11 Hugely Talented WWE Stars Who Were Fired Too Soon

3. Mike Awesome

The stench of World Championship Wrestling was all over Mike Awesome when he made his WWE debut in June of 2001 and the all-time great big man was never fully able to recover. The "Fat Chick Thriller" and "That 70's Guy" gimmicks had so deteriorated the reputation of a performer who had become one of the best workers in the world just months prior in ECW that he was damaged goods when WWE picked up his contract during their purchase of WCW, which is a shame because at his best, Awesome was a revolutionary worker, the likes of which the wrestling world has not seen since. Awesome was a big man by height and weight standards but he could move with the quickness and agility of a cruiserweight. He was a hard hitter, a brawler by nature, but could fly through the air with nearly unmatched grace. He built a name for himself thanks to barbaric wars with Masato Tanaka in both Japan and ECW and earned the respect of every fan he ever competed in front of. WCW, a company that never truly understood how to market a competitor to their strengths, saddled him with ridiculous gimmicks rather than letting him be exactly what his name indicated: awesome. When he arrived in WWE, he won the Hardcore Championship but held it very briefly. From there, he formed a tag team with Lance Storm, whom he partnered with in the dying days of WCW, but the tandem never gained any traction. On September 27, 2002, he was released from his contract after a year of doing absolutely nothing. The backstage politics had clearly taken their toll on Awesome, who stayed out of the spotlight in America, for the most part, and returned to Japan. In 2005, he returned to WWE for ECW: One Night Stand, where he defeated Tanaka in an outstanding match. Sadly, Awesome's life was cut short in 2007, when he committed suicide. He was just 42.