10 Wrestling Alliances You Completely Forgot Happened

It’s a strange sight and no mistake: Mr WWE and Mr ECW standing side by side on WCW television. Mark Calaway’s tenure with the Georgia promotion was almost entirely forgettable, bizarrely so. While he was nowhere near the professional wrestler he would become, his sheer aura should have marked him out for stardom.

Instead, he languished in the midcard, before being gladly let go. That he couldn’t get over is one thing - that he couldn’t do so with Paul Heyman standing by his side is nothing short of perverse.

Heyman, then Paul E. Dangerously, had a delightfully obnoxious yuppie character, and took to Calaway, who he described as “shockingly mature”. He did what he could for the future legend, who was working under the unfortunate name “Mean Mark Callous”, but the top brass didn’t believe in the big guy - it wasn’t happening.

Heyman helped Calaway make the jump to WWE by putting in a word with Bruce Pritchard. While the two never linked up under the WWE banner, Calaway has acknowledged the debt, describing himself recently as “the original Paul Heyman guy”. It beggars belief this didn’t yield results.