12 Biggest "What If" Scenarios In WWE WrestleMania History

12. WrestleMania I: What If It’s Not A Success?

Watch any WWE documentary that involves a recitation of the first WrestleMania, and you will inevitably hear any number of talking heads discuss how the McMahon family had mortgaged everything to put on that event, and that had it failed, they might not have had a company going forward.

And that really is a sound assessment. Had WrestleMania I flopped hard, the McMahons might have been out as owners. That’s an easy scenario to play out, with the company floundering and many of the innovations that followed never coming to fruition. WWF very well could have been bought out and just continued as an extra-regional territory with no Vince to drive the explosive growth everyone experienced.

But what if Mania wasn’t a huge success, but also didn’t tank? The McMahons paid their debts, but they didn’t become the celebrated sports entertainment juggernaut we know today. Does NBC not enter into a partnership with WWF to create Saturday Night’s Main Event? The cable and syndicated programs probably would have still moved forward, but the national explosion we saw in 1985-86 might never have happened - or it might have been delayed until Vince could think of another scheme to push WWF back into the national conversation.

Perhaps WWF still becomes the global leader in sports entertainment, but it would have required another major gambit to take hold if the original WrestleMania wasn’t the catalyst.