So assuming WCW and ECW still existed...

[Xero]

This assumes that WCW and WWE are still fluctuating between the top spot and ECW has a small but steady incline from 2001 (this is a best case scenario).

What do you think the landscape would be like? Who would be where? Would things not have happened? Would more have retired? Less? Who would be huge? Who wouldn't have gotten a chance? Etc.

[Pepsi Man]

Well, wrestlers would certainly be making more money...

[Nowhere Man]

Not the ECW ones, that's for damn sure.

[Pepsi Man]

Not the ECW ones, that's for damn sure.
I dunno; some of them might. In an interview I once read, Bill Alfonso did claim that the stories of wrestlers not getting paid in ECW were exaggerated, and that they always got their weekly checks, but sometimes didn't get their PPV payoffs on time.

[Fox]

A weekly check doesn't mean anything if it bounces, which is what a lot of ECW Stars' checks were doing at the time.



I think WCW would have realized their failures in continuing to push guys like Nash, DDP, Hogan, and Flair, and would have created some new stars. Guys who would've been headlining WCW events today would be Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sean O'Haire (who I still think could have been a ME player in the WWE if they'd given him a shot...), Vampiro, others.

And who knows. With Kurt Angle, Rhino, Christian, the Dudleys and others leaving WWE for other waters after WCW had closed, they may very well have ended up in WCW as main event stars. I would've expected WCW to resemble today's TNA, with more stars, and obviously much more money and a much better timeslot on TNT/TBS.

ECW? They were going to die no matter what. I can't really visualize any way that they could've climbed out of their financial hole after 2000.

[Pepsi Man]

A weekly check doesn't mean anything if it bounces, which is what a lot of ECW Stars' checks were doing at the time.
Sure, but the implication from that particular interview was that in the case of the weekly payments, they got their money. Sure, it was just one interview, but tell me you'd really be surprised at exaggeration in anything pro wrestling related.

[Stickman]

All the TNA wrestlers would be in WCW doing the same thing.