If Axl had turned up at the 2002 VMAs having trained up, lost some weight and got his voice into shape - and if he'd been sporting his 2006 look - he would've slayed that crowd. If he'd then released Chinese Democracy a couple of months later it would've been MASSIVE. The revolving door of musicians wasn't a joke at that point; people might've got over the absence of Slash once they'd seen how good Buckethead was (and remember, this was 2002; freaky-looking guitarists were the in thing among the MTV crowd, look at Limp Bizkit...).

A trained-up Axl doing the VMAs and not dressing like a tool - Better as the first single, swiftly followed by the album, then singles of If The World and TWAT... Axl would've been king of the world. Ah well, so many "if only"s.