What Could Have Been / WWE

Over the years, many WWE story arcs and events have been dropped or altered due to injuries, disputes with and between the wrestlers, Executive Meddling and various other reasons.

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Territorial Days (pre-80s)

• The big what-if for years was, what if Vince McMahon (Junior) had never purchased his father's stock in the company, and all the shares went to one of the others the elder McMahon had envisioned eventually selling to (e.g., Gorilla Monsoon)? What if Vince were held to some promise that, by buying his father's company, he had to keep the promotion regional or else it would revert to a holding company? What if, back in September 1971, WWWF television announcer Ray Morgan had not been fired (over a pay dispute) by the elder McMahon and young Vince not been in the office that day? ^note (Speculation had it that Gorilla Monsoon also had been looking at reducing his schedule and, in addition to a desire to do some promoting, had been boning up on his announcing skills. Indeed, he would, during the 1970s, occasionally provide commentary during young Vince's (rare) vacations or when he couldn't make a taping, before finally moving full time behind the mike in late 1982.) What if Hulk Hogan had never returned to the northeast to become the centerpiece of young Vince's slowly-building empire, or any other major star had ever made it big in the WWF? What if Bob Backlund had refused to concede to Vince Jr.'s vision that involved Hogan — a wrestler that even today Backlund sees as having a limited wrestling skillset and more muscle and hot air than legit love for the sport — and not him? What if the first WrestleMania had flopped? ^note There was a very real chance the company would have gone under. What if Hogan and Vince McMahon were grilled by attorneys and forced to admit to their role in the steroid scandals that nearly brought down the company? ^note (Not to mention the sexual misconduct scandals that involved key promoters and officials, which were ongoing about the same time? More than a few were bracing for this to be just the tip of the iceberg of revelations regarding a possible criminal empire.) What if WCW had won the Monday Night Wars and viewers heeded Tony Schiavone's scornful warning to not tune into WWF Raw to see Mick Foley win the WWF Championship, and instead found the Hulk Hogan vs. Kevin Nash "Finger Poke of Doom" match more compelling^note By that point the war had heavily tipped in favor of the WWF, those extra viewers that came over from Nitro didn't give Raw the win for the week, they made what was going to be a pretty easy Raw victory into a total rout. That being said, there were points earlier on in the war where the WWF was on the ropes, and they weren't exactly setting the world on fire before the Monday night war started, Nitro launched shortly before the WWF (then still a private company) posted their second consecutive fiscal year in the red? What about other future scandals, concerning such things as Chris Benoit's death? So many what ifs about the WWF and later WWE itself that, had fate gone even just slightly differently, McMahon's empire would have been irreparably damaged, if not destroyed ... or in the very least professional wrestling as we now know it would be far different than it is now ... maybe with someone else stepping up to the plate to create company whose promotional territory is national, perhaps still as a territorial company that Vince Sr. advocated, maybe just the underground and smoky bar entertainment with minimal television presence ... who knows?
• Bruno Sammartino:
  • In 1980, several matches were supposedly booked pitting the ring veteran Sammartino against the young, up-and-coming Hulk Hogan. However, Hogan no-showed for these matches, and according to Sammartino, it was because Hogan knew he had little realistic chance of keeping up with him in the ring, much less beating him (legit or scripted). Had these matches happened, it is very likely that Hogan's push and credibility as a legitimate threat to two others on the WWF roster — André the Giant and Bob Backlund — would have been squashed, much less his future marketability. To be fair to Hogan, speculation has also been that Vince McMahon Senior also knew this (ergo, that Hogan, still a relative novice in 1980, was not quite ready to keep up with Sammartino in the ring), had the matches cancelled and arranged for Hogan to no-show without telling Sammartino. (Indeed, Sammartino already was busy with a feud around that time with Larry Zbyszko.)
  • In 1987, in the immediate aftermath of André the Giant's heel turn and demand for a shot at the WWF World Heavyweight Championship held by Hogan at WrestleMania III, a short-term storyline was supposedly planned with Sammartino being used to put over Andre, the upshot being that this man's sterling credentials as two-time WWF champion, who had never been decisively beaten much less had more than a very small number of clean pinfall losses on his record, were meaningless against Andre (who would swiftly and brutally beat Bruno to the point where he would be hospitalized). Instead, the WWF wisely took the direct approach by keeping Sammartino in the broadcast booth and having Andre easily eliminate Hogan from a nationally televised battle royal shortly before WrestleMania.
• When Bob Backlund's popularity began to wane, the man Vince Sr. wanted to make the number one face and eventual world champion was the Junkyard Dog. He had already main evented shows down South, and was an over upper mid-carder in the WWWF. But then Vince Jr. was able to lure Hulk Hogan back from the AWA, and JYD was bumped down to the lower mid-card.
• Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has reported that Vince saw three wrestlers in America who would be capable of leading the national expansion of the WWF. The one he got was Hulk Hogan, but the others were apparently "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka, who had already been a star working for Vince Sr., and Kerry Von Erich, one of the major attractions of World Class Championship Wrestling in Dallas. Both alternatives had their merits, but both also would have come with serious problems (namely massive substance abuse and personal reliability issues) that were less of an issue with Hogan.
  • Jim Cornette has said that there are only three people Vince could've realistically both locked into exclusive contracts and had the star power to carry a national promotion with the same level of marketing Hogan eventually got: Austin Idol, Kerry von Erich, and Sgt. Slaughter.

Rock n' Wrestling Era (1980s-93)

• The Rockers: The tag team of Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels initially debuted in the WWF in the summer of 1987, but were fired days later — shortly after their first television match aired on Wrestling Challenge. Interestingly, in between that first match and their being fired, the Rockers were at a house show card where the Hart Foundation was also competing ... and it was Jannetty who threw down the gauntlet and challenged the then Tag Team champions to a match. The Harts accepted, but no match ever took place because Michaels and Jannetty partied too hard that night ... but imagine at least another two years of matches involving Michaels and his arch-nemesis for years, Bret Hart, both in tag-team and (potentially) one-on-one competition. (And this was at a time when Jannetty and Jim Neidhart were still considered the better members of their respective tag teams ... if they only knew.) Anyway, it would be another year before the Rockers returned — after the Harts turned face — and another year after that before the two teams (quietly) wrestled each other^note The Rockers actually defeated the Hart Foundation in a best of 3 falls match (taped to be shown on TV a few days later) to win the WWF tag titles... except not, even though they defended the titles on a couple house shows. The original plan after the title change was to fire Neidhart and give Bret a singles push, but due to a combination of Vince changing his mind on firing Neidhart and the match not being fit to air on TV (the top rope broke about 30 seconds into the second fall) they gave the belts back to the Hart Foundation and pretended like the match never happened, burying the footage in the vault. As you'd expect both Bret and Shawn were livid about this. The match was finally acknowledged many years later when it was shown on Michaels' Heartbreak and Triumph DVD, and almost 2 ½ years after that before the first high-profile Bret Hart-Shawn Michaels match.
  • Marty Jannetty's career is full of what-if's. As has been mentioned, Jannetty was considered at least the equal of Shawn Michaels in ability and charisma, and the team was broken up because WWF management thought they could get two singles stars out of it. It was a steady stream of problems relating to "personal demons" that ended up hamstringing Jannetty's wrestling career. For example, right after the breakup of the Rockers, Jannetty got in real life trouble that resulted in him being put under house arrest for half a year, which lead to his release from WWF and capturing absolutely no heat from the angle. He got released a second time after a low-quality match against Michaels that was blamed on his being hung over, although Jannetty claimed he was merely tired and Michaels deliberately made him look bad. Even as recently as 2006, Jannetty was brought back for a one-off match with Kurt Angle. The match went nearly 20 minutes and the wrestling fandom went mad demanding Jannetty be rehired - only he couldn't because he was under probation from an assault case. Jannetty had the ability, look and charisma to be much more than the guy most often associated with being the failed half of a tag team - what would the wrestling scene look like if he'd missed a few bad breaks and controlled his personal life a little better?
• Ted DiBiase was supposed to win the WWF title at WrestleMania IV. The problem was that Randy Savage was supposed to win the Intercontinental Title from the Honky Tonk Man at an earlier Saturday Night's Main Event. Honky, however, refused to drop the title and threatened to quit the company and sign with the NWA. Honky was allowed to keep the title, so now Savage was upset, so Savage was given the WWF title at WrestleMania. DiBiase was now upset, but apparently not enough since he was given the Million Dollar Belt as compensation.
• The Undertaker
  • The Undertaker was supposed to be an actual undertaker instead of a zombie/biker. Technically he was, when he was managed (briefly) by Brother Love — then Paul Bearer became his manager, and with him came the mysterious urn that was the source of his supernatural powers.
  • It is widely rumored that the Undertaker was also supposed to debut as the infamous Gobbledy Gooker, as the Egg Man. However, this idea was seen as too ridiculous and was revised into the Undertaker persona on the same night the Gobbledy Gooker gimmick bombed.
  • According to James J. Dillon, another idea for the Undertaker was to make him a Viking character. The Viking character concept would later be given to John Nord as The Berserker.
• Fans also have speculated what might have been had the Ultimate Warrior remained with the WWF in late 1991 (i.e., not been fired by Vince McMahon over a pay dispute) and his planned feud with Jake Roberts had taken hold. One idea, suggested by Warrior fans, held that eventually Warrior would be victorious in his feud with Roberts before the whole thing would come full-circle back to the Undertaker, setting up a WrestleMania VIII showdown that would have seen Warrior emerge as a decisive winner. Surely, the Undertaker's credibility would have been lost and so would have his push. But fate stepped in and, with Undertaker's face turn in early 1992, so would Victory No. 2 in the legendary "Streak" (at the expense of Roberts).
• Before settling on Hogan vs. Warrior, near the end of 1989 the company was contemplating Mr. Perfect as the challenger to Hogan's title. A Saturday Night's Main Event even had The Genius get a countout win over Hogan when Perfect stole the WWF Title and later destroyed it backstage. ^note Rumors that this later became the Hardcore Title are false. It's not clear whether Hogan himself shot down the idea or the bookers just thought up the Hogan vs. Warrior scenario and felt it would be a better draw. Perfect was then going to win the 1990 Royal Rumble, but that one Hogan did veto, on the same day according to some reports.
• Brutus Beefcake was originally slated to win the Intercontinental Title at SummerSlam 1990, but the parasailing accident made that impossible (he wouldn't return to wrestling for nearly three years).
• After the huge success of Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI the original plan was to do the sequel match at WrestleMania VII. Instead, Warrior ended the career of Randy Savage while Hogan went to face Sgt.Slaughter for the WWE championship.
  • Speaking of WrestleMania VII, it was advertised at Mania 6 that the Los Angeles Memorial Colliseum would be the hosting stadium of Mania 7 but owing to bad ticket sales it was downgraded to the Sports Arena instead.
• WrestleMania VIII had the potential to run Hulk Hogan vs Ric Flair in the main event. WWE trialed it out on house shows and it was deemed a failure. So Flair fought Savage while Hogan fought Sid Justice in the main event

New Generation Era (1993-97)

