Buff Bagwell believes his WWE story could have gone a hell of a lot differently after WCW went under, and he isn’t talking about simply sticking around for a few more years. Bagwell says that if things had broken his way following the WWF purchase of WCW, he believes he could have been right in the mix with The Rock—and even thinks their rivalry could have become another Rock vs. Steve Austin.
Bagwell’s WWF run in 2001 went sideways almost immediately after his infamous match against Booker T on RAW in Tacoma, Washington. Bagwell recently claimed Shane McMahon threatened to fire him if he looked into the camera before that WWE debut, something Bagwell says stripped away one of the biggest parts of the character fans had watched for years in WCW.
During his appearance on Going Ringside, Bagwell was asked who he would want to face if he could wrestle completely healthy again. He didn’t hesitate before naming The Rock, but then took the answer much further.
“If I could be 100% healthy, I would want to wrestle The Rock. I’ve always—I really, if things would have gone a better way for me with the merger of the WWF and the WCW, me and The Rock would have been the Stone Cold-Rock thing.”
Bagwell believes the timing was there for him to slide into WWE’s upper echelon if his transition from WCW hadn’t fallen apart.
“It would have been—I would have been, I feel with my heart, I would have been right in that mix of that timing with my age and everything. That would have been a perfect spot for me.”
That is a massive what-if considering Rock and Austin were already sitting at the top of the wrestling business. Bagwell, meanwhile, walked into WWF as one of WCW’s most recognizable personalities, only for his run to fall apart within weeks.
That Tacoma match has remained a major point of frustration for Bagwell. During a previous exclusive interview with Ringside News about his WWE firing, Bagwell argued that putting him and Booker T in the first major WCW match in Tacoma instead of waiting one week for RAW in Atlanta was a huge mistake because an Atlanta crowd would have had years of history with both WCW stars.
That alternate version of history never happened. Bagwell’s WWE stint was over almost as quickly as it started, while The Rock and Steve Austin remained at the center of the company as the Invasion continued without him.
More than 25 years later, Bagwell clearly still sees a much bigger version of his WWE career when he looks back at what might have been. Whether Buff Bagwell really could have become The Rock’s next massive rival will always be impossible to prove, but Bagwell has no problem saying exactly where he believes he belonged.
Do you think Buff Bagwell could have become a serious rival for The Rock if WWE had handled his 2001 arrival differently, or was Rock vs. Austin simply on another level? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
