| Depends how they would have handled Rock from 2001 onwards. Hunter, Taker, Michaels (albeit with a 4 year break in the middle) are all still there after many many years and the crowds still love them, and Rock had just as much if not more about him than they did, so he would still have been gaining huge attention and support from the fans.
I don't actually think his staying around would have made a huge difference long term to the ratings, people fell out of love with wrestling around 2001 onwards because of the incredibly bad writing, not because of the performers who were for the most part putting on stellar matches through 2001/2.
Wrestling is just like any TV show in that regard, when it is written well it does well, when the stroylines don't garner interest, the ratings drop. Had anybody except Steph been fronting up creative from this time onwards they would have been canned, but Vince as always has to ultimately take the blame since it's his decision to have the shows written in the way they are now and it's his decision to have his daughter front up the writing team.
Thanks largely to international success the company is still extremely profitable, unless his ratings started tanking completely (and hopefully they have pretty much bottomed in the 3.5ish areas) Vince is going to pretty much going to carry on going the way he is until he hopefully unearths either a character that clicks with the public to a huge degree coupled with an improvement in storyline quality. In the meantime I have to hope Vince is forced into better action (since he works better under pressure) by a rival organisation, but that isn't happening soon. |