• As mentioned on the WCW page Eric Bischoff interviewed for an announcer job in 1990, before WCW hired him. By 1993 he was WCW's executive producer. But what if Vince had hired Bischoff? 3 of the 4 biggest stars of the Attitude Era (Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and Triple H, along with commentator Jim Ross) were fired/ran off from WCW by Bischoff during this time period, and it's unlikely that whoever is running WCW in Bischoff's absence is able to convince Ted Turner to give him Monday nights and to break out the checkbook for guys like Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Bret Hart. The WWF-WCW promotional war might have ended in a WWF victory even sooner^note WCW was in really bad shape in 1993 and had trouble even giving tickets away until they got Hogan than it actually did... or it might still be ongoing today, who knows.
• One of the key elements of the New Generation Era, pushing Bret Hart as their top face and courting Canada as a market, could have been different, since the WWF actually were considering two options, the other being pushing Tito Santana and courting Latin America as a market (and building the WWF around lucha libre). With fans growing less interested in Rock n' Wrestling era-type wrestling and its top stars (notably Hulk Hogan) directly involved in the steroid scandal, the WWF was forced to look to a new direction. Reportedly, Santana — one of the WWF's most talented and reliable wrestlers — had been eyed for the WWF title and was even eyed as the centerpiece for the WWF's lucha libre template. However, the powers that be also saw tremendous promise in building around another of its top talents, Bret Hart. The coin was proverbially flipped, and the WWF went north to Canada ... and Hart and the Hart family (including Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith and Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart), but many observers say things likely would have worked out just as well with Santana, whose wrestling skills, charisma and so forth were solid.
• The Ringmaster gimmick was originally planned to go to Bryan Clarke in 1993. However, Clarke didn't like the gimmick, so he finally became Adam Bomb, and the Ringmaster gimmick wouldn't be used until Stone Cold Steve Austin arrived to WWF in 1995.
• After the blockbuster main event match at WrestleMania 12, the original plan was for Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels to have a rematch at WrestleMania 13 with Shawn planned to dropped the WWE championship back to the hitman. However Shawn "lost his smile" and faked a knee injury and vacated the title. Bret Hart instead faced Stone Cold Steve Austin along with their famous Face/Heel Double-Turn which elevated Steve Austin to eventual face of the company and the WWE championship was instead contested by Sid and The Undertaker
• In late 1993, the WWF decided to revive the previously inactive Women's Championship by bringing in Madusa, under the new name Alundra Blayze, who would win the title in December of that year. A few months later, in 1994, the WWF brought in legendary AJW wrestler Bull Nakano to face off against Blayze, and the two would engage in a heated rivalry that lasted throughout the rest of the year and produced good matches. In 1995, the WWF signed Rhonda Singh, bringing her in as vicious yet comedic heel Bertha Faye, the trailer trash girlfriend of Dr. Harvey Wippleman. Since Blayze would be out for a few months getting plastic surgery after Faye broke her nose in her debut, the plan was for Faye to feud with Bull until Blayze returned and then build the division up from there. However, Bull was found in possession of cocaine and subsequently fired, leaving Faye without a feud, and by the end of the year, frustrated with her gimmick and being told she couldn't perform her signature powerbomb as Sycho Sid was using it as his Finishing Move, Singh had left. At Survivor Series 1995, WWF brought in more women from AJW (Sakie Hasegawa, Chaparita ASARI, Kyoko Inoue, Aja Kong, Tomoko Watanabe and Lioness Asuka) with the intention of building Aja Kong up as Blayze's next challenger, as she picked up wins over the next few weeks on Monday Night Raw and was scheduled to face Blayze for the belt at the 1996 Royal Rumble. However, Blayze did not like Kong, who was notoriously stiff, and refused to work with her, instead sitting out the last month of her contract and refusing to re-sign while she was still champion. The WWF abandoned its women's division before bringing it back three years later. It's a story full of what ifs: would the plan to build a solid division around Bull, Faye and Blayze have succeeded if Bull hadn't been fired? Would fan interest have continued if the Blayze/Kong feud had gone off as planned, and if so, would WWE keep the focus on bringing in actual women wrestlers (be it American girls, Japanese joshi or Mexican luchadoras)? Of course, the kicker to all of this was the fact that the day her contract with WWF expired, she showed up on WCW Monday Nitro as Madusa with the WWF Women's Championship belt...which she then proceeded to toss in the trash The really painful part? The massive loss of face Vince suffered from Madusa's action (particularly, having a WWF title on WCW television), is believed to be part of why he pulled the Montreal Screwjob.
• The Montreal Screwjob itself, of course, also has so many "what could have been" moments as well: Bret Hart was supposed to drop the title at the 1997 Survivor Series to Shawn Michaels the night before his contract expired, but refused to do so due to the pay-per-view being held in Canada. Desperate to make sure his top prize doesn't leave the company with Hart, Vince forced the referee to ring the bell and declare Michaels as the new champion. The massive amount of heat McMahon got from the event led to the development of his Corrupt Corporate Executive persona, which led to his classic feud with Steve Austin that helped launch the Attitude Era.
• In a rare case of actually acknowledging what could have been, WWE actually released promotional pictures of Owen Hart as WWF Champion from his aborted 1994 title run. Owen was originally supposed to beat older brother Bret for the title in a Lumberjack Match at a house show in July due to interference from Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, which would lead into their cage match at SummerSlam (a match which did happen, and was a Crowning Moment of Awesome for both men). For whatever reason, this was booked as a Dusty Finish so the WWF invented an instant replay rule that would keep the belt on him (hey, at least it was better than the "not an official ring" excuse he used to keep the Rockers from being the tag team champions).
  • Speaking of Owen, more than a few sources have stated Owen was supposed to get "The Game" gimmick instead of Triple H. Owen's tag team with Jeff Jarrett (with Debra as manager) was also going to be christened Talent & Attitude. The T&A pun was later given to Test and Albert, with Trish Stratus as the manager.
• Prior to Vince McMahon's 1994 steroid trial, Vince put together a contingency plan in case the case went bad for him: Linda McMahon would take control of the company as a whole and the role of creative head would be taken up by long-time Memphis promoter Jerry Jarrett, who had worked with most of the roster of the time (particularly Jerry Lawler and his own son, Jeff Jarrett). The WWF's Audience-Alienating Era would've been a far different place guided by Jarrett's old-school sensibilities.
• When Vince McMahon began laying groundwork for the Light Heavyweight division, the original plan was to build the division around The Great Sasuke. However, Sasuke was notoriously difficult to work with and allegedly ruffled a lot of feathers behind the scenes in the WWF, feeling he was a bigger deal in America than he actually was.^note Sort of, it wasn't that he thought he was a bigger deal than he was, it's that doing jobs in the WWF could hurt his standing in Japan. While American wrestlers can go to Japan and do whatever because no one at home will ever know about it the same is not true for Japanese wrestlers working in the U.S. - wrestling is huge in Japan and Japanese wrestling publications would definitely report one of their guys getting beaten into powder overseas. Today this wouldn't even matter (and it would be laughable to think that someone would even bring it up), but in 1996 it would have been a huge deal, especially for the guy that founded Michinoku Pro Wrestling. Instead of building the division around Sasuke, they built it around his protege Taka Michinoku.

Attitude Era (1997-2001)

• Had the "MSG Incident"^note During Scott Hall and Kevin Nash's last appearance in WWF before they left for WCW, they no-sold the finish of a match and celebrated together in the ring with Shawn Michaels and Triple H, breaking kayfabe severely. Since Vince McMahon couldn't punish Hall and Nash for it and was afraid to punish HBK, who was his top draw at the time, the full punishment for the incident fell on Triple H not taken place in 1996, Triple H, not "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, would have won the King of the Ring tournament that year. Of course, Austin's KotR victory speech was where he coined "Austin 3:16" and is looked on as a pivotal moment in his ascent to the top of the wrestling industry, meaning that without Austin's win, the Attitude Era might not have happened, and the WWF at the time might very well have gone bankrupt.
• Had Bret Hart not been released from the company in the circumstances surrounding the Montreal Screwjob; the plan for WrestleMania 14 was to have Bret drop the title to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in a rematch of their WrestleMania 13 classic.
• There were plans to make Sable a love interest of The Undertaker around 1997. There was even an article in a WWF magazine that was going to lead into it. However, the Undertaker's real-life wife at the time did not approve of the storyline, so it never happened. The only time they crossed paths was during Taker's Ministry of Darkness's run, where she was one of the women he terrorized as punishment for Vince McMahon not handing Stephanie to him.
• Sable's feud with Tori was constantly changing. Vince Russo claims that Tori was going to be revealed as Sable's sister (commentators do reference that they look alike in a few of Tori's early appearances). For whatever reasons she ended up just being an obsessed fan. Tori herself claims the story changed every week due to Sable not approving of the ideas.
• Although Mick Foley has had numerous crowning moments in his career, his first book Have a Nice Day notes that he did end up missing on one that would have been the highlight of his Dude Love persona. In Summerslam 1997, Mankind was wrestling Triple H in a cage match. Mankind was supposed to go through a personality change, rip off his shirt revealing a heart tattoo on his chest and do a dive off the top of the cage as per the fantasy of Dude Love. Unfortunately Mick forgot to get the tattoo done (and the substitute, done with body paint, had been sweated off), and he was too bruised up to do a proper dive resulting in many a confused fan.
  • Another for Foley: The main event for WrestleMania XV was originally going to be a three-way between Austin, Rock, and Mankind. Shawn Michaels apparently appealed that the main event of WrestleMania should be a one-on-one match. The bookers agreed, so Foley was relegated to being the guest referee (though, ironically enough, Michaels was actually lobbying for Austin to be left out of the match, leaving Rock and Mankind fighting one-on-one).
• Had Brian Pillman not died on the day of the In Your House: Badd Blood PPV, his storyline with Goldust would have ended with him stealing Goldust's wife, Terri Runnels. He had already won her servitude, but in a match where Goldust was wrestling to win her back, she was going to turn on him and side with Pillman for real.
• "Dr. Death" Steve Williams was brought to the WWE in 1998 to be a challenger for then-champion "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Austin was looking forward to the match having never really worked with Doc before. Then Vince Russo thought of the ill-fated Brawl For All which centered on legitimate fights. He entered the competition and was expected to win it due to his reputation as one of the toughest men in the wrestling business. However, after beating Pierre Carl Ouellet in the first round, he faced Bart Gunn in the semifinals and suffered a torn hamstring. Gunn then knocked out Williams, who missed several months following the injury. The loss killed any push he might have been given before it got started, and Doc left the company shortly thereafter.
• In 1998, the WWF had planned to give Luna Vachon a reign as WWF Women's Champion. Just one little problem: the then-champion Sable repeatedly refused to drop the title to her.
• Malia Hosaka was a very talented wrestling journeywoman during the days when women's wrestling was all but dead in the United States. She worked a match against WCW Women's Champion Akira Hokuto on Nitro, and later signed a WWF developmental contract in the late 90s, but she never got called up from developmental. She made one appearance with Taka Michinoku and Funaki while they were doing their "Evil / Indeed" gimmick - she shoved Funaki, stole his microphone, and said "indeed" instead of him - but very shortly after that the entire gimmick was canned because WWF had no plans to actually push Taka and Funaki, and the gimmick was making them too over to be effective jobbers. That was unfortunately the closest Malia ever came to making it in one of the big 3. And who knows how far the gimmick could have taken Taka and Funaki if it hadn't been canned?
  • She did a surprise anonymous run-in during WWE Women's Champion Ivory's promo on the June 28, 1999 Raw. The Usenet newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling went nuts asking who it was. The plan was for Hosaka to be come in as an unknown commodity, then rise through the ranks and challenge Ivory for the Women's title (her character was supposed to be a "Rocky Balboa" type), but the idea got scrapped because too many fans recognized her.
  • In early 2000, there were plans for Malia Hosaka to be Essa Rios' manager but, at the last minute, they switched and gave the job to Amy Dumas, who became Lita and went on to be one of the biggest female stars in wrestling history. Hosaka (and Rios for that matter) have long since been forgotten by anyone who isn't a pro wrestling fan as well as wrestling fans who only watch WWE.
• The Public Enemy (Tag Team) probably would have been as successful in WWF as The Dudleys later became if not for several factors later revealed by John "Bradshaw" Layfield, who participated in their infamous Sunday Night Heat beatdown: being hired by Terry Taylor, who most in the entire business don't like, showing up four hours late for the tapings, and the main one, attempting a last minute change in the finish (being driven through tables for a DQ win). Gerald Brisco's instructions to Bradshaw and Ron Simmons was simply to ensure they went through the table.
• One can't help but wonder what would have happened with Owen Hart's career had he not tragically been killed in a stunt gone wrong at the Over The Edge PPV in May 1999. Many people that knew him say he was seriously considering retiring once his contract was up to spend more time with his family, but he may have been convinced to stick around, and retirements never last in wrestling anyway. We certainly would have got some great matches with all the guys that came over from WCW, at least. Given his friendship with Jeff Jarrett it's not hard to imagine him ending up in TNA (especially with their much lighter schedule), where he probably would have won a couple world titles seeing as how he would have arguably been both their biggest star and their most talented wrestler during TNA's first few years.
  • On the other hand if Owen is still alive when Jarrett's contract is up a few months after his passing maybe he talks Jarrett into staying (Jarrett later said that Owen's death was a big reason why he left), which means Jarrett doesn't hold up Vince to put over Chyna and get blacklisted, which means Jeff and his father never start TNA in the first place.
• Chyna was briefly planned to win the WWE title at SummerSlam 1999. This was cancelled because the bookers didn't believe she had adequate skill in the ring for it.
• In 1999, then-WWF booker Vince Russo abruptly jumped to WCW; this left WWF's creative staff scrambling to come up with resolutions to approaching angles, one of them being the impending wedding of Stephanie McMahon and Test. Russo later admitted that his plan was to have Test turn heel, join D-Generation X, and leave Stephanie at the altar.
• The Triple H, Stephanie McMahon and Kurt Angle Just Friends Love Triangle storyline around the middle of 2000 was apparently meant to end with Steph running off with Kurt, both turning Heel while H turned face. After that angle was nixed, it lead to Chris Kreski being fired/leaving his head writer role with WWF Creative, and being replaced with Steph herself, starting the period that many in the IWC believe began the decline of the company.
• Speaking of which, The Jericho/Triple H WrestleMania feud was originally going to be about Jericho having an affair with Stephanie to stick it to Triple H. Rock/Hogan was also going to be the original main event of WrestleMania 18. Triple H vetoed both. Instead, Jericho was demoted to a weapon in a Triple H Stephanie feud and the match closed WrestleMania 18, before a crowd tired out from Rock vs. Hogan.
• A boxing match between Triple H and Mike Tyson was planned to take place at WrestleMania X-Seven but did not come to fruition, so Tyson was replaced by The Undertaker.
  • Another possibility for The Game at X-Seven was a match against Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens NFL team. They won the Super Bowl in January 2001, with Lewis being named the game's MVP. He was as hot as a sports star could be at the time, though taking a plea on a murder charge the year before probably didn't help.
  • In addition, Shawn Michaels was pitched as a possible opponent, which would've brough forward his comeback match agaist Triple H that eventually happened at SummerSlam 2002 a year and a half earlier. However, on the episode of Raw that was supposed to start the angle leading to the match, Michaels appeared backstage in no condition to compete.
• If Kevin Nash is to be believed, WCW sought to bring The Undertaker back from the WWF when he was sidelined for injuries. Even though 'Taker ultimately stayed, the near-poaching led to 'Taker dropping the Deadman gimmick when he returned in favor of a biker identity, dubbed the "American Bad Ass," and wouldn't return as the Deadman until Wrestlemania XX.
• If Triple H hadn't suffered his Game-Breaking Injury in 2001, he would have turned face and restarted his feud with a heel Austin, that would end at WrestleMania X-8, in what would have been a heel version of the Mega Powers (Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage) storyline. If that happened, he might have done so well that WWF may have decided "he's much better as a face than as a heel." He may have never turned heel, get infamously pushed to the moon on Raw, form Evolution and allow Randy Orton and Batista to gain credibility, and the two may never have had such great careers.
  • Even further - if Triple H didn't tear his quad, thus leaving the WWE without Triple H and The Rock, who was shooting The Scorpion King at the time, then TLC III wouldn't have taken place at the following SmackDown tapings due the WWF having to scramble rewrite the show; Chris Benoit may not have broken his neck (TLC III was the match where the injury first happened), the InVasion may not have occurred in the manner it did (The first WCW run-in happened the week after the injury), and Chris Jericho & Kurt Angle may not have been pushed to the main event due to the the three absences already mentioned.
  • According to Jericho's second autobiography, he would have feuded with Austin for the WWF Title at that year's King of the Ring, while Triple H would have feuded with Benoit for the Intercontinental Title. Due to Triple H's injury, those matches were dropped and replaced by the Triple Threat Match between Austin, Jericho and Benoit.
• The biggest "What Could Have Been" in wrestling history: The InVasion Angle. After the buyout of WCW, WWE was planning to have WCW run as an entirely separate wrestling promotion (but still be a part of the WWE corporate structure; in essence, the plan was an early prototype of the Brand Extension). Unfortunately, WWE couldn't find a time slot for WCW, so instead, the InVasion angle began. This was intended to move WCW into a primetime slot, with Raw planned to become WCW's show while SmackDown would be WWE's show. However, fans solidly rejected this plan, threatened refunds for already-purchased Raw tickets, booed every "Special WCW Match" in a WWE ring, and in the end, the InVasion ended up being one giant bag of suck.
  • The above would have been a continuation of the divorce angle between Vince and Linda; Shane McMahon's WCW and Vince's WWF were initially pushed as faces and heels, respectively, prior to the Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell match.
  • The InVasion only existed in the first place because of another "What Could Have Been". Former WCW executive Eric Bischoff had managed to get backing from a venture capital firm (Fusient Media Ventures) to buy WCW out, and relaunch it apart from Time Warner's corporate umbrella. Said backing got cold feet once they got a good look at the books (at the time, plans were to cancel the Wednesday night "Thunder" show, and move Monday Nitro to TBS, halving the new company's revenue), and Bischoff was scrambling to put something else together. Then TNT (and specifically, Jamie Kellner, the Time Warner exec who was also responsible for Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain) canceled WCW Monday Nitro, stripping WCW of its only remaining TV outlet and single most valuable asset. This was primarily to force a sale to the WWF, who had been in talks earlier but couldn't pull the trigger due to an exclusivity deal with Viacom.
  • A couple of other "What if" moments regarding the InVasion: What if Vince would have sprung for the contracts of popular WCW wrestlers that he decided not to buy, and what if his ego didn't get in the way of making the InVasion worth a damn? At the time, Vince argued that he couldn't afford some of the contracts of WCW big name stars. So when the InVasion kicked off, there were few big names from WCW to compete with a WWF roster that was stacked with the biggest names in the business. This coupled with Vince's insistence on not giving WCW any credibility in the angle turned the entire ordeal in to a one-sided "Haha, we won" affair for WWF. There was no real suspense, no period of peril, shock or excitement for the fans, as WCW never got a chance to take the angle to the hilt. Big names from WCW ultimately didn't end up in WWE until after the InVasion was over.
  • The Saturday night recap show, WWF Excess (later WWE Excess), was originally planned to be a WCW-based show, possibly a revival of "WCW Saturday Night".
• At one point, WWF had very big plans for Marianna Komlos as a wrestler. As discussed on podcast by Jim Cornette and Bruce Pritchard, Marianna came to WWF from the same agency that they obtained Trish Stratus and Victoria from. According to Cornette, Marianna was both well liked and gorgeous, but despite her background in fitness she wasn't very athletic and simply couldn't learn to wrestle - WWF management had just assumed that she would become servicable in the ring quickly because Trish and Victoria had. She and the WWF mutually agreed to part ways, and that was the end of her involvement in the wrestling business. It leads to some small but interesting what-ifs. Was the excreable domestic abuse angle altered (or created) to write her off television? Was the Chaz Warrington singles push supposed to be a vehicle to get her over? If she'd succeeded as a wrestler, would it have helped or hurt his career?
• Depending on whom you believe, the identity behind GTV would have been either Tom Green (according to Vince Russo and Chris Jericho) or Goldust; in the case of the latter, GTV was originally called "GDTV" (Goldust Television) when it was first launched.
• Had Eddie Guerrero not gotten injured on the Smack Down! the week of his debut, the main event of No Way Out would have actually been simular to last year: an 8-Man Tag with The Radicals vs. DX. This would have also meant that Mick Foley would have quietly retired after the Royal Rumble instead outright following his loss at No Way Out.
• After the Invasion Angle came to an end, the WWF Championship and the World Championship (formerly the WCW Championship) were unified into the Undisputed WWF Championship at Vengeance. In 2021, Angle revealed that he was meant to be the first Undisputed WWF Champion, but, one week before the event, Vince changed the plan and gave the title to Jericho, since he was very popular with the fans, to which Angle agreed with.
• According to former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz, Tazz was going to be the driver who ran over Stone Cold Steve Austin at Survivor Series 1999.

