10 Shocking WCW Plans That Almost Happened
3. Mike Awesome Throwing The ECW Championship In The Trash
Man, when you look at incoming names who could've become big deals and genuinely helped WCW in the promotion's main event scene, Mike Awesome seemed like a can't-miss star for Ted Turner's rasslin' company.
Even though he had a strong debut by laying out Kevin Nash, Awesome soon went from the badass monster seen in ECW, to the Career Killer, to the Fat Chick Thrilla, to That '70s Guy, to the Canadian Career Killer - with it becoming clear that WCW didn't realise what it had in the 6'6" powerhouse.
What makes the misuse of Mike Awesome even more jarring, he was only with WCW for barely a year.
One early plan that WCW did have for Awesome, though, was for him to turn up on WCW TV and throw the ECW World Championship in the trash, ala Madusa and the WWF Women's Championship.
At the time of his April 2000 Nitro debut, the Steve Keirn-trained bulldozer was the reigning ECW Champ. What followed was a whole bunch of 'he said, she said' between all three parties involved.
From the standpoint of Awesome, he was refusing to perform for ECW after being owed significant money by Paul Heyman. From the WCW perspective, they wanted to make a statement by having yet another champion of a rival promotion disrespect that title on WCW programming. And from the ECW viewpoint, they threatened legal action in order to protect their most prestigious title.
The end result was an agreement that saw Mike Awesome return to ECW for one more match, where he dropped the ECW World Championship to WWE-contracted Taz(z).