Attitude era yes, 80's no. We will never see territory wrestling as big as it was before turdball McMahon killed it.
I'll always maintain that the old man was both the best AND worst things to happen to the business.
He was responsible for the heights wrestling reached under his vision, but he is also the root cause of many of the problems with today's product.
We'll never know the answer to this, but I wonder how long the territories would have survived had Vince not come along.
This is pure conjecture on my part, but Vince ruined a lot of things the old territories relied on. But, they may have been on their way out even
without Vince throwing his hat into the mix.
Audiences have changed dramatically over the last thirty years.
WWF has endured by becoming the preferred product of mainstream because Vince changed with the times while the other promoters didn't, and their businesses all folded because of it.
And that's my point: audiences would have evolved regardless of Vince.
The other promoters showed no signs of evolving.
Vince
was there and he was the only one who adequately kept up with changing demands.
On one hand, McMahon Jr. may have helped kill off the territories, but that may be a moot point since they were/would soon be dying anyway.
On the other hand, I think Vince has also kept wrestling alive by being better than his dying counterparts.
Vince is the only promoter who's continually given audiences enough of what they want to keep his company AND pro-wrestling afloat.
Without the WWF machine, professional wrestling may have gone the way of Vaudeville and silent films by now!
