promotion, it would have to be McMahon.

1. No WWE Network

The WWE Network as we know it may have never been developed.

There’s a telling moment toward the end of WWE’s documentary about Eric Bischoff when the former Executive Vice President of WCW admits that had WCW won the Monday Night War, it wouldn’t have been best for the wrestling business. In particular, he cites that without Vince McMahon’s vision and passion, the WWE Network probably never would have been.

In the modern era of streaming entertainment, it’s feasible to think WCW or other surviving leading wrestling promotions would have developed their own streaming platforms. Bischoff isn’t wrong, though, that creating a platform this polished, and particularly with this expansive of an on demand library may well never have occurred without McMahon at the helm. His aggressive approach to acquiring old tape libraries, not unlike his old approach to gobbling top talent from other promotions was key to building the Network’s library, and as a resource to creating unparalleled documentary style programming.