6 Times Wrestling History Was Almost COMPLETELY Different

5. Triple H Wins The 1996 King Of The Ring

It's one of the most familiar butterfly effect stories in wrestling history - after about a year in WWE, Hunter Hearst Helmsley's winning streak is obliterated by the Ultimate Warrior in humbling fashion at WrestleMania XII. The 'Greenwich Snob' is a warm body for Warrior's unexpected and slightly weird return, but he does business knowing that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will usurp his 'Show Of Shows' payoff by some margin. He's going to win the 1996 King Of The Ring tournament, his best friend is the extremely powerful new WWE Champion and top star Shawn Michaels, and prior heel winners Mabel and Owen Hart were crowned in June and main eventing SummerSlam by August. Paul Levesque has every reason to believe that this will be his turning point, and even feels confident to join his Kliq friends Michaels, Razor Ramon and Diesel as the latter pair bid farewell to the company, mid-ring, at a May 19th house show at Madison Square Garden. Vince McMahon gives his approval for the group to take the moment, but immediately has to walk that back when the locker room threatens revolt at the contravention of kayfabe and supposed killing of the business. 

Hunter's big win is ripped away and replaced with a summer of doing jobs (he wins the Intercontinental Championship in October, but let's not kill his narrative that he was buried below the surface of the earth and had to claw his way back from the brink), and the King Of The Ring spoils are given to Stone Cold Steve Austin, who obliterates Jake Roberts physically then verbally in a tour-de-force that ends with the birth of the Austin 3:16 catchphrase, about four other billion dollar lines, and in general a night that at long last teases the idea of what the Stone Cold character could actually be. Of course, so much of this wasn't exactly Plan A, and that's reflected in the months of television that follow. Austin has a role but not the role, not really anyway, until whispers of Bret Hart's return begin in earnest and he has something to sink his rattlesnake-like fangs into. 

So exactly how much does the wrestling world change if the Kliq never hug, and Hunter simply goes over? This is tricky to assess. Centrally, the problem with the timeline is that Triple H was only ever going to be Triple H, and Stone Cold Steve Austin had such a burning desire to make it as the volume-up version of himself in wrestling that he may well have done so anyway. "Austin 3:16" was the money shirt that eventually reflected WWE's return to pop culture significance (in the exact same period as the nWo one because mainstream staple too, just to contextualise wrestling's growth then too) and who knows how he would have landed on it with Roberts and the bible and all of that, but Austin the man might have just found something else just as marketable instead. Hunter, meanwhile, was going nowhere fast with or without a crown. He only became a king of anything when he found his queen - Chyna, as opposed to a cape and sceptre, was the missing ingredient of his act, as evidenced by just how over she was when he was still finding his way a full year later. Wrestling history really would have been different, but an iconic tee would have only been replaced by a different one down the line. Before "undesirable" and "undeniable" were brought into wrestling vernacular by Cody Rhodes, Hunter and Austin respectively summed up both.