Removing rubber casing from Masterline Monster handles?

[Slalom.Steve]

According to Masterline, the improvements from their cheaper Monster Team handle to their more expensive Custom Ski handle are that the Custom has a smaller aluminum bar with thicker walls and more rubber on the bar, and that the rubber compound is higher quality. I certainly believe them, but I don't have the budget nor the skiing skill to care too much, so I've always just bought the Monster.

There's also an obvious cosmetic difference though in that the Monster has most of the V-shape wrapped in a rubber sheath casing. I don't know of any functional reason though, and I don't like that it covers the colors of the rope.

As an experiment, I took my just-retired Monster handle, and cut the rubber entirely off of one side, and most of the rubber on the other (pictures below).At the end of the bar is a little foam piece, which is easy to pull out and you can see down into the bar itself.For the side I left a little bit of rubber on, there's certainly wiggle room for the rope within the rubber.

So the ultimate question: is there any reason I couldn't cut the rubber off my future handles? The foam piece was a little bit wet, even after being out of the water for 36 hours, so it' not like the rubber casing was keeping the inside totally dry. Obviously the foam would come out if I used it as-is, but I could just cover the foam/the hole with marine epoxy. And the end of the bar isn't sharp or anything, so it's not dangerous.Or I could just leave a little bit of rubber on, and even though it's not tight around the rope, I don't see any issues with having it that way. Or I could maybe zip-tie it down really tight.

Anything I'm missing here why this wouldn't work? Any idea why Masterline puts it on in the first place, except to make the more expensive Custom handle look cooler? It's interesting that the rope that was under the casing is in better shape than the rest of the handle, and you can even kinda see where the casing ended - no fray above it, bunch of fray below it - as if the casing is actually an improvement! Probably harder or impossible to restring it though? But again, why even have it in the first place?

Here's the pictures:

[skialex]

Just leave a little piece of rubber like on the orange side. I’m thinking as you cutoff the rest, leave some 2” of the end rubber and pull up and inside the top part.If you know how to undo and restring… then you can do anything you like, even making it look like the custom if you can find the rubber parts, end cups etc from an old one.

[DW]

I cut the black sleeve on my ML handles similar to the orange side. I use the extra to make a protective cover at the Y, where a ski tends to rub on pull ups. I wear out the rubber on the handle way before any rope wear happens.

I would expect if fully removed the end of the handle will find a way to smack your ski and the boat with the hard / sharp aluminum bar end.