What if: Vince McMahon dies at Wrestlemania 12

[BruiserBrody]

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/625zhf

So Vince does the practice zip line stunt in the afternoon, only for something to go horribly wrong and he falls to his death. We'll assume the show itself goes on (or not whatever....) but my question lies more in the fall out. Bruce Prichard scrambles to gain creative power/Corny, fresh from SMW folding is on board to help. JR is the talent relations guy. Pat Patterson is the finish guy, in semi-retirement and only seen on TV days most of the time. Michael Hayes is in the mix somewhere.
Is it almost the same in the next few months, minus maybe Linda finding some business people to take on some of Vince's over sight? Does Shane get rushed into power? One would think if Patterson and Bruce disliked Jerry Jarrett, then he's not involved. Bret has no loyalty to Vince to worry about, so he can jump to WCW. Russo is the magazine editor and perhaps never anything more? Maybe they pay Heyman enough to shutter ECW, bring in some talent and help in creative? Hell, maybe even Gorilla Monsoon has to set aside his heart issues and lingering heartache over Joey and play a bigger role in settling down the aftermath backstage.
The Kliq are about to implode as Hall and Nash are out the door, and Bret is leaving, so creative direction is wide open. Maybe even more guys lose faith without Vince's charisma talking them up and WCW gets even more talents?
Without Vince's big man fetish, perhaps the AAA deal helps kick start the Light Hwy division much sooner than late 1997?
Maybe Dusty Rhodes decides that formatting B-shows and announcing is boring and jumps to the WWF to tackle creative.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

If Vince dies in '96, I kind of doubt WWF is able to get their shit together to definitively win the Monday Night War. Grimmer scenario is Idk if pro wrestling is around on a major level at this point if Vince dies before the '90s Wrestling Boom. I think WWF and WCW probably both sputter out at some point by the mid '00s and we're left with a modern day version of the territory system with wrestling having regional/niche popularity ala roller derby.

 

[BUTT]

I doubt that Vince's death would have made Bret more likely to leave. If anything he would have felt an obligation to help the struggling company in its most troubled time. My guess is they would have gone even harder with Warrior and they wouldn't have had the blowup with him in June because he always had a better relationship with Linda than with Vince.

 

[Big Papa Paegan]

Prichard and Corny take over all creative, and we get some improvements to the product overall (more freedom for the talents, less cartoonish bullshit, less HBK political power) but they don't have anybody to think outside of the box and stutter as WCW likely starts the nWo angle anyway.

This leads to Bischoff convincing Ted Turner to buy them out, and I don't think the WWF is in any financial position to argue otherwise. At best, it means that Bischoff can get enough clout with Turner and other executives to keep WCW floating for longer than it did, even if the downturn happens even sooner (since so much of the WCW product was about presenting itself as "ahead" of the WWF, at the time), and mayyyybeeeee we get Turner to launch a wrestling-centric channel (HUGE maybe, 99.9% unlikely) where WCW expands into more shows.

ECW ceases to be by 1998. So many of their bills were being taken care of by Vince, and I don't see Linda/Prichard/Corny being in favor of that kind of product. Best case scenario for ECW is that they stick around and really make a go of focusing almost entirely on tape traders and sticking to their hotbed regions (Northeast, Chicago), maybe cracking a TV deal with USA following the WWF's demise for a 1-hour late night program. Regardless, it sputters out around when it did anyway, at the very latest.

No indy boom in the early 00s. No current healthy indy scene. No AEW. Japan and Mexico are unaffected, overall.

I think the scenario that @King Kamala outlined is the most realistic one.

 

[BruiserBrody]

I wonder if JR pitches that the WWF needs a farm system and Corny gets to reboot SMW as a WWF feeder system?

Vince dying here might mean Mark Henry never becomes a wrestler, or if he does he goes through the WCW power plant ala fellow Olympian Chip Minton.

Miavia likely still gets signed as he was partially a Patterson project but who knows if he gets a mega push under a different booking regime?

Vader, Foley, Austin, Mero are all fresh signings so trajectories could change wildly. Ron Simmons won't become a goofy gladiator 1st come summer.