For decades, the assumption for WWE's future was always that much like Vince McMahon Sr. passed the company down to his son, Vincent Kennedy McMahon would do the same to either his son, Shane, his daughter, Stephanie, or a combination of the two. With Paul Levesque in charge of the creative team, all signs pointed in that direction for quite some time.
Of course, now, we know that WWE has merged with UFC under Endeavor's control to form the TKO Group Holdings media conglomerate, Shane's spent more time out of WWE in the past 20 years than within it, Stephanie is gone and Vince is still running things—albeit now with a boss instead of having full control.
It's wild what a difference this is, but it's even stranger when you look back on how things could have panned out differently had a few things in the past gone another way. Namely, how in another timeline, Shane McMahon is able to convince his father to purchase UFC and this whole merger happens much sooner, but with Vince in charge, instead.
Around the same time Vince purchased WCW from Ted Turner for chump change, Shane was pitching to not only also pick up ECW (which eventually did happen), but supposedly looking to buy UFC, which had been struggling for a few years.
According to a recent interview with Big Boy TV, Dana White said:
"Vince McMahon, from what I hear, his son Shane wanted to buy the UFC. Vince had the opportunity to buy it. And Vince said 'Yeah, no, we're not gonna buy it.' Vince could have bought this thing and just put it on the shelf. Or, Vince could have bought it and let his son, you know..."
Hindsight is 20/20, and if the McMahon family could have known back then what they know now about the success of UFC, and how the Fertitta brothers bought UFC for a mere $2 million and sold it to Endeavor in 2016 for a whopping $4.025 billion—and now, how that same group would snatch up WWE? Forget about it. Instead of just picking up the scraps of WCW and ECW, Titan Towers could have become the headquarters of the biggest MMA promotion at the same time as well.
Within those years, supposedly Shane revisited the idea a few more times.
According to the Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard podcast, Shane had some meetings about obtaining UFC in 2004. There were meetings with Bob Meyrowitz and Campbell McLaren, and "they weren't asking for a lot, but it was more than Vince was willing to pay at the time."
Supposedly, this came up again in 2009, but once again, it was shut down.
Why Vince never saw the monetary potential in this is something we may never know. It's been analyzed to death with questions like "If he didn't want to run UFC, why not just be an investor and let Shane run it?" or "Vince spread out with two attempts in football with the XFL. He had ventured into movies, the World Bodybuilding Federation...why not UFC?"
It's not as though there has been a big separation between the two that would indicate Vince had any ill feelings toward UFC. We've seen stars like Ronda Rousey, Cain Velasquez, Matt Riddle and more come to WWE. The relationship Brock Lesnar has had between the two companies is a testament to this, too, as WWE never shied away from acknowledging his accolades in UFC.
So what if Shane had been able to purchase it himself, or been an investor alongside his father and some others as a co-owner of sorts? What might have changed with these companies?
On the positive side, perhaps there would have been a better synergy with certain athletes finding their proper home. Some fighters are better suited for MMA while others have the personas to pull off a career in sports entertainment. Perhaps by having WWE and UFC under the same roof, when scouting talent, some of those athletes would have been steered into the opposite company had producers thought they'd better succeed in one or the other.
For all we know, someone like Alberto Del Rio could have been a much better MMA fighter than he was a pro wrestler. Maybe Jack Swagger would have gone into the octagon rather than stepping inside the squared circle and made a bigger name for himself. Vice versa, who's to say Chael Sonnen couldn't have been a great WWE Superstar? Or Kimbo Slice? Conor McGregor? We know Paige VanZant eventually spent some time in AEW, so maybe when she was coming up, she would have been positioned more as a WWE Diva and had an even more successful career there instead.
On the negatives, though, there's certainly a chance UFC never would have grown to its heights under McMahon control. After all, look at how XFL died out twice and how quickly the World Bodybuilding Federation folded, and how little WWE Studios has managed to make a dent in Hollywood.
UFC could have been stuck going nowhere, with MMA fans not able to concede that "the fake fighting company" now owned the brand. There might have been criticism that fights were scripted and too hokey like pro wrestling. Also, if there had been any decisions to up the showmanship aspect of these fighters, that could have drawn even more ire with people saying the McMahons were trying to make UFC just another Raw or SmackDown.
There's something to be said about how you're able to check FanDuel UFC odds for legitimate sportsbetting on fights, but that still doesn't happen with WWE matches. Even now under TKO, there are fans and stockholders who will likely have hesitation to invest out of fear that UFC will change to become more like WWE, even though it isn't under Vince's control.
For a WWE fan, it might seem like Shane buying UFC would have been the best case scenario to keep World Wrestling Entertainment a family business under the McMahons. But for UFC fans, that might have killed the company and another one like Bellator would have become the top MMA company—or the sport itself might not have taken off like it did at all. For that matter, who's to say WWE wouldn't be in a position in 2023 where instead of merging under Endeavor, the company could have sold outright to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund?
There's no way of knowing how different everything would be today, but it does make you wonder...what if?
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