6 Wrestlers That Visibly Hated Working For ECW
3. Mike Awesome
God, has there ever been a more aptly named professional wrestler than Mike Awesome?
He wasn't just good, or excellent; everything he did inspired awe. The fact that he did those unspeakable things to his opponents without injuring or even outright killing them was impressive.
Awesome wasn’t just an absolutely jaw-dropping spectacle of a performer; by the spring of 2000, he was one of ECW’s few remaining hopes. ECW fans had dealt with departures before, but with the promotion’s identity subsumed by the WWF, each one felt more like a betrayal. An existential threat, even. When Awesome jumped ship to WCW, he did so as the reigning ECW World champion.
Awesome’s motivation was really as fair as it gets. He was not getting paid in time to put his body on the line. And he did put his body on the line; even by ECW standards, his matches were unhinged. The ECW fandom however bought into Heyman’s outsider cult mentality. To them, the wrestlers did not sign a deal that was often not even honoured; they had signed a blood oath of sorts.
Awesome jumped to WCW while still recognised as ECW champion. This went down about as well as you’d expect. Awesome agreed to drop the belt, on April 8, 2000 in a wild scenario in which the WCW-contracted ECW champion lost to a WWF-contracted wrestler in Tazz.
Ordinarily, Mike Awesome was pumped the f*ck up. He’d make his entrance pointing at himself and screaming his head off, like he couldn’t do anything else with the adrenaline surging through his body. This didn’t happen in Indiana; he got in there, looking shaken, and immediately vaulted over the barricade, flanked by WCW security personality, after tapping to the Tazmission.