Ruthless Aggression Era (2002-2008)

• What if WrestleMania X8 main event was Austin vs. Hogan?
  • Scott Hall was supposed to beat "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in their WrestleMania X8 match but Austin pretty much shot it down as hard as he could, not wanting to lose to the 'invading' force of the nWo.
• If the writers hadn't pissed off Austin with a last-minute Raw booking in the King of the Ring tournament against Brock Lesnar that would have helped neither of them, he would have continued feuding with Eddie Guerrero.
• Before becoming Brock Lesnar's manager, Paul Heyman was set to become Chris Benoit's.
• The execrable Katie Vick angle was supposed to bring Scott Vick aka Sick Boy (a talented jobber-to-the-stars from Raven's Flock that WCW never utilized) into WWE. The reason was Katie Vick was named as such was because Scott would have been brought under his real-life name as Katie's kayfabe brother. When the fans thoroughly rejected the angle, Scott Vick was kept in developmental and quit wrestling in frustration several months later.
  • According to former WWE executive Bruce Pritchard, he and Triple H wanted to film two different versions of the Katie Vick video: a "comical and over-the-top" version akin to the style of The Pink Panther, and the "straight and serious" version that wound up becoming the one that everyone knows. Vince insisted on filming the "straight and serious" version first, but after they were done filming, Vince told the crew to wrap up filming supposedly due to them not having enough time to film the other version (though it is heavily implied that Vince had lied just so that they could have his version only...)
• Mark "Marco Corleone" Jindrak was set to be the fourth member of Evolution. Triple H's DVD would later reveal unaired footage of promos featuring Jindrak instead of Batista.
• John Cena might have been fired if Stephanie McMahon hadn't overheard him freestyling, leading to him dressing and rapping like Vanilla Ice two weeks later on the Halloween Episode of SmackDown. And if Cena was fired, he would have never won the US title, would have never gotten super-over with the fans, would have never been pushed to the WWE title, would have never beat JBL for the championship at WrestleMania 21, would have never took the title to RAW and would have never had a 10 month reign that made Vince realize he could be the company's top face.
  • Additionally, John Cena actually lobbied to Edge to win their Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match at Unforgiven (WWE) 2006, giving Edge the title and the feud. This was because Cena wanted to take a break, go back to SmackDown, and turn heel to refresh his character (restarting his feuds with Kurt Angle, from opposite roles, and Rey Mysterio Jr. while possibly aligning with Randy Orton and starting his feud with Batista years early). However, his feud with Edge ignited a phase of him Growing the Beard, so the idea was nixed as he ascended to megastar status. Interestingly, Cena was very disappointed with the outcome as, in stark contrast to his other title wins, he didn't celebrate and looked miserable,^note not helped at all by the event taking place in Edge's hometown, meaning that he had to endure again the same kind of hostile reception he already faced at One Night Stand 2006 somewhat breaking kayfabe.
• Booker T was slated to win the World Heavyweight Championship from Triple H at WrestleMania XIX, but at the time, Booker T was contemplating retirement, and the WWE was in the process of signing Goldberg. Or if rumors are to be believed, Triple H lobbied to retain the championship.
• In October 2004, WWE began grooming Stacy Keibler for a reign as WWE Women's Champion. Stacy was extremely popular but had very little talent as an in-ring performer so WWE had Molly Holly put her over three weeks in row to build up some buzz on her. Stacy was booked to win the Fulfill Your Fantasy Battle Royal at Taboo Tuesday 2004 and become champion. The day of the show, Stacy told WWE management that, as a non-wrestler, she didn't deserve to be champion and they should leave the belt on then-champ Trish Stratus.
• Had Brock Lesnar not left in 2004, he would had reprised his feud with The Undertaker now back as the "Original Deadman", which eventually did happen in 2014 and 2015.
• According to former WWE writer Dan Madigan (who would later write Kane's debut movie, See No Evil), Heidenreich's first gimmick would have been Baron von Bava, a 1940s frozen Nazi soldier thawed out in the present day, with Paul Heyman (who is Jewish and whose mother is a Holocaust survivor) as his heel manager. The pitch did not get over with the WWE creative team and Vince McMahon, who was shocked into silence and left the meeting without saying a word.
  • Also, Kenzo Suzuki's first gimmick would have been Hirohito, an apologist for Imperial Japan who had taken the name of the late Japanese emperor and would swear to make America pay for defeating Japan in World War II (the Hirohito gimmick went as far as having vignettes airing for it, showing Hirohito's name appearing in a splash of blood). Reportedly, it was pitched by the same guy who pitched the Baron Von Bava gimmick, and it's likely that Suzuki and Heindenreich would have teamed up under those gimmicks.
• Trish Stratus said that WWE once wanted her to do a lesbian storyline with Torrie Wilson. She turned it down, feeling it served no purpose beyond Fanservice.
• Torrie's actual lesbian storyline with Dawn Marie was planned to go much longer, with segments involving lawyers and Torrie's brothers. When Torrie was chosen to pose for Playboy the storyline was quietly dropped (Dawn had still been billed as 'Dawn Marie-Wilson' for a couple of month's after Al's kayfabe death).
• Lita was going to face off against Trish Stratus at Wrestlemania 21 for the Women's Championship, but after she blew her knee at New Year's Revolution 2005, Lita was replaced by Christy Hemme, with Lita serving as Hemme's manager.
• The UFC's Mike Goldberg was WWE's original choice to replace Jim Ross in 2005. Goldberg declined because he would have to give up his announcing gig at Fox Sports Net. It was Goldberg's refusal that led to Joey Styles being recruited by the company.
• Had controversy not ended his career and storyline, the record for youngest World Heavyweight Champion might belong to Muhammad Hassan, who was 23 when he faced Undertaker for the #1 Contendership. Had it not been for the London Bombing incident, he would have won the match, and beaten Batista at Summerslam, beating Randy Orton's record by more than 8 months.
• According to Hulk Hogan, his feud with Shawn Michaels that went into SummerSlam of 2005 was originally planned to last for at least 2 more Pay-Per-Views, with Shawn Michaels winning the 2nd one and a 3rd one building up for who the better wrestler was. One of them was going to be a Steel Cage Match. Hogan also hinted that this could be one of the major possibilities as to why Shawn Michaels oversold all of Hogan's moves in such an over-the-top fashion. ^note  Michaels himself claimed in WWE Magazine that he had been told to emulate the Michaels of old, who "bounced around the ring like a Superball" rather than trying to stick it to Hogan, so make of that what you will. However, multiple issues came up right afterwards and the feud abruptly ended the next night on RAW, with Michaels slowly but surely returning to his Face routes.
• Similarly to the Owen Hart/WWF Championship example mentioned above, Stephanie McMahon has hinted in interviews that, on the day he died, Eddie Guerrero was booked to win the World Heavyweight Championship in a Triple Threat Match involving an injured then-champion Batista. Batista later stated in his book that Randy Orton was the one who was going to win the title, and most likely Stephanie's comments were sadness over Eddie never becoming a champion again like he hoped to be. Chavo Guerrero Jr.'s comments after his departure from WWE about him and Eddie used more for building newer talent rather than being given their own pushes give some validity to Batista.
  • Even if Eddie would not have won the above match, it was later confirmed that he was eventually going to have a match at WrestleMania 22 vs. Shawn Michaels, built up in a similar way to Michaels' match against Chris Jericho at WrestleMania XIX.
  • Speaking of Chavo, reportedly WWE had Chavo as their first choice for the main event push that was part of the infamous, widely-panned "Eddiesploitation" angle, but Chavo declined, so they went with the next option, Rey Mysterio.
  • Bizarrely enough, had Eddie Guerrero not passed away in late 2005, we might not have Dolph Ziggler as we currently know him. Before Eddie died, his nephew Chavo was wrestling as a goofy, white-bread golfer named Kerwin White, with Ziggler as his caddy. However, when Eddie died, Chavo decided he wanted to go back to his original gimmick and have a Guerrero on the roster. Had he continued as Kerwin White, Dolph wouldn't have been sent back to developmental, became part of the Spirit Squad, or anything else. Ziggler might not even still be in WWE had it not happened (as, at that time, he was one of the unremarkable lower mid-carders that tend to disappear during WWE's annual "spring cleaning.")
  • Eddie's death also had an effect on his wife Vickie. If he never died, Vickie wouldn't have needed a job, wouldn't have been put in the Rey Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero feud, would have never turned on Mysterio and align with her nephew, would have never been appointed as Teddy Long's Assistant GM, wouldn't have ever been named General Manager of SmackDown after Teddy Long's heart attack, wouldn't have delivered such bad promos, wouldn't have gotten so much X-Pac Heat (and, since people hated hearing her speak, the heat would be the loudest at the beginning of every promo, which was usually opened with "Excuse Me!" and WWE would never have noticed how much heat those two words got, and would have never turned it into a Catchphrase.) The careers of LayCool and Dolph Ziggler may not have gone very far without her support, and, wow, it changed everything.
• On a sadder note, The Miz stated that original plans for his call-up in 2005 would had been in a tag team called "Reality Check" with the late Matt Cappotelli, the Tough Enough III co-winner^note The other being the Miz's future partner John Morrison. whose career was derailed by brain cancer.
• An angle that, thankfully, never panned out: In 2006, after Stephanie McMahon gave birth to her child, there was planned to be an incest angle where Vince was revealed to be the father. This was scrapped after Stephanie refused to participate in such a storyline.
  • Undaunted by Stephanie's refusal, Vince pitched a slightly different idea: the father of her baby would be Shane McMahon (Vince's son/Stephanie's brother). BOTH of Vince's children balked at that one.
  • Vince sure does like his incest angles: He originally pitched the idea back in the Attitude Era, wanting Ken Shamrock to reveal a sexual relationship with his (on-screen) sister Ryan Shamrock. Both performers shot that one down in no uncertain terms.^note Ironically, Ken would have an affair with the woman portraying Ryan in real life. Still, if at first you don't succeed...
• Bret Hart's 2006 DVD documentary, Bret Hart: The Best There Is, The Best There Was, The Best There Ever Will Be, was to have been a Take That! documentary called Screwed: The Bret Hart Story (named after the Montreal Screwjob), and would have been in line with The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior produced a year earlier. However, between Bret mending fences with WWE, and possibly because WWE came under fire from more than a few wrestling fans for the blatant hatchet job that was Self-Destruction, it thankfully became much more positive.
• Randy Orton was supposed to win the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 22. Then he got busted getting high on weed.
• The "Imposter Kane" storyline. A strong rumor says that sometime around 2006, during his stint as an actor in the See No Evil film, Kane was planning on retiring soon. To make up for his character, an Imposter Kane (played by Drew Hankinson, later known as Festus and Luke Gallows) was brought in to make a storyline in which HE was the real Kane, having been locked away while the real Kane was the Imposter. However because the angle confused the fans too much, the storyline was quickly abandoned. The truth behind this storyline has still not been revealed or discussed to this day.
• Paul Heyman's original plans for the disastrous December To Dismember 2006 main event? Use UFC style vignettes to sell that match in the weeks leading up to it (they were filmed but never used, the concept was recycled for WrestleMania 25's opening), then in the actual match itself, start it off with CM Punk choking out and eliminating Big Show in the first five minutes to ensure a new champion (an idea which Big Show liked and Vince hated). A lot better than the attempt to turn Bobby Lashley into the next Goldberg.
  • The ECW revival itself was supposed to have been just a Web Original produced by Heyman and Shane McMahon until interest from sponsors and Vince caused it to blow up into a full-on third television brand. Triple H would recycle this concept for NXT, which, like the ECW revival, is focused on newer talent and veterans who are being revamped.
  • One Night Stand 2006 was never meant to launch into a revival, only to serve as Rob Van Dam's Awesome Moment of Crowning vs. John Cena... or Triple H.
• Mr. Kennedy's career is full of these non-moments.
  • Mr. Kennedy was supposed to be Vince's illegitimate son, then he got himself a Wellness Policy violation. This was going to be the original angle for the "Who Killed Vince McMahon?" angle. Apparently, the night Chris Benoit died, the "murderer" was supposed to be revealed as Linda McMahon, who would be arrested at that show. Some weeks after the funeral, which would have included Vince's real-life older brother Roderick McMahon III and his kids, there was supposed to be an "aired will reading" by Mr. McMahon himself wherein he would leave the entire WWE in the hands of his "illegitimate son" Mr. Kennedy. This was meant to turn Kennedy into a massive heel and give him a mega-push to the championship. At that point, Stephanie McMahon and Triple H were going to reveal their kayfabe-second, consensual marriage - based on their real one - that would entitle Triple H to combat Mr. Kennedy for the right to own the WWE, culminating in a feud that would push all the way to the main event of that year's WrestleMania. After THAT was finished, in which Triple H would win back control of the company from Kennedy, Vince was meant to come back and reveal that he'd faked the whole thing and setup Linda to take the fall so that way he could give everything to his "true son." What if THAT angle got to play out properly, instead of being pulled due to the Chris Benoit situation? ^note Ultimately, the only indication of this storyline that appeared on WWE programming was how, in the immediate aftermath of Vince's "death", while every other wrestler was either talking badly of Vince (if they were Faces) or pointing fingers at possible culprits (if they were Heels), Kennedy was the only one who made a point of speaking positively of Vince, even dedicating his career from now on to him.
  • When The Undertaker suffered a Game-Breaking Injury in 2007, Mr. Kennedy was going to use his Money in the Bank contract and capture the World Heavyweight title. However, Kennedy himself would have an injury of his own, so Edge would end up winning the contract from Kennedy in a match (after Edge attacked Kennedy on the ramp, thus not making Kennedy look weak, but doing a short match). What makes this situation really awful is that Kennedy's injury was not as serious as initially thought, as it was a giant hematoma as opposed to a torn triceps, so Kennedy ended up losing a World title run for something that didn't keep him out two months.
    • The curse didn't stop here as far as the World Heavyweight title was concerned, as Edge would suffer his own injury about a month into what was supposed to be Kennedy's run with the world title. The SmackDown Creative team was so desperate for a Heel champion that they put the title on the absolutely hated Great Khali.
• As for Chris Benoit himself, he would have become the new focal point of ECW by winning the title at Vengeance and feuding with CM Punk, building Punk up similar to his feud with MVP.
  • Also, had Benoit's death not been part of a murder-suicide, would the WWE have milked it for what it's worth, like they did when Eddie Guerrero died?
• The cast of MTV's Jackass [[were planned to appear at SummerSlam 2007; a print ad for SummerSlam featuring the cast of Jackass and Umaga appeared in issues of the WWE Raw and WWE Smackdown magazines. It was ultimately cancelled in the aftermath of Chris Benoit's murder and suicide.
• Cena's injury in 2008 put an end to a blossoming faction with Cryme Tyme called Cryme Tyme Cenation (or CTC) for short.
• Kane was supposed to remask in 2008 when he carried around a burlap sack asking "Is he alive or dead?" However once fans pointed out the shape of his old mask's likeness in the bag's surface, the idea was nixed and transformed into a feud between Kane and Rey Mysterio Jr.. In December 2011, he finally did, turning this into a 'what became'.
• William Regal was receiving a major push in 2008 that saw him become Raw General Manager and win the 2008 King of the Ring tournament. Reportedly, the next step on this would've being him challenging for the WWE title, but by his own admission, he got self-conscious, started using steroids, got caught, and got suspended. When he came back, he was barely on TV.
• Christian was supposed to be the one behind Jeff Hardy's "accidents" in late 2008. When the news leaked to the Internet, he was switched with Matt Hardy. ECW likely would have floundered if Christian didn't carry the brand for one last year. And remember, ECW was the starting point for Sheamus and the solo career of Zack Ryder.
• Had Jeff Hardy not failed a steroid test, he would've kept the Intercontinental Championship going into WrestleMania 24 and would've won the Money in the Bank ladder match had his suspension not taken him out of it (the contract ultimately went to CM Punk, whose cash-in on Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship several months later set the stage for his meteoric rise to stardom in the years that followed). Fortunately, he would get his successful world title stint at Armageddon later that year.
• In December 2008, a vignette was shown for Hade Vansen, a British wrestler with a gimmick described as being similar to the "Fallen Angel" persona of Christopher Daniels. Vansen himself said that this was supposed to lead to him sending "X-Men style mutants" after The Undertaker week after week, eventually culminating in a match between the two men, possibly at WrestleMania XXV. Vansen was never seen again on TV after the initial promo, and he was released less than a month later.
• Chris Jericho's short feud with Mickey Rourke was supposed to lead into both of them actually having a wrestling match at WrestleMania 25. However, Rourke let the plans slip before they had even started playing it up on TV, and his handlers panicked and pulled him out of the match out of fears that associating with WWE would cost him his Best Actor nomination for The Wrestler. So the feud was changed up to have Jericho wrestle against Hall of Famers Ricky Steamboat, Jimmy Snuka, and Roddy Piper instead at the event.
  • Jerry Lawler was a name thrown around for one of the WWE Legends to wrestle Jericho, but Vince had the criteria that said Legends had to have appeared at the first WrestleMania so he was quickly dropped. After Piper and Snuka were settled on, Vince wanted the third Legend in the match to be Greg Valentine. Concerned about the quality of the match, Jericho successfully pushed for Ricky Steamboat to be the third Legend instead.

