20 Mind-Blowing Facts About WCW

7. Tank Abbott Nearly Became WCW World Champ

Right before he was told to go home and stop causing even more problems for the company, Vince Russo's backup plan for the Souled Out 2000 Pay-Per-View mentioned in a previous entry was to have shoot-fighter Tank Abbot win the WCW World Title. Russo's thinking was that fans knew Abbot was a genuine bad-ass, so it'd be realistic that he could win the belt.

This was forgetting, of course, that wrestling fans cared little for anything Abbot had done outside of the realms of pro wrestling, he wasn't a fitting champion. It's startling that months later, when Russo had returned to the promotion, his big idea for Abbot was to have him become a huge fan of the faux-boyband Three Count, dancing away on camera and making a fool of himself.

It's these kind of wild creative swings that helped land WCW in hot water. Abbot would have been an aberration as World Champion, mainly because he couldn't work a lick and wasn't especially over with WCW fans to begin with. The scenario of Tank winning the gold would never end up happening, which is probably just as well. In fairness, it couldn't have been worse than David Arquette.