Every Star Of The Last WCW Nitro: Where Are They Now?
7. Mike Awesome
Mike Awesome's story was as sad as it was, by that point, disturbingly familiar: he died by suicide in February of 2007, discovered by a group of concerned friends at both the end of his life and the grim middle. He was 42.
Awesome was such an aptly named professional wrestler because that's what he inspired from fans rocked by his disgusting, thrilling wars opposite career revival Masato Tanaka: those matches were out-of-this-world good, crazed clashes pitting the manifestations of power and guts in opposite ends of a weapons-strewn ring that could not contain them.
Awesome suffered such wincing concussive trauma in those matches that our modern awareness of CTE paints an awful picture of the last phase of his life, during which he, in scant consolation, was so great at WWECW One Night Stand that he won over a crowd that despised him all over again.