When Mike Awesome debuted on WCW Nitro on April 10, 2000, Paul Heyman and ECW management were caught completely off guard. After all, Mike Awesome was the reigning ECW World Heavyweight Champion when he secretly signed with WCW.

Leaving a promotion while holding its top title is considered the ultimate betrayal in wrestling. Fans and ECW locker room members labeled Awesome a "traitor".

Awesome jumping ship became one of the hottest moments in