25 biggest pro wrestling ‘what ifs’ of the past 25 years

5. What if Eric Bischoff had bought WCW?

The bigger question here might be what would have happened if AOL had never merged with Time Warner but we’ll go with this. When WCW was going down, there actually was a deal in place for Eric Bischoff and a group of partners to buy the company and essentially reboot it. However, a TV slot was not part of the deal, which really makes it no deal at all, and Bischoff backed out because that was the right thing to do. Vince came in and more or less stole it with the price he paid and that was that. The Monday Night War was over.

But what if a TV deal was included and Eric Bischoff had actually purchased WCW? There was still a ton of talent on the roster and with some of the young guys coming up in the business, I truly believe that it could have worked. Sure, maybe we don’t get anywhere close to what the Monday Night War was but we still have another wrestling company in the U.S. that isn’t WWE. Sure, TNA and Ring of Honor got rolling but it was always going to take them a while to really get moving. WCW was a name that people knew and while the ratings weren’t going to be what they once were, people would have tuned in out of curiosity if nothing else.

Perhaps some of the veterans would have stayed to help out while the younger generation was still being built. Sting likely would have stuck around and some of the others probably would have as well. Meanwhile, guys like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe may have ended up debuting in WCW at some point and made their names there. Jeff Jarrett probably would have been part of the plan so we probably wouldn’t ever have gotten TNA. Bischoff was a very smart guy that had taken a promotion further than anyone would have ever thought possible and it would have been very interesting to see him try to do it again.