PG Era (2008-2016)

• There are several long-standing rumors and reports that WWE wanted to reignite the legendary feud between CM Punk and Jeff Hardy, only to fail numerous times thanks to Jeff's refusal to re-sign with the company. This is supported by how Punk spent the latter half of 2009 constantly dissing Jeff on SmackDown even though Jeff was gone from the company. From what's been said, Jeff was supposed to take the next six to eight months off, then WWE would re-sign him to restart the feud. Instead, he ended up signing with TNA, so Punk stopped referencing Jeff and ended up in a feud with Rey Mysterio as the backup plan. The second time it was rumored was in 2012 in the middle of Punk's 434-day WWE Title reign, when Jeff's contract with TNA was about to expire; WWE was allegedly showing interest in signing Jeff back despite his numerous legal problems. However, TNA did everything in their power to make sure Jeff stayed with them, including having him win the TNA World Heavyweight Championship and letting him use his personal belt (the same one that he used as a member as Immortal). They ultimately succeeded, and by the time Jeff finally re-signed with WWE in 2017, Punk had been long gone from the company and wrestling in general, and they wouldn't be in the same promotion together for another five years.
• The SummerSlam 2010 main event pitting Team WWE against The Nexus was originally planned to see the latter team emerge victorious, but that finish was vetoed by John Cena, who ended up winning as the sole survivor of Team WWE, as revealed later by Chris Jericho and Edge. Jericho and Edge later noted that Cena regretted that decision, realizing after the match that The Nexus should have gone over.
• When WWE considered to write off their annual Survivor Series PPV in 2010, THE top candidate for its replacement was a PPV based on WCW's War Games match. It seems they've reached a middle ground.
• Matt Hardy's feud with Drew McIntyre was supposed to have Matt use a Twitter campaign to rehire McIntyre so he could face him.
• Vince McMahon, John "Bradshaw" Layfield or Triple H were all choices for revealing of the anonymous Raw GM in summer 2010, but because an identity could not have been decided, it was held off indefinitely until Hornswoggle was revealed as the GM.
  • Former writer Kevin Eck revealed another possibility would have been Kevin Nash, who's anonymity would have explained with him keeping his identity being under contract in TNA at the time. The reveal would have the emails being traced to the production truck and when instigated, Nash would be sitting with wizard's hat as a nod towards his old WCW "Oz" gimmick.
  • Hornswoggle's reveal would have led to 'Swoggle keeping the GM role, and involve a gimmick change to a W.C. Fields-accented, cigar-chomping heel character who used the GM position to get back at the superstars that had treated him like a mascot. Hornswoggle seemingly confirmed this in an interview, where he said that his character/gimmick would have been a mob-boss style character that would have had a Napoleon complex, throwing his power around while running Raw. Obviously, things didn't work out that way, though, as 'Swoggle couldn't pull off the new character, so the reveal itself swiftly led to the end of the angle.
• TLC 2010's card originally contained a Chairs match with Alberto Del Rio and Rey Mysterio. The two men were instead added to the World title TLC match with Kane and Edge.
• Had Kharma been able to continue her WWE run in 2011, she would have torn through the entire Divas division, killing bitches dead one-by-one, saving Kelly Kelly for last to use as bait to lure then-champion Beth Phoenix. Beth would then have rallied the girls against Kharma as she did the show before the pregnancy announcement.
  • There has also been talk that WWE's plans were for Kelly to turn heel and be revealed as the one who brought Kharma in, with Kelly winning the Divas Championship thanks to her.
• It was reported several times (though never confirmed) that WWE wanted to have a match between Rey Mysterio Jr. and Sin Cara at Wrestlemania, with WWE handing out masks to the crowd in an attempt to break a world record for most masked people in one place^note And to draw in the lucha libre fans, which probably would have been a pretty cool visual. Anyone who has followed the careers of these two injury-prone wrestlers sees the flaw in this plan, and sure enough every April one or both of them would be on the shelf. By the time (the original) Sin Cara was released WWE had given up on the idea.
• Had Edge not retired, one of the possibilities for a feud post-WrestleMania XXVII for him would had been Christian turning on him.
  • Also, if Edge never retired, he would have retained the title, Christian wouldn't have won it at Extreme Rules, he wouldn't have lost it to Orton immediately afterwards, there wouldn't be a backlash, and Christian wouldn't have turned heel.
• What if Daniel Bryan didn't get "fired" from the WWE and stayed in The Nexus? Well, at least that one generally worked out for the best.^note The firing was only a move to appease sponsors who objected to him choking Justin Roberts with his tie, and Vince fully intended to bring him back once the heat had died down. Otherwise, he probably would have been stuck in Wade Barrett's shadow, and there would have been no face push, no US title win, no Money in the Bank victory, no World Heavyweight Championship victory, no YES! chants, no NO! chants, no 18-second loss to Sheamus, no Team Hell No with Kane, no A.J. Lee push, and no Yes!lemania XXX.
• Daniel Bryan stated in an interview that Wade Barrett was originally scheduled to win the SmackDown MITB contract in 2011. However, this was changed as the creative team felt it would be too similar to what they were planning to do on Raw, where another heel, Alberto Del Rio, was going to win their MITB contract. Bryan won instead of Barrett, and the rest is history.
  • Former WWE creative team member Kevin Eck noted that after winning, Bryan wasn't receiving much of a push, and Vince was even considering having him lose his cash-in match, which would have made Bryan the first wrestler to do so. However, World Heavyweight Champion Mark Henry was banged up and potentially needed time off, so the decision was made to have Bryan cash in successfully on Big Show at TLC.
• CM Punk's feud with Kevin Nash got derailed by, of all things, Plavix. Nash took the anti-artery blockage drug for hereditary reasons due to his father's early death by heart attack at 36. When it came time for Punk and Nash to have the match, the pre-match blood test detected the Plavix and the doctors refused to clear Nash to wrestle. The storyline would have revealed that John Laurinaitis as the one to put the hit out on Punk by sending a text message to Nash to attack Punk (instead of Nash sending a text message to himself), in an attempt to drive out COO Triple H and take over the company.
• Brodus Clay's Funkasaurus gimmick actually had a link between the monster heel promos and his current form. Clay would have debuted (OK, returned, but the WWE pretended that he never appeared on WWE television before) the monster heel gimmick but would turn on Laurinaitis (for stalling his debut for so long) and later debut the dancing gimmick.
  • Mark Henry's "Hall of Pain" gimmick was initially meant for Clay in his first run.
• If Evan Bourne and R-Truth had not gotten suspended, the team of Awesome Truth would have won the Tag Team Titles following Survivor Series. R-Truth's suspension, in particular, led to WWE having to break up Awesome Truth, and decided to do so by having the Miz stab R-Truth in the back. Because of this, it meant that WWE had to turn one of them face, and chose R-Truth. That was a problem, because the IWC loathed him as a face, and feared he would be given his old rapping gimmick back. R-Truth kept his Little Jimmy gimmick, but played a fan-friendly version of it before slowly evolving back to his first gimmick.
• In 2012, WWE was building towards a Chris Jericho vs. Randy Orton match for the No Way Out PPV. This never happened, as Jericho would be suspended for kicking the Brazilian flag at a live event in an attempt to get heel heat, and Orton would be suspended for his second violation of the WWE wellness policy.
• The Shield were originally booked to lose their six-man tag team match at Elimination Chamber 2013 against John Cena, Sheamus, and Ryback. Having pleaded their case to the powers that be, they ultimately won that match, but one cannot help but wonder how much their momentum would have been stunted if they lost in only their second PPV match (especially since it was widely rumored already leading up to the event that they would lose).
• The closest scenario that John Cena had came to turning heel after his rise to the main event in 2005 was during his first feud against The Rock at WrestleMania XXVII. According to Kevin Eck, it had came very close to the point that not only Vince McMahon had potentially considered it, but Cena had new gear planned and an entrance theme recorded ready to go. However, a recent deal with Kmart for a John Cena clothing line and the unsure feeling of who would replace him as the top babyface afterward had canceled the heel turn at the last minute, robbing fans a chance to see Cena as an outright villain vs. The Rock instead of the latter merely being the de facto heel.
• In the days leading up to WrestleMania 29, The Rock was planned to have a match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XXX. However, injuries sustained in the WM 29 match with John Cena prevented Rock from appearing on the next night's episode of Raw (where he and Lesnar would have shot an angle to begin their feud), and led him to decide to not have another match in the near future. One cannot help but wonder if the legendary streak of The Undertaker would still be intact had Rock faced off with Lesnar instead.
• Jack Swagger almost came back as a babyface with Sgt. Slaughter as his manager. Unfortunately with the rash of injuries happening to Hispanic heroes Rey Mysterio Jr. and Sin Cara which necessitated turning the then-heel Alberto Del Rio face, WWE went in another direction bringing in Dutch Mantell as Zeb Colter and rebuilding Swagger into a Tea Party-style heel as a foil to the Mexico native.
  • However, WWE already had a similar character in Antonio Cesaro, and not wanting to have two similar characters, Cesaro was given a yodeling gimmick and his push came to a abrupt stop. This gimmick led to a feud with R-Truth that brought the latter back to his rapping gimmick after two years of having stopped it. Of course, then WWE solved the issue of having similar characters by aligning Cesaro with Colter and forming a mini-stable out of the situation.
• Speaking of Swagger and del Rio, had the former not been busted for DUI, the two would've fought at WrestleMania 29 for the World Heavyweight title, with the former being booked to win. Had this happened, Dolph Ziggler would've not cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on Raw the next night.
• Former WWE Creative member Kevin Eck said that Wade Barrett was one of the two potential winners of the 2013 MITB contract for the World Heavyweight title. Eck himself was a strong supporter of that choice, but ultimately, Vince made the call and Damien Sandow was booked to win. As Sandow began to lose constantly (a common symptom of holding the briefcase), the perception grew that Sandow wasn't World Championship material, and Vince soon agreed.
• The Undertaker and Kane were supposed to team up against The Shield for SummerSlam 2013, but The Undertaker got hurt taking a triple powerbomb from The Shield. This killed the chances of the feud, and almost killed The Shield's push, as this caused them to fall out of favor with their superiors for a period (wrongly attributed to "Seth Rollins being disrespectful" on news sites).
• In a 2013 WWE Magazine article, Fandango revealed that he was almost part of the Magic Mike inspired male stripper gimmick that Curt Hawkins and Tyler Reks used, which lasted maybe all of two weeks before Reks decided he wanted to retire and spend more time with his infant daughter.
• Los Matadores were gonna debut as heels, and without El Torito. But then it was decided to add El Torito to group, so they made their debut as faces.
• Had CM Punk not walked out of the WWE after Royal Rumble 2014, he would have faced Kane at Elimination Chamber and later Triple H at WrestleMania XXX. Punk would have also faced Triple H at WrestleMania 28 until the above delay with an interquel Kevin Nash feud. Daniel Bryan would have faced a heel Sheamus for a third time if it wasn't for the backlash. Batista was also orignally slated to have a rematch vs. Bryan for the title at Extreme Rules.
• Before Daniel Bryan surrendered the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in 2014, the eight-man ladder match which ended up being the main event of Money in the Bank was going to be for the MITB contract. Sheamus was first slated to win the contract as a face, with the idea that it would be an unexpected outcome, and with plans in place for a slow-burn heel turn. Even with Bryan's injury and Cena winning the ladder match for the WWE title, Sheamus did end up turning heel in 2015, then won that year's MITB contract later on, winning the title from Roman Reigns at Survivor Series.
  • Bryan's title defense at MITB 2014 was scheduled to be a Stretcher match against Kane before he was ruled out of the event. Incidentally, John Cena beat Kane in a Stretcher match on an episode of Raw to earn his spot in the ladder match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship that he eventually won.
  • The comprehensive beating John Cena took at SummerSlam 2014 from Brock Lesnar, in one of the most one-sided WWE title matches in history? That was meant for Daniel Bryan, but Bryan vacating the WWE World Heavyweight Championship due to neck surgery led to WWE putting Cena in the spot instead, meaning that Bryan's injury wrote him out of the business end of a Curb-Stomp Battle by Lesnar at SummerSlam. The result, instead of Daniel Bryan's WWE World Heavyweight Championship reign being ended as the result of the Authority calling Brock Lesnar in as a hired gun after Kane proved to be ineffective, John Cena was inserted in the role of Sacrificial Lion. Since then, John Cena has gone through a sort of career renaissance as far as smarks are concerned, moving back to the upper midcards and having amazing match after amazing match during his run as United States Champion. Brock Lesnar also benefitted from the angle - fans hadn't completely warmed up to him due to his previous departure on bad terms from pro wrestling and his part-time working schedule, which him ending the Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleMania did not help matters. But beating up Cena not only caused the fans to love Lesnar, but started the popularity of Lesnar as a special attraction who completely annihilates whoever he's in the ring against. How would fans have reacted to him squashing a favorite like Daniel Bryan instead? And how much staler could Cena have gotten?
• Among the submissions for WWE's 6th and what would later be their final season of Tough Enough stands out one person who didn't get on the show but could have and that was MJF. If he had won the show he could have been signed to a WWE contract instead of eventually going to AEW in 2019. He would even drop his future catchphrase "My name is Maxell Jacob Friedman and I am better than you and you know it." in his submission video
• The pre-show of Hell in a Cell 2015 was to feature a tag team match pitting Dean Ambrose and Randy Orton against Braun Strowman and Luke Harper. The match was cancelled after Orton suffered a shoulder injury which kept him out of action until the summer of 2016.
• As evidenced by the booking of the 2016 Royal Rumble match, Brock Lesnar was originally scheduled to face Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania 32. Instead, Lesnar faced Wyatt and Luke Harper in a Handicap match at the Roadblock WWE Network special, while Lesnar's Mania match ended up being against Dean Ambrose. Chris Jericho stated in a 2018 interview that he was originally scheduled to face Ambrose at Mania.

