In the fall of 1984, McMahon met with Fritz. Details are sketchy—McMahon would not return calls for comment, and Fritz died in 1997—but the story goes that McMahon came to Dallas pitching a merger. Skeptics who knew the two say that the egos involved make such a scenario unthinkable. And, in fact, no merger took place. McMahon kept his WWF billions to himself. But the story from Fritz’s former employees is that Fritz turned McMahon down, that he was too loyal to the system to create a promotion that would put his friends out of business. And Fritz believed that his own promotion would outlast McMahon’s.