10 Best ECW Champions Ever

3. Taz

As the Tazmaniac, the Brooklyn native was a cartoon character, the type of which would have succeeded during the boom period of the late 1980s or in Vince McMahon's New Generation era of the mid-90s but in the hardcore, extreme environment Paul Heyman was trying to create in ECW, it stuck out like a sore thumb. When he suffered an unfortunate neck injury during a tag team match in 1995, against 2 Cold Scorpio and Dean Malenko, it provided the opportunity needed to remove him from television and reintroduce him at a later time as a new and improved character. Known simply as Taz, the Human Suplex Machine, he returned from injury sporting a gimmick straight out of the UFC. A shoot fighter, he wasted little time in tearing his opponents apart en route to victory. After dispatching of Sabu in a match one-year in the making, Taz climbed the ranks, capturing the ECW TV Championship. When Shane Douglas refused to give him a shot at the heavyweight title, the baddest man in ECW debuted his own title, the FTW Championship. It was merely a placeholder, though, as Taz finally dethroned Douglas at Guilty As Charged 1999. Over the course of his nine month reign, Taz defeated every major star ECW had to offer. Whether it was Chris Candido or Buh Buh Ray Dudley, Sabu or Tajiri, Taz proved himself one of the elite stars in the industry. Unfortunately, that meant that WWE would inevitably come calling, and they did. By September 1999, Taz was on his way out of the promotion he helped build and at Anarchy Rulz 1999, he was the first competitor eliminated from a Three Way Dance that also involved Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka. Months later, Taz would return to ECW and capture the heavyweight title from turncoat Mike Awesome, who had signed with WCW days earlier. It marks the only time in wrestling history that a WWE star beat a WCW star for the ECW title.