10 Real Life Events That Forced Wrestling World Title Changes
8. WWF's Taz Beats WCW's Mike Awesome For The ECW World Title
The real life event here, was that the ECW World Championship was in the possession of a WCW-contracted wrestler who ECW's Paul Heyman feared would be persuaded to trash said title on WCW television - similar to what Madusa had already done with the WWF Women's Championship.
That WCW-contracted talent was Mike Awesome, who had signed for Ted Turner's company while still the reigning ECW Champion and with the title in his possession.
While Awesome is often made out to be the villain in this scenario, one has to consider that the powerhouse had missing ECW paychecks that were believed to total in the region of $50,000 when he jumped to WCW - and also that his deal with Turner's promotion was for a guaranteed $280,000 per year.
Regardless of the reasons for the Canadian exiting ECW, the Land of Extreme still needed to get its World Championship from Awesome.
As a way to shock fans, Paul Heyman contacted Vince McMahon and requested to borrow Taz(z). Seeing this as a way to get one over WCW, McMahon agreed, and Taz turned up at an Indiana house show to dethrone Awesome as the ECW Champ - something which Eric Bischoff and WCW also agreed to.
How did WWF maximise having the ECW World Champion on their books? They had Taz come up short in a triple threat featuring Crash Holly and Perry Saturn, then had Triple H pin him with the Pedigree before the Human Suplex Machine dropped the title to Tommy Dreamer.