New Era (2016-2023)

• Had Roman Reigns had not gotten a wellness suspension, he would have kept the WWE World Championship past the Brand Split and brought the senior title to Raw. The WWE Universal Championship would have ended up on SmackDown with AJ Styles as the first champion. Finn Bálor on the other hand, would have had his first feud vs. Chris Jericho.
  • Later at Money in the Bank 2016, Reigns and Rollins would have not only feuded also double turned, turning Rollins face which eventually happened with his feud with Triple H and turning Reigns heel which would have solved his character problems in ways that they never could with Cena.
• Had Cody Rhodes not requested his release back in May 2016, he still would've remained Stardust but would've had bleached blond hair just like his older brother Goldust. He also had plans on separating his personas after the brand split, appearing as Stardust on Raw and as Cody Rhodes on SmackDown Live.
• Mustafa Ali was originally an alternate for the Cruiserweight Classic. Due to visa issues with Brazilian wrestler Zumbi, Ali was entered into the tournament, and was eventually signed to the 205 Live roster. He would go on to have multiple highly-acclaimed matches in the cruiserweight division, and WWE eventually saw enough in him to call him up to SmackDown Live, where he has been booked fairly well and has even competed for the WWE Championship on PPV.
  • Speaking of the Cruiserweight Classic, the finals of the Cruiserweight Classic was nearly TJ Perkins vs Zack Sabre Jr.. Zack did not want to sign to WWE and due to this he lost his Semi-final match against Gran Metalik and Zack would sign to New Japan Pro Wrestling. There is also the image of Zack Sabre Jr as a WWE wrestler since he would have been signed to WWE
• After the second brand split in 2016, vignettes began airing on SmackDown Live promoting the return of Shelton Benjamin. Shortly after, however, it was discovered that he needed surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and he would not return until the summer of 2017.
• Heath Slater's free agent storyline was supposed to have him feud with the Miz over the Intercontinental Championship.
• Had Finn Bálor not suffered his injury at SummerSlam 2016, cutting short his main event push and forcing him to vacate the WWE Universal Championship, he was originally scheduled to face Kevin Owens at Clash of Champions that September, as well as a Triple Threat Hell in a Cell match against Owens and Chris Jericho in October. This worked out in Owens' favor though, as he captured the vacated title the following week on RAW.
• In a 2017 interview with Inside the Ropes, Chris Jericho stated that in late 2016, he pitched him challenging Kevin Owens for the Universal title at the Royal Rumble, and possibly winning. According to Jericho, Owens was originally supposed to defend against Brock Lesnar at Mania. Vince then decided that he wanted Jericho to beat Owens for the title at Mania instead, and then lose the title to Lesnar at Payback. Obviously the plan later changed to Goldberg beating Owens at Fastlane, with Owens beating Jericho for the United States title at Mania.
• WrestleMania 33 would've turned out much differently if John Cena hadn't agreed to propose to Nikki Bella.
  • For starters, rather than losing the Intercontinental Championship in January and going on to face Cena at WM 33 in a mixed tag team match, The Miz would've instead defended the IC title at 'Mania against a debuting Shinsuke Nakamura.
  • AJ Styles would have lost the WWE Championship to The Undertaker at the Royal Rumble, who would've lost it back to Styles in the Elimination Chamber match after being eliminated by John Cena, thus setting up a long-awaited Taker/Cena match for Mania.
  • Randy Orton was always slated to win the Rumble match, but he would've turned on Bray Wyatt to win, setting up a match between the two men seven weeks earlier at Elimination Chamber. Orton would've gone on to challenge Styles for the WWE title at Mania.
• In the weeks after WrestleMania 33, Rusev (who had been injured) began demanding a WWE Championship match against champion Randy Orton at Money in the Bank. The plan to have Orton/Rusev at the PPV was scrapped when the decision was made to have Jinder Mahal win the title from Orton at Backlash. Rusev would not return until after MITB.
• Prior to SummerSlam 2017, Bayley suffered a shoulder injury which took her out of her Raw Women's Championship match against Alexa Bliss. Sasha Banks, who Bayley had defeated to become #1 contender, ended up winning a Triple Threat match against Alicia Fox and Emma and a singles match against Nia Jax to earn the title opportunity against Bliss. Banks would be victorious at SummerSlam, only to lose the title back to Bliss eight days later.
• A viral infection on the Raw roster drastically changed the landscape of TLC 2017, with Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt being ruled out of the event two days prior.
  • The main event was to feature the reunited Shield in a handicap TLC match. Reigns was replaced by Kurt Angle, competing in his first WWE match in 11 years. This opened the door for Angle to compete at Survivor Series as the team captain for Raw.
  • Finn Bálor was supposed to assume his Demon persona and face "Sister Abigail". Wyatt was replaced by AJ Styles, who had a show-stealing match with Bálor (not to mention the absolutely electric atmosphere).
    • At the time, the SmackDown roster was in the middle of an international tour. Styles' reliability on such short notice is credited by many as the catalyst for him being booked to win the WWE Championship less than a month later, ending the widely-panned title reign of Jinder Mahal. Prior to this, Mahal was rumored to be holding the title all the way into WrestleMania 34, where he would defend against John Cena.
  • "Thank you meningitis/mumps" became something of a meme after the event, as many people were not all that excited for TLC's original card. The reunion of The Shield, anticipated as it was, paled in comparison to the excitement garnered by the announcement that Kurt Angle was going to compete. In addition, very few were looking forward to whatever match "Sister Abigail" was going to have with "The Demon", feeling that the feud was not doing any favors to either man involved. After TLC, their storyline was dropped, with no mention being made of Sister Abigail again until Wyatt's program with "Woken" Matt Hardy.
• The December 11, 2017 episode of Raw was originally supposed to feature a Drew Gulak vs. Rich Swann match to determine the #1 contender to Enzo Amore's Cruiserweight Championship. One day prior, however, Swann was arrested for a domestic dispute and reported kidnapping, and was immediately suspended indefinitely. On Raw, Cedric Alexander won a "second chance" Fatal 4-Way match to replace Swann (with it simply being stated by Gulak in a backstage segment that Swann's opportunity had been revoked), and the #1 contender's match was held one week later.
  • In an even crazier turn of events, a Cruiserweight title match between Amore and Alexander scheduled for the Royal Rumble was cancelled after Amore was released amid rape accusations.
• Remember in 2017 when Raw ran a bunch of ads promoting that Emma was going to become "Emmalina", which lasted for several months, and was then dropped? According to reports, the plan was to repackage Emma as a Sable-esque sexpot character, but during dress rehearsal, management didn't think she could pull it off and scrapped it at the last minute.
• Paige might very well be the Trope Codifier. Daughter of indy veteran Saraya Knight, very first NXT Women's Champion, won the Divas Championship over A.J. Lee on her very first night on the main roster (the Raw after WrestleMania XXX, no less), the world's eyes were on her and she was ready to be the Diva of Tomorrow. Unfortunately, a neck injury in 2016 (coupled with two drug-related suspensions) and a dysfunctional relationship with then-fiance Alberto Del Rio kept her out of the spotlight for about a year and a half. A major comeback was in store, as the Raw after Survivor Series, she would return along with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville as the new faction Absolution. It was rumored that Paige would have entered the first women's Royal Rumble and won, facing Asuka, who would've been holding the Raw Women's Championship going into the event instead of challenging SmackDown's at the event. However, another neck injury during a live event in New York City within a month led to doctors officially ruling that she would never be cleared to compete again; this was confirmed as she announced her retirement on the Raw after 'Mania 34, in the VERY same arena in New Orleans where she had made her debut four years earlier.
• After returning from injury in April 2018, Big Cass seemed in line for a big push, immediately being entered into a feud with newly-cleared Daniel Bryan, and making it to the final two of the Greatest Royal Rumble match. After only a couple of months, however, he was released from the company following behavioral issues, public intoxication during a WWE tour, and disobeying orders from Vince McMahon. One of those incidents is believed to be a particular segment on SmackDown where Cass brought a little person dressed as Daniel Bryan into the ring. Cass was only supposed to deliver a big boot to him to end the segment, however, he felt that this was insufficient and asked if he could attack him further. Backstage officials told him not to, but he delivered a beatdown anyway.
• In 2018, Asuka - at the time on a massive undefeated streak - started winning matches via armbar, with the obvious plan being building her towards a feud with the incoming Ronda Rousey. These plans went so far as for Asuka to win the women's Royal Rumble match and, after Rousey's official signing was announced and she came to the ring following the match, Asuka blew her off. But apparently the plans were changed at the last minute. Asuka's win streak was broken by Charlotte Flair and she was moved to Smackdown, Rousey entered into an angle with The Authority, and the two haven't been anywhere near each other since.
• Another one related to Asuka. During the middle of her undefeated run, someone realized that there actually was a woman employed by WWE who'd beaten her - trainer Sara Amato had several wins over Asuka dating back to their indy days as Kana and Sara Del Rey. There was talk of Amato coming out of retirement for a one-off with Asuka, but between concerns over the finish being obvious (would they really have Asuka's streak ended by an inactive wrestler that casual fans had never heard of?) and over match quality (Amato hadn't wrestled a match in 4+ years at that point) they decided against it.
• The injury bug has not been a fan of Tegan Nox during her time in WWE.
  • Nox (then under her previous ring name of Nixon Newell) was originally scheduled as one of the 32 women to compete in the inaugural Mae Young Classic in 2017. However, she suffered a torn ACL prior to the tournament, and was replaced by Miranda Salinas.
  • She entered the 2nd Mae Young Classic in 2018, and made it to the quarterfinals before another devastating knee injury occurred during her match with Rhea Ripley. Ripley beat her to advance, but Nox was originally scheduled to win that match as well as her semi-final match with Io Shirai to earn a spot in the finals at the Evolution PPV. She also was strongly being considered to defeat Toni Storm in that match and win the tournament, no doubt setting her up for a push in NXT or NXT UK. It was later confirmed by Nox herself that she was meant to win and become the first NXT UK Women's Champion. Ouch.
• Mustafa Ali was scheduled to compete in the Elimination Chamber match for the WWE Championship in 2019, but an injury meant he would not be medically cleared for the event, so he was replaced by Kofi Kingston. After a SmackDown gauntlet match performance reminiscent of that from Seth Rollins the previous year on Raw and a career-defining near-win in the Chamber, fans immediately demanded that Kingston be in the WWE title picture at WrestleMania, meaning there would've been no feud with a colluding Mr. McMahon, no KofiMania and no first African-born wrestler to win the WWE title. One cannot help but wonder how things would have gone if Ali had not been injured.
• Roman Reigns was just a few weeks away from a Universal title defense at the Crown Jewel event when he announced that he had leukemia, and vacated the title. This resulted in Brock Lesnar defeating Braun Strowman (turned babyface in Reigns' absence) to win back the vacant title which Reigns had won from him less than three months prior. If Reigns had not needed to take time off, he likely would have retained at Crown Jewel and kept the title heading into Mania season, meaning that Men's Royal Rumble match winner Seth Rollins probably would not have ended up challenging Lesnar at WM 35, if he even would've won the Rumble at all.
• Crown Jewel had a few absences:
  • John Cena was the first participant announced for the WWE World Cup, but due to the horrific murder of journalist of Jamal Khashoggi and the negative publicity directed towards WWE for their decision to still hold the event, Cena refused to participate. He was replaced by Bobby Lashley.
  • Daniel Bryan was originally scheduled to challenge AJ Styles for the WWE Championship, but he also decided to not work the show. His title match was moved to the go-home episode of SmackDown, and he was replaced by Samoa Joe.
  • Roman Reigns was scheduled to defend his Universal Championship at the event against Braun Strowman and Brock Lesnar, but his leukemia returned and he had to vacate the title. This is reinforced, however, by a shoot interview where he said that even if his leukemia didn't return, he wouldn't have participated in the event, anyway (though he would participate at Saudi Arabia events afterwards following his remission).
  • In the aftermath of the event, plans that involved both The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels were nixed. Those plans involved another Taker vs. Shawn fight, and Shawn taking on AJ Styles. Two of the plans that were initially nixed, however, did eventually came to fruition the next year: Triple H vs. Batista as a WrestleMania match, and Shane McMahon's Face–Heel Turn.
• Whether baseless speculation or not, following WrestleMania 34 and the critically-acclaimed performance of UFC legend Ronda Rousey in her first pro wrestling match, many believed that her and Charlotte Flair would face off in the main event of WrestleMania 35, the first time that female performers would ever close out the show of shows. However, Becky Lynch got massively over in the summer of 2018 following a heel turn on Flair, reaching levels of popularity not seen in WWE since Daniel Bryan in 2013-14. The meteoric rise of Lynch secured her a spot alongside Rousey and Flair in the WM 35 main event for the Raw Women's Championship.
  • This match and the women's division was further shaken up when, less than two weeks away from WrestleMania 35, Flair defeated Asuka for the SmackDown Women's Championship. Originally, that particular edition of SmackDown was to feature a Fatal 4-Way match involving Carmella, Naomi, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville to determine Asuka's challenger at WM 35; a later documentary revealed that Deville would have won and challenged Asuka for the title. All five women instead ended up on the pre-show battle royal, which Carmella won.
• The main event of NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 4 was to be new NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa defending against former champion Aleister Black and best friend-turned-arch nemesis Johnny Gargano in a Triple Threat match. However, Black was injured a few weeks before the event, and the match was changed to Ciampa and Gargano in a Last Man Standing match. A whodunnit angle involving Black being attacked in the parking lot of Full Sail University was shot to explain his absence, and it became one of the most compelling examples of pro wrestling storytelling in years, certainly in WWE. Gargano was eventually revealed as the assailant, turning him heel and setting up a feud with Black.
• Likewise, Ciampa's neck surgery and subsequent vacation of the NXT title in 2019 meant that the planned main event of Ciampa vs. Gargano at TakeOver: New York needed to be changed. Adam Cole defeated Aleister Black, Matt Riddle, Ricochet, and The Velveteen Dream in a Fatal 5-Way match to secure his spot at TakeOver against Gargano in a 2-out-of-3 falls match for the vacant title.
  • Ciampa's injury resulted in he and Gargano being taken off of main roster TV. The pair (along with Aleister Black and Ricochet) had been called up in February and were reunited as a tag team, scoring multiple wins and mounting an undefeated streak on Raw and SmackDown. One cannot help but wonder how their dissolution and planned match at TakeOver would have been presented and built up on the main WWE programs.
  • Many have speculated that, due to their non-title win over Raw Tag Team Champions The Revival, #DIY would have likely challenged for the titles alongside Black and Ricochet in a Triple Threat match at Fastlane 2019. Ultimately, Bobby Roode and Chad Gable were booked for that match instead.
  • Based on the NXT tapings that occurred before Ciampa's surgery, one could be led to believe that Cole was originally slated to be in a Triple Threat match for the NXT North American Championship against Dream and Riddle. Following an unaired victory over Punishment Martinez, Cole brawled with Dream after declaring that his intentions to regain the title. He also interrupted Riddle in a televised backstage interview where the latter was asked about Dream and the North American title. Following Cole's victory, Dream was booked to defend the title against Riddle in a singles match at TakeOver.
• The tragic death of Jim Neidhart nixed a heel turn for Natalya, who would have turned against Ronda Rousey (based on Natalya being Rousey's real-life wrestling trainer) and gunned for her Raw Women's Championship. They would later fight each other in a one-off face vs. face contest with no heel turn for either wrestler. The role of a friend of Rousey turning heel on her was later given to the Bella Twins, with Nikki challenging her for her title.
• Royal Rumble 2019 was originally to feature Brock Lesnar defending the Universal Championship against Braun Strowman. However, the decision was made to replace Strowman with Finn Bálor. Strowman ended up participating in the men's Rumble match, being the last person eliminated by Seth Rollins.
• The entire WWE career of Hideo Itami (best known elsewhere by his real name Kenta Kobayashi, or simply KENTA) exemplified this trope.
  • He signed with the company in 2014 to a great deal of hype, and asserted his goal of becoming NXT Champion in his debut promo at NXT TakeOver: Fatal 4-Way in September. The following May, he was booked in a #1 contender's Triple Threat match with Finn Bálor and Tyler Breeze. However, Itami was ruled out due to a shoulder injury, and Bálor ended up winning a singles match with Breeze at TakeOver: Unstoppable. The original plan was for Itami to win the Triple Threat match and defeat then-champion Kevin Owens at The Beast in the East in Tokyo, Japan. Bálor won the title instead, and held it for 292 days, becoming the longest-reigning champion for pretty much the rest of the decade, until Adam Cole surpassed it by having the first yearlong reign with the title, topping out at 403 days.
  • Itami's shoulder injury was explained in kayfabe at TakeOver: Unstoppable by showing him laying on the ground in pain, having just suffered an attack after arriving to Full Sail University. Kevin Owens was heavily implied to be the one who attacked him, but with Owens being called up to the main roster, this storyline never received a proper conclusion.
