My responses in bold for your convenience.
Since I doubt this will butterfly away the pill addiction, will Vince incorporate it into his storylines and either heve Kerry go into rehab or turn heel? Will he be forced to groom the "Macho Man" as a face, or will such an embarassing championship turnover for reasons unrelated to the action in the ring cut into the WWF's credibility?
Kerry didn't really get into addiction (at least no more so than any of the guys who still use the "It was the 80's" excuse) until the motorcycle accident in 1986 took his foot as well as most of his in-ring ability. If Vince sensed a problem, he would've tried to get Kerry clean at all costs. He even made an attempt in the early 90s while Kerry was employed but already too far gone. As far as that, if there was a problem with Kerry, he could have always hotshotted the belt onto Piper or Savage for awhile and I don't think it would have hurt. If anything, Piper could have had a very prosperous reign as he was the most brilliant talker of that time.
Unless he owned more than 36 percent of a Japanese promoter, or the AWA had Japanese affiliates, why the heck would Verne ever make such a demand? It makes no sense. The NBA doesn't demand a share of the salary of off-season and undrafted players who play in Europe, Asia, or South America between times with NBA teams.
I'm not privy to 100% details on what the deal was, but according to several shoot interviews, Gagne was unhappy with Hogan keeping all of the merchandising money he stood to make in Japan and wanted a percentage as basically a kickback for letting him have the title. McMahon wanted no such thing. He let Hogan work for Inoki (I believe) without asking for any of the merchandising percentages. Rather, Vince would make deals with Inoki at the time while Gagne had a deal with Baba (all the while Hogan would work dates for Inoki). The politics of it is quite dizzying, but it boils down to Gagne wanted a kickback from Hogan. Hogan wouldn't budge.
Okay, let's asume the screwdriver that Verne Gagne has a lick of sense about the matter. Now what?
Then Gagne can probably compete for awhile longer. Until McMahon decided to throw a pile of money at the syndicated stations that aired the AWA and told them to put on the WWF instead. Historically, most of the syndicates went for it and dropped whatever wrestling program was on for the WWF. Also, many of the workers knew where the money was. Verne didn't attempt to get into competitors markets. He would need to. The result will likely always end the same.
Oh, and ff Hulk is AWA champ, more than likely "Mean" Gene Okerlund stays put too. Who does McMahan turn to for ring announcing? Or does he give some unknown a chance?
Mean Gene was indeed an interview artist. I don't think Vince could replace him so easily, however, Mean Gene said in his shoot that he knew where the money was. Vince also did some interviewing at the time, so if no Gene, he could've done it or gotten say Alfred Hayes or someone like that to do it. Though it wouldn't be the same.
Also, if Corckett can avoid buying a jet he can't really afford and hasn't much use for yet, and has a "Plan B" in the form of seeing and signing Sting and/or The Ultimate Warrior after seeing them while on an NWA affiliate roundtable meeting in Shreveport or Memphis in late 1985, before they turned heel for a couple of years, it could have minimised most of the damage to his promotion Magnum TA's injuries caused. Who knows, maybe it would have prevented the need to sell out to Ted Turner, or else made it more of a merger of equals. (Until Time-Warner acquired Turner's properties).
Of course. According to the Jim Cornette shoot and many other sources, they were all making money hand over fist, but they also bled all that cash away frivolously. The only reason Jimmy Crockett was forced to sell was because he just did not watch his spending. The Mid-Atlantic territory could have survived just as long, if not longer than it did.
Well, there seems to have been some bad blood between McMahon and the Gagne family, enough that Greg's younger brothers Gene and Dale tried to restart it in 1996. I haven't read any interviews about it, but it seems like McMahon was an absolute last resort.
Yep. Verne and Vince are like oil and water. McMahon did offer Gagne a huge buyout and even promised him towns that he could run under the WWF banner as the agent in charge (the WWF was running 3 house shows at a time on any given night in three different cities). Gene Okerlund was in the room when Vince was on the phone with him and said Gagne flipped his top and he could hear him screaming at Vince over the phone. I believe Dale Gagne did try to restart the AWA around that time but it went nowhere. The territory system was dead by then. So, why not sell to Vince years later and get a nice check from Titan Sports?
Since ESPN by this time no longer needed them, and treated them like filler when they had them anyway, that would have been a bust.
ESPN was wanting to get away from wrestling by the time the AWA went under. They did air the GWF and UWF afterwards but those two promotions were huge failures. Herb Abrams' UWF is the epitome of how bad a wrestling show can be in particular.
According to Wikipedia, Ted Turner took the Atlanta affiliate of the NWA off of Jim Crockett's hands in Novermber, 1988, so theroreticaly Crockett should be pretty flush with cash, unless he wasted it on something else, which admittedly is not beyond the realm of possibility. And we all know that he wasn't officially done with wrestling promotion, the way he took over TNA. Also, while Cornette wouldn't call it quits with the Midnight Express for another two years, Paul Heyman was already looking for a way out of the ring.
I believe Crockett would've had the capital to go ahead and get back in it, but he was admittedly tired of the wrestling business. The Jarrett's founded TNA. Jim Crockett has had nothing to do with it as far as I know. But I could be wrong. Well, Heyman first became interested in booking when he complained to Verne Gagne about the show on that night. Gagne threw the booking sheets at Paul and said "Let's see you do better". After that, Heyman began developing his ideas as a booker.
WI Heyman, Crockett, Lawler, and Jarrett has pooled their resources together to buy the AWA, or are there too many big egoes and/or too disperate booking styles for this to work?
Look at the Pro Wrestling USA fiasco as a historical guideline for this. Crockett already proved he couldn't work with Lawler and Jarrett (also involved in that mess were the Von Erichs and Gagne). Everyone was trying to steal talent from each other and none of them could really get along. Also, Heyman and Lawler hate each other. Actually, the styles only contrast between the three southerners (who booked fairly similarly) and Heyman. Besides, Jarrett was about to get a job with the WWF around 91-92 because Vince thought he was going to jail. He believed Jerry Jarrett was a safe pair of hands to leave the WWF in after Gorilla Monsoon turned him down in case Vince went to jail. So, even if they all had the resources to do it, they couldn't have worked together.
In other words, it would punish everyone
but the actual malefectors.
Certainly so. Wrestling is extremely expensive to promote and a lot of indy promotions probably wouldn't have the resources to survive if things came down hard... It would also hurt a lot of indy workers who make very little money. Why would they wanna pay say 500 dollars for a drug test when they're only making say 50 - 100 bucks for the night?
Funny, there are still minor boxing, kickboxing, and MMA circuits today.
It can be conceded that not all indy promotions are cash poor. Ring of Honor certainly could afford to keep going (As could JCW, which is run by the ICP, they apparently pay very well because they run shows to coincide with their concerts). I believe PWG could survive as well because they only run 1-2 times a month. But small budget independents like CHIKARA would be gone. And I can't live without CHIKARA in my life lol. (Granted, it's not everyone's taste)