To many, Mike Awesome is one of the great 'what ifs' in wrestling history. A superlative worker in FMW and ECW in the mid-late 90s, his career was badly mismanaged in both WCW and WWE. In WCW, he was given a succession of crappy gimmicks, including the 'fat chick thriller' and 'that 70s guy'. In WWE, he wasn't given a momentum-sapping gimmick, but his ring work was given a damming appraisal by some powerful people backstage, most notably The Undertaker. After working with Awesome on a house show, Undertaker branded him with the 'he doesn't know how to work' tag, and that was it as far as Awesome's WWE career was concerned. After an extended spell as a Velocity jobber, Awesome was released on September 27 2002. He was glad when it came, since he hated the WWE experience. Following his release he did the indie and Japan thing for a while, and stole the show with Masato Tanaka at the original One Night Stand, before retiring in 2006. Sadly, Awesome took his own life on February 17 2007. He was 42-years-old.