  • Itami finally returned in August 2016, beginning a feud with Austin Aries at TakeOver: Brooklyn II. He was then entered into the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic with Kota Ibushi, but an injury suffered at an NXT live event sidelined him once again, preventing him from competing in the tournament and shelving his feud with Aries. He was replaced by T.J. Perkins.
  • Itami finally received his NXT title opportunity at TakeOver: Chicago in 2017 in a losing effort to Bobby Roode. After competing in his final televised NXT match against Aleister Black at TakeOver: Brooklyn III, he was moved to the 205 Live roster, where he would remain until asking for his release from WWE in January 2019.
• The landscape of the NXT tag team division in 2018 was changed considerably following injuries to Bobby Fish and Tyler Bate.
  • A knee injury to Tyler Bate prevented Moustache Mountain from competing in the 2018 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. They were replaced in the tournament by Pete Dunne and Roderick Strong.
  • Bobby Fish suffered a torn ACL and MCL in March, taking him out of TakeOver: New Orleans. Adam Cole pulled double duty at the event and replaced Fish in the finals of the Dusty Classic, tagging with Kyle O'Reilly. Strong would turn on Dunne in that match and join The Undisputed Era, officially assuming Fish's spot as one-half of the NXT Tag Team Champions alongside O'Reilly.
  • After Bate was cleared, Moustache Mountain ended up winning the NXT Tag titles in June at the 2nd United Kingdom Championship Tournament from O'Reilly and Strong, and the pair of teams went on to have one of the best tag team rivalries in recent memory in WWE, their second match even receiving the coveted five-star rating from Dave Meltzer.
• The Forgotten Sons (Jaxson Ryker, Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake) were subject to many of these.
  • The group seemingly made their NXT TV debut at the tapings in Atlanta in February 2018, declaring their participation in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. However, this debut never aired, and the trio would not end up appearing on NXT until August.
  • Reportedly, there was a house show event in which the Forgotten Sons were joined by Lacey Evans dressed in similar attire to them, implying that she would join them.^note They were feuding with SAnitY at the time, so Lacey was likely added to oppose Nikki Cross. The fact that the Forgotten Sons' gimmick is that they're all former Marines (although in reality Blake isn't one in real life) only seems to increase that implication, as Evans is also a Marine herself. She would eventually debut with a military-related gimmick, just not alongside them.
  • The trio debuted on SmackDown after WrestleMania 36 on April 2020 and were given a big push, being put in the title picture of the SmackDown Tag Team Championship. However, the trio were taken off television in June after Ryker made tweets supporting President Donald Trump. While that in itself, while controversial, might not have generated much issue, the particular timing in which the tweets were made,^note specifically shortly after, during protests for the death of George Floyd, law enforcement officers violently cleared protesters in Washington, D.C. so that President Trump would walk from the White House to an adjacent church, where he posed for a photo in front the church's parish house, in which he held a Bible upside down; the clearing of the demonstrators was afterwards widely condemned as excessive. complete with Ryker using the team's Catchphrase "Forgotten no more", not only caused backlash from many fans, but also led him to have serious backstage heat (with other WWE wrestlers openly criticizing Ryker on Twitter either because of his views or for mingling his wrestling character with his personal views). It was later reported that they were set to actually win the SmackDown Tag Team Championship from The New Day, but after being taken off TV, the titles were won by Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura instead.
  • On the December 4, 2020 episode of SmackDown, Blake and Cutler, now clean-shaven, returned to TV repackaged as King Corbin's new bodyguards, the "Knights of the Lone Wolf", but this only lasted a few weeks before Cutler was let go for contracting COVID-19 and not telling anyone he had it. Ryker returned to TV on the December 14, 2020 Raw as the new associate of Elias, effectively marking the end of the group, and Ryker was eventually released on November of next year.
• In an extremely rare move, the NXT North American title match between Johnny Gargano and The Velveteen Dream in early 2019 was taped with two separate endings, so that there could be no definitive spoilers about the match's outcome. The first ending (which ended up being the true one) featured Dream winning the title following a Purple Rainmaker. After a celebration, Gargano came back and put Dream in the Garga-No Escape, with Dream submitting and Gargano taking the title back with him, posing on the stage with Tommaso Ciampa as he did at the end of TakeOver: Phoenix. Even though this match was taped only 4 days after TakeOver: Phoenix, Gargano continued to appear as North American Champion on subsequently filmed episodes of Raw and SmackDown, as well as Halftime Heat, until the title change aired. WWE officially recognizes his reign as lasting 25 days.
• The kickoff show for Fastlane 2019 originally was to feature a match between Rey Mysterio and Andrade. Instead, WWE announced on the kickoff show that the two men would participate in a United States title Fatal 4-Way with Samoa Joe and R-Truth on the main card.
• In November 2018, vignettes for NXT wrestler Lars Sullivan's main roster debut began airing. However, before a dark match at a Raw taping in January, he reportedly suffered an anxiety attack, and the match was canceled. The match was re-scheduled for the next night before SmackDown, but he, unfortunately, was unable to perform once again. Sullivan had been slated to begin a feud with John Cena, culminating in a match at WrestleMania 35. He eventually appeared on the Raw and SmackDown after that event, taking out both a retired Kurt Angle and the Hardy Boyz. Sullivan apparently suffers from extreme anxiety, hence the aforementioned anxiety attack, which is also what caused him to retire from wrestling in January 2020, deciding that his condition made a career in wrestling unfeasible.
• For the Kurt Angle vs. Baron Corbin match at WrestleMania 35, The Undertaker was supposed to return in his "American Badass" gimmick for the first time since Survivor Series 2003 to save Angle from a violent beatdown from Corbin following the match. The plan was dropped just before the event started, and 'Taker instead attacked Elias on the Raw episode post-Mania. Taker would eventually return with the gimmick next year at WrestleMania 36 in what would be his final match.
• After the Daniel Bryan-Kofi Kingston match at WrestleMania 35, Bryan was supposed to continue feuding with Kingston in a lead-up to a rematch for the WWE Championship at that year's Money in the Bank PPV. Unfortunately, Bryan suffered a concussion during the 'Mania match, meaning he wouldn't make it to the PPV. Ultimately, the decision was made to have Kevin Owens turn heel and challenge Kingston for the title. When Bryan eventually returned the following month, he challenged Kingston for the title again on Raw in a losing effort, and he and right-hand man Erick Rowan became the SmackDown Tag Team Champions (after prior champions the Hardy Boyz had to vacate it due to Jeff injuring his leg) to make up for Bryan's absence and allegedly to allow Bryan to fully heal from the injury. Owens in turn was on the other end of this trope post-Money in the Bank; originally he was meant to face Kingston once more at Super ShowDown in Saudi Arabia. However, similar to the absences in Crown Jewel, he chose not to participate. Since Daniel Bryan was also not participating, Dolph Ziggler was brought back to set up a WWE Championship match with Kingston instead.
• As revealed by Mandy Rose herself on Threads with McKenzie Mitchelle, she revealed that at WrestleMania 35 she would have faced Asuka for the Smackdown Women's Championship and win the title
• For the Men's Money in the Bank ladder match in 2019, the original choices to win the briefcase were either Mustafa Ali or Drew McIntyre. When preparations for the PPV began, the plans were for Ali to win the match. Just minutes before the PPV started, though, it was decided that Brock Lesnar, of all people, would win the match, apparently due to concern from Vince McMahon over his programs' continued ratings declines and feeling bringing Lesnar back would juice up the viewership. Lesnar's participation also resulted in Sami Zayn, who himself replaced previous year's winner Braun Strowman as a competitor in the match, getting removed via a kayfabe off-screen beatdown from Lesnar backstage during the PPV.
• Two weeks before 2019's Extreme Rules PPV, Alexa Bliss suffered a sinus infection that affected her singles match with then-SmackDown Women's Champion Bayley. Nikki Cross, who had formed an alliance with Bliss by then, was added to the match, thus making it a handicap match, in order to protect Bliss from serious harm while still dealing with the sickness.
• According to a report by Fightful, the infamous no-contest result of the Hell in a Cell 2019 main event match was always set to end the way it did so that then-Universal Champion Seth Rollins and "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt could then have a rematch at Crown Jewel. What was also reported was that WWE planned for a double turn to take place with Rollins and Wyatt at Crown Jewel, with Rollins going heel and Wyatt officially turning face. Rollins eventually turned heel on the Raw following Survivor Series of that year.
• The tag team of Bobby Roode and Dolph Ziggler were set to challenge The New Day for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships at TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs 2019, but Roode was suspended for violating the Wellness Policy, so he and Ziggler were replaced by The Revival instead.
• The 2020 Men's Rumble was supposed to have been won by Roman Reigns and Shayna Baszler would win the Women's Rumble. At almost the last minute, it was changed to Drew McIntyre and Charlotte Flair respectively. It was also reported that after dropping Reigns as a winner, Aleister Black was considered to win the 2020 Men's Royal Rumble match, but it was determined that McIntyre was more ready for the main event push.
• The COVID-19 Pandemic had a massive, unprecedented impact on the entire world, including WWE. All televised main roster events from March 13, 2020 onward were moved to Orlando's WWE Performance Center, with no fans in attendance and only essential personnel on hand. NXT events remained filmed at Full Sail University, but also closed to the public. All events from the March 23 episode of Raw onward (save a few events) aired on tape delay.
  • The most notable of these was WrestleMania 36, originally scheduled to take place at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Not only was it moved to the Performance Center, but it was also made into a two-day event for the first time in history.
    • Bayley was originally scheduled to defend her SmackDown Women's title in a Six-Pack Elimination Challenge. However, challenger Dana Brooke was placed in quarantine due to illness and was removed from the match, turning it into a Fatal 5-Way.^note Even Brooke's involvement seemed to be a result of this, as Carmella was originally teased as one of Bayley's contenders for the title, scoring a non-title victory over her, but she also was placed in quarantine, before Brooke was announced as one of the challengers instead.
    • Rey Mysterio was also placed in quarantine and did not compete at WrestleMania. It is believed that he would have likely challenged for the United States Championship, given his non-title victory over then-champion Andrade on Raw.
    • Andrade himself also pulled out of the event due to a rib injury. Originally scheduled to tag with Angel Garza and challenge the Street Profits for the Raw Tag Team titles, he was replaced by Austin Theory, making his main roster debut.
    • Roman Reigns was originally scheduled to challenge Goldberg for the Universal Championship. However, Reigns chose not to participate out of concern for his wife, who had given birth to twins not long before the event, and not wanting to risk spreading the virus.^note It was commonly believed that he was immunocompromised after his battles with leukemia, but Reigns explained in an interview that this was never the case. He was replaced by Braun Strowman, who went on to win the title.
    • When WrestleMania 37's location was announced at 36 it was originally going to be in LA in SoFi Stadium. However WWE ended up running the pirate theme back at WrestleMania 37 in Raymond James Stadium(which was the original location for WrestleMania 36) due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.WrestleMania 39 would end up being in SoFi Stadium.
    • John Morrison and The Miz were originally planned to defend their SmackDown Tag Team titles in a Ladder match against The New Day and The Usos. However, The Miz could not perform due to illness, so the match was turned into a singles Triple Threat Ladder match with Morrison defending against Kofi Kingston and Jimmy Uso.
    • Due to concerns about having several people in the ring at one time, the planned WrestleMania Women's and André the Giant Memorial Battle Royals were scrapped.
    • One can only imagine how different the AJ Styles vs. The Undertaker and Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena matches, which would became heavily cinematic fights (and the latter a straight-up Mind Screw), would've been if not for the pandemic.
  • The 2020 Hall of Fame induction ceremony was postponed, and NXT TakeOver: Tampa was cancelled altogether. Matches scheduled for Tampa instead took place on NXT beginning April 1.
    • At least one match planned for TakeOver, however, was unable to take place. While not officially announced, it was believed that the BroserWeights would defend the NXT Tag Team titles against the Grizzled Young Veterans. Unfortunately, Pete Dunne, Zack Gibson and James Drake were unable to travel to America. The same was true for Walter, who would have likely defended the NXT UK title against Finn Bálor.
  • NXT UK TakeOver: Dublin was also postponed, and the scheduled NXT UK tapings in Bournemouth were cancelled.
• For Money in the Bank 2020, Shayna Baszler was originally slated to win the women's briefcase and eventually pick up her feud again with Becky Lynch, who would've defended the Raw Women's Championship at the event against Nia Jax. Becky's pregnancy meant this had to be scuttled, and Asuka was chosen as the winner instead, receiving the title the next night in lieu of the contract.
• In late 2019 into 2020, weird static interruptions began appearing on SmackDown. Finally, it came to a head on the go-home SmackDown before WrestleMania 36, when a mysterious person in a hoodie revealed themselves on the Titantron, showing footage of how Sonya Deville and Dolph Ziggler conspired to keep Mandy Rose away from Otis, leading to her abandoning both of them. The mystery figure popped up the next week, interrupting a Daniel Bryan match, and later one more time, teasing that a tag team would break up (presumably due a revelation made by the hacker), then was never heard from again. It's unknown who they were, what their motivations were, nothing, so it comes off as just a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. Cultaholic would later report that the hacker was supposed to be Mustafa Ali (already the most widely rumored candidate by fans, since the hacker had as a logo a ring of light similar to the one Ali wears on his wrestling gear), and the storyline was interrupted when Ali asked to be drafted from SmackDown to Raw, reportedly due to not agreeing with Bruce Prichard's booking of the brand, before being aborted outright when Paul Heyman's (who was in charge of Raw) and Ali's ideas for the character were nixed by Vince McMahon.^note Ironically, Heyman would be later fired as creative head of Raw to be replaced by Prichard, rendering Ali's reasons for his transfer moot. Eventually this was subverted; on the October 19, 2020 edition of Raw Ali, now the leader of the RETRIBUTION stable, out and out admitted he was the SmackDown hacker and admitted he was doing so out of revenge for continually being passed over.
• RETRIBUTION itself also has a few, according to their article on WrestleCrap:
  • Kayden Carter was part of the group when they posed on the ring following SummerSlam and it seemed they would be a Gender-Equal Ensemble with 6 members, but Carter never did anything with them afterward.
  • Mercedes Martinez was part of the group originally and was there when they cut their first promo as members of the RAW roster, with her character name later revealed to be RETALIATION. However, apparently realizing the stable was a lemon, she requested to be sent back to NXT, and was before Ali was revealed as the leader.
• On the subject of Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, originally their match at SummerSlam 2020 was billed as a hair vs. hair match, based on Sonya attacking Mandy and giving her a Traumatic Haircut weeks earlier. However, days before the event, Sonya's house was broken into by a stalker (while Mandy was staying over, on top of that). The match was then changed to a Loser Leaves WWE match on the go-home SmackDown and Sonya subsequently lost the match, presumably to allow her a much-needed break after the incident. She came back a few months later, now as a non-wrestling authority figure.
• On the March 5th, 2021 edition of SmackDown there was a backstage segment where Bayley was reading some ego-stroking tweets, allegedly from viewers, when she looked at one, without reading it aloud, reacted sadly to it and walked through the large door next to her without saying anything. This was not addressed the following week, as WWE apparently forgot they have more women on the roster than just Sasha Banks, Bianca Belair, Natalya, & Tamina so Bayley disappeared for weeks and when she returned following WrestleMania she was back to her Yosemite Sam-esque, egotistical self and it was never mentioned what that whole thing was about. It was later revealed in September 2021 by Becky Lynch that she would have been the one who sent the tweets setting up her return match vs. Bayley at WrestleMania, giving them a first time pay-per-view showdown.
• The debut episode of NXT 2.0 was supposed to feature a Fatal 4-Way #1 Contender's match between Tomasso Ciampa, Pete Dunne, Kyle O'Reilly & LA Knight for Samoa Joe's NXT championship. Almost days before the show, the match was changed into one for the now vacant title, and O'Reilly was replaced by newcomer Von Wagner ^note  Real name Cal Bloom and son of 80's/90's wrestler Wayne Bloom, better known as Blake of the Beverly Brothers with Ciampa winning the vacant title for the 2nd time.
• A leaked graphic revealed that, had Roman Reigns not had to be pulled from his Day 1 Universal Championship match vs Brock Lesnar due to COVID-19, Big E would have won his Fatal Four-Way WWE Championship defense, instead of Lesnar being inserted into the match and winning it. A report from WON also suggests that had Seth Rollins not also contracted COVID-19 shortly before the PPV (albeit early enough to still be cleared to compete at the event), he would have been the original winner (and is bitterly ironic, considering he had won a contract for a one-on-one match with E before it got bloated into a 5-way in the first place.)

