At 6' 7" inches and 290 pounds, Mike Awesome was a sight to behold. He was chiseled to the max and his massive arms and legs made him look like even more of a monster. His wet mulleted hair made him the perfect bully figure. Heck, he was the jock you hated in high school.
Mike Awesome's appearance would have led you to believe that he was a monster with limited skills and ability in the ring. You would have believed wrong.
Everything Mike Awesome did defied normal logic. He soared through the air with the grace and hangtime of a cruiserweight. His raw power and impactful blows were as legit is his mullet. Awesome was a physically gifted man in the ring.
Mike Awesome skyrocketed his career in the early '90s in Japan wrestling as "The Gladiator." And to the Japanese workers and crowds, you can bet he looked like a modern day gladiator. His scowl and his aggressiveness was well received in Japan much to the surprise of those who told him otherwise. The Japanese wrestling fans have a way of respecting those who give their everything in the ring, and Awesome was amongst that crowd.
While in Japan, Awesome began to feud with Masato Tanaka. Tanaka was a scrappy, yet surprisingly similar wrestler to Awesome. Tanaka didn't scare many men with his physical appearance but he had an uncanny ability to take an absolute beating in the ring, which earned him the honors of one of the toughest men to lace up a pair of boots. Awesome and Tanaka wrestled physically grueling matches all over Japan for many years before reigniting their feud years later in ECW.
In 1998, awesome made an appearance in ECW facing Tanaka twice and losing both times. However, the matches were extremely well received as fans began to notice Awesome's uncanny ability to literally do it all in the ring. Awesome sustained a knee injury which would keep him out for a while, but ECW and Paul Heyman had plans to make him the next huge name in professional wrestling.
Awesome returned and shocked the wrestling world by winning the ECW Heavyweight Title from Tazz and Tanaka in a three-way dance in 2000. He wasn't even advertised as being on the card that night.
In what would be the first in a series of must-see matches with Tanaka, the two men tore the house down and had fans of wrestling clamoring for more. The unbelievably physical bumps and shots these two men took and gave out was new to the American fan (other than what they had seen from Mick Foley in a watered down WWE).
After merely a year of top-notch performances for ECW, Awesome jumped ship to WCW citing better pay as the main reason. The end of the real Mike Awesome had occurred, we simply did not realize it yet.
I tell you all of this for the simple reason that Mike Awesome SHOULD HAVE BEEN among the men who reinvented American wrestling as we knew it. He could have single handedly carried WCW as their world champion and perhaps kept them afloat if they only knew the wrestling talent they had.
WCW instead put the title on Kevin Nash and David Arquette in this time frame, showing the absolute inept ability to book a wrestling show. Maybe I am being a bit too quick to say Awesome could have saved WCW, but you have to know that he was loved despite the fact he TRIED to be hated.
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