Endeavor/Renaissance Era (2023-)

• If Mustafa Ali hadn't been released from his contract before his NXT North American Championship match at NXT No Mercy 2023, he would've won it from Dominik Mysterio, instead Trick Williams was the one to take the title.
• Wes Lee was pulled from the Deadline 2023 card on the NXT before Deadline due to a back injury that gave him numbness in his legs and it requiring surgery to fix with a recovery time of 8-12 months. It would have been assumed that if he was healthy he would have beat Dominik Mysterio to win the North American Championship. Wes Lee was replaced by Dragon Lee with Dragon Lee winning the title instead
• Brock Lesnar was scheduled to make his return at the 2024 Royal Rumble after losing to Cody Rhodes at SummerSlam 2023 before being removed from the show due to being heavily implicated in Vince McMahon's latest lawsuit^note The lawsuit itself withheld the name of the talent in question, only identifying him as "a world-famous athlete and former UFC Heavyweight Champion with whom WWE was actively trying to sign a new contract", though The Wall Street Journal identified him as Lesnar. that caused Vince to leave the company to defend himself and retire from TKO entirely less than 24 hours before showtime. Bron Breakker was made into his last minute replacement and made his main roster debut in the 2024 Men's Rumble at number 20.
  • Had Brock Lesnar actually showed up to the Royal Rumble, Brock Lesnar was planned to have a match with Dominik Mysterio at Elimination Chamber Perth since Dominik Mysterio would have eliminated him from the Royal Rumble which would have eventually led to a match with Gunther at WrestleMania XL for the Intercontinental Championship
• The plan for CM Punk was for him to face Seth Rollins for his World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XL but during the 2024 Men's Rumble got injured taking a Future Shock DDT from Drew McIntyre which would end up tearing his right tricep. On the Raw after the Royal Rumble, Punk announced he would unfortunately not be on the WrestleMania XL card due to this injury requiring surgery and not being able to recover in time for it. McIntyre would go onto face Rollins at WrestleMania XL instead after winning the men's chamber match at Elimination Chamber Perth.
• Bronson Reed was scheduled to appear in the men's chamber match at Elimination Chamber Perth, however his wife entered labor early and would give birth to his child before the PPV. He ended up losing his qualifying match to Bobby Lashley on the February 12th episode of Raw.

Unsorted

• Several times through the years, the WWF/WWE has had storylines where it was teased, or became apparent — but nothing came to pass — that women (either managers, divas or wrestlers) would suffer brutal beatings at the hands of male wrestlers (usually Monster Heels that were booked as being bloodthirsty animals who remorselessly kill and there's little that can be done to physically stop him), to help set up an eventual main-event match with the top babyface (depending on the year, Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Daniel Bryan or John Cena). These have included, but are not limited to, Miss Elizabeth,^note (to wit: brutally beaten, or more than just simply being slapped, shoved or having a wrist broken in the ring, all of which happened at the hands of various heels through the years, or otherwise threatened) Stephanie McMahon, A.J. Lee, and Eve Torres.^note Keep in mind that other female wrestlers, such as Candice Michelle, Kelly Kelly, Maria Kanellis and others, did get attacked by male wrestlers, but in their cases it only went as far as the male wrestler hitting only their Finishing Move on them before someone rescued them.
• WWE almost signed New Jack. Although his tryout match with Val Venis was really short and lackluster, his promo skills impressed Vince McMahon and he was well-liked in the locker room. Due to the inevitable Bowdlerization and Vince's concern that New Jack would seriously hurt someone, it didn't happen.
• Another almost-WWE signee would be Steve Corino. After leaving ECW for WCW, Corino was released after the WWF bought the latter. Six years later, he wrestled a couple tryout matches but was never offered a contract. He turned down a request from Dusty Rhodes since he felt he couldn't do the short five-minute matches that were standard in WWE compared to the 20+ minute bouts he had done in Japan and elsewhere.
• There's also a long list of TNA Wrestling/Impact Wrestling talents who almost signed with WWE.
  • AJ Styles turned down a developmental contract circa 2002 to stay and support his future wife's college education. That said, AJ finally did show up in WWE in 2016.
  • Other wrestlers mostly associated with TNA who had stints or worked dark matches in WWE include Alex Shelley, Frankie Kazarian, Eric Young, Bobby Roode, Samoa Joe (who also eventually showed up on WWE television in NXT), and Christopher Daniels.
  • Frankie Kazarian is a significant one, as he actually was in WWE and had a winning streak, before he was either a) fired because he wouldn't cut his hair (long standing rumours) or b) quit because they refused to reform the cruiserweight division (Word of Kaz).
  • Christopher Daniels in particular is the subject of several of these. He was originally set to become Vampiro's master, Syndrome, in WCW, but the storyline was scrapped. He also made appearances in ECW prior to its demise.
  • Alex Shelley later had another brush with a WWE contract, as WWE reportedly planned to tap him to be the top face of a new Cruiserweight division to be showcased on the WWE Network. Unfortunately, the network ended up in Development Hell, and thus the Cruiserweight program never came to pass. By the time the Network actually came into existence two years later, NXT had evolved to fill the niche the planned cruiserweight program would have, and Shelley had moved on to become a fixture of New Japan Pro-Wrestling working there and Ring of Honor until his temporary retirement in 2018. However, while he was finally seen on WWE TV in 2020, where he reformed the Time Splitters with KUSHIDA on NXT, unfortunately this was just a one night only thing as the Time Splitters lost, and Shelley returned to the now-renamed Impact Wrestling in order to reform the Motor City Machine Guns with Chris Sabin.
  • Mick Foley tried to get Samoa Joe AND CM Punk signed to company the 2005, but only managed to get Punk signed, with Joe not coming until after Punk left.
• After Rey Misterio Jr, Paul London and Dean Malenko all pushed the issue, WWE offered Místico a contract in 2007 only to be turned down because 300 days a year wouldn't give him anytime for CMLL, who he was still committed to. WWE persisted though and eventually got him as Sin Cara in 2011.
• SmackDown was pitched as an all-Divas show.
• During his first year, Brock Lesnar was forced to work a watered down power wrestling style rather than the more technical style he was good at. Despite being an NCAA champion and a shoe-in for the Olympics (he declined so he could start his career in WWE), Brock was booked to wrestle a power/brawling style that he clearly didn't know how to work. While he showed some promise during his feud with The Rock, it wasn't until Lesnar's feud with Kurt Angle that he was finally allowed to show his technical skills.
  • Speaking of Lesnar, his original finish in developmental was a shooting star press. It's a shame he couldn't continue to use it, and the one time he did, he got a broken neck.
• The Rock and Edge had custom WWF/WWE Championship belts designed but they were not used. The Rock's belt, which had been the successor to Austin's Smokin's Skull belt, had the Brahma Bull logo but was reportedly lost in the mail. Edge's belt was far different than the Rated R Spinner belt but was scrapped due to time constraints. One could only imagine that Cena Spinner could have been a one off instead of a seven year itch plus one. That is until the debut of the "Class/Super Bowl Ring" Belt in 2013.
• The Juniors division of SmackDown was an attempt to relaunch the Cruiserweight Division, up to then considered dark match/B-show material. The one who had lobbied for it and fought tooth and nail to get it approved was hoping to get guys like Sonjay Dutt, Jack Evans, Místico^note Eventually hired as the first Sin Cara, and others. But John Laurinaitis, who was in charge of hiring them, disliked the idea, hiring instead mostly midget wrestlers, killing it. This may have led to WWE signing Hornswoggle, who of course has been involved of some of WWE's most embarrassing moments.
• Jim Ross nearly booked Mankind vs. the Undertaker... on Alcatraz Island.
• During her time in developmental, Shantelle Taylor (aka TNA Knockout Taylor Wilde) wrestled in dark matches for SmackDown under the name San-Eye while wearing a mask. The story goes that she would've been called up as the masked San-Eye character eventually winning the WWE Cruiserweight Title before unmasking to reveal she was actually a woman. This was dropped after only a few matches and Taylor was sent back down to developmental before eventually being released.
• Montel Vontavious Porter once proposed to WWE what would essentially would have been their version of TNA 3 Live Kru]] with John Cena and R-Truth.
• Elijah Burke/D'Angelo Dinero almost ended up as a Spirit Squad member.
• The Shield's Dean Ambrose was supposedly going to debut through a online feud with Mick Foley which included confronting Foley in a worked shoot on the floor at WrestleMania XXVIII Axxess. Unfortunately, the plug was pulled after Foley couldn't be medically cleared to wrestle.
• Vince McMahon once asked Dana White, president of UFC, to do some sort of fight on either a UFC pay per view or a WrestleMania. Dana cited Vince's advanced age as the main reason he turned it down. It didn't stop former boxing champion Mike Tyson to predict a victory for Vince though.
• After impressing during a SmackDown dark match, The Briscoe Brothers were invited to the revived version of FCW in 2009, for a week of free developmental. Their ring work was deemed impressive and the locker room liked them (which isn't surprising considering it was full of ROH veterans). Then the Briscoes were sent home and told over the phone they weren't "cosmetically pleasing" enough for WWE. Well, Mark wasn't getting dentures, and no one even had any idea what John Laurinaitis thought was wrong with Jay, so that was that.
• The question of whether or not Jim Ross or Joey Styles are each others Poor Man's Substitute might have been put to the test with Paul Heyman stating that JR would have called ECW One Night Stand 2005 had Joey declined or been unable to.
• After the Atlanta Falcon Moose left the NFL to become a pro wrestler, he was invited to a WWE training camp and offered a contract. Moose took the training but declined the job in favor of Dragon Gate USA and Ring of Honor. Late Summer 2016, DG USA is no more and WWE is finally able to lure Moose away from ROH, only to be outbid by TNA! How they pulled it off is a mystery for the ages.
  • Soon afterwards it came to light that WWE backed off from signing him at the last moment upon discovering that he was arrested in 2009 for alleged domestic abuse while he was still in the NFL. WWE informed Moose not to worry as they discovered he was the one abused by his wife and he was merely defending himself, as well as explaining that the temporary halt to his signing was because Adam Rose and Jerry Lawler were recently arrested for similar incidents. They told him the door would be open for him when the heat died down, during that time, TNA threw him a ludicrous, given their financial troubles, $100,000 deal which dwarfed the supposed NXT deal he was going to get, Moose happily snatched it up, which many deemed a stupid move given TNA's financial troubles, it could go bankrupt at any moment. Perhaps worsening it for Moose himself is that in the months following, WWE signed Brennan Williams, another NFL star turned wrestler who's a good decade younger, likely killing any chance of Moose making it to WWE.
• While the Money in the Bank ladder match has become a massive success to the point of getting its own show, rumor has it that the original idea was to have a match where the winner would get their wish granted. Rob Van Dam was slated to win and his wish would be to bring back ECW, resulting in the 2005 One Night Stand pay-per-view. However, Rob was out with a knee injury and the match was reworked into what we know now.
• Back when WWE Magazine was still around, every few issues used this very idea with a section called Alternate Realities. Memorable ones include:
  • What if Shawn Michaels had defeated the Undertaker at WrestleMania 26 and not retired? Shawn would have a career resurgence after a Face–Heel Turn, beating both John Cena and Edge for their respective World Titles and unified both belts. Edge would have retired afterwards and Shawn would dub himself "The Career-Ender". A wedge is driven between Shawn and Triple H, with DX disbanding. This would all come to a head at WrestleMania 28, with Triple H defeating Shawn in a Unified Title vs Career match. After the match, the lights would go out, and the Undertaker (clad in white), proceeded to drag HBK to Hell.
  • What if John Cena joined Evolution instead of Randy Orton?
• WWE almost released a video game called "WWE Brawl" The entire game was to be set in the fictitious Brawl City, where John Cena, Kelly Kelly, Triple H, Hulk Hogan and others brawl their way through town in order to take down an evil organization hellbent on dominating the world...none other than World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. The game would lay out a secret conspiracy perpetrated by none other than Vince McMahon himself in a mech suit.
• In OVW, there was a wrestler named Boris Alexiev, a shootfighter not dissimilar to what we ended up seeing with Vladimir Kozlov. When Alexiev was called up to the main roster, the MMA gimmick was forgotten, and he was given the new character of Santino Marella.^note Ironically, during his Alexiev days, Santino feuded with, then later teamed up with, Kozlov, a situation that later repeated itself on the main roster.
• While WWE has signed a number of big indy names throughout the late 2010s (Finn Bálor, AJ Styles, & Samoa Joe among them) they have also signed several notable wrestlers who only ended up lasting a few months at most before leaving for one reason or another. One can only speculate on how Austin Aries, Kimber Lee, Frankie Kazarian, Low Ki, Mahabali Shera, Sami Callihan, Deonna Purrazzo, Lio Rush, ACH, Jake Atlas, EC3, or Anthony Greene would have done in WWE if they had stayed.
• Krissy Vaine debuted on an episode of SmackDown in 2007, attacking Torrie Wilson at ringside. Krissy said it was to write Torrie off TV for a while, and rumors have been tossed around that Torrie would have been the first Divas' Champion - leading some to believe that Krissy was going to be her opponent (the similarities between the two had been noted by talent scouts). Krissy however chose to leave WWE after the week she debuted, citing depression and family problems.
• Aliyah pitched her character as a belly dancer to acknowledge her Arab heritage. As shown on Breaking Ground, her first rehearsal with it in front of the roster bombed. Although she used it twice on TV, it was quietly dropped.
• In trying to make up for the usual Gorgeous George Camp Gay stereotypes pro-wrestling has been known (read: infamous) for since the TV era began, there was talk of having a serious gay character whose sexual orientation would simply be normalized. The idea was scrapped though the wrestler would go on to become a World champion just the same. The wrestler in question: Brock. Lesnar. Now take a moment to imagine that guy with that gimmick.
• According to the official article on Wikipedia, in an interview he did shortly after his release, former SAnitY member Sawyer Fulton revealed that the original lineup for the group was himself, Solomon Crowe and Marcus Louis and they apparently tried the gimmick at a few live events. Then Crowe left and Louis was let go, leading to the group as it now is. Eventually Crowe and Fulton ended up sharing a team: the Impact Wrestling Power Stable incarnation of oVe (Ohio Versus Everyone).
• Although Vince McMahon's real life brother Roderick "Rod" McMahon III never had anything to do with the wrestling business, at various points in time ideas for bringing him in for a small role were floated. At one point there were even plans to make Rod a face authority figure to rival Vince, and reportedly, had the "Who Killed Mr. McMahon?" storyline in 2007 not being cancelled due to the Chris Benoit tragedy, he would've made his debut appearance at the "funeral" to sell the storyline as real. All these plans fell through in the end, and Rod passed away in January 2021.
• During the 1980s, WWE had a working relationship with AJW which eventually led to the Jumping Bomb Angels being brought in to be the centerpiece of the new women's tag team division. However, originally AJW debated whether to send over the Jumping Bomb Angels or the Crush Gals to the then WWF with the Crushes (and Dump Matsumoto and Bull Nakano) working a few house shows around that time. Eventually, though, they chose to send over the JBA as Chigusa and Lioness were just too big of stars for AJW while the JBA, though popular, were still a secondary team.
• Not quite a wrestling example, but before starting the original XFL Vince McMahon tried buying the entire Canadian Football League and moving it down south, and keep in mind this was shortly after the CFL pulled the plug on their failed attempt to expand to the U.S. The CFL rightly told Vince to pound sand (and the Canadian government wouldn't have allowed it anyway), though who knows what would happen to pro football in Canada if the CFL had taken the deal. Oddly enough the revived XFL under Dwayne Johnson would propose a merger with the CFL before they (re)started play^note The XFL first tried resuming play under McMahon in 2020 until the COVID-19 Pandemic shut it down 5 games in, at which point Vince just said "To hell with this" and the league declared bankruptcy, at witch point Johnson bought the league's assets in 2022, this was also rejected and delayed the XFL 3.0's debut to 2023. The XFL would then merge with the revived USFL (as there's just not enough talent out there to support two spring leagues) to become the United Football League, which will begin play on March 30, 2024.
• Though they ended up being bought by Endeavor Group Holdings (owners of UFC, among other things) leading to the merger with UFC and formation of "TKO Group Holdings", there were several other groups interested in buying WWE, including Comcast^note Though this doesn't make much sense as WWE gets most of their revenue from Comcast, by way of the Monday Night Raw rights fees and Comcast basically buying out the American WWE Network and absorbing it into their Peacock streaming service, Disney, Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery (the former home of their defunct rival WCW and current home to their closest modern rival All Elite Wrestling), Liberty Media (who own SiriusXM and Formula One), and infamously, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (as it was believed that a Saudi buyout would've resulted in them giving the disgraced Vince McMahon complete creative control again). ^note  There were also claims that AEW owner Tony Khan was interested in buying them, as he had with Ring of Honor, and said he would've merged the two companies together if successful, although it's unknown if this was a legitimate offer, or just AEW trying to get in on the publicity of/mocking the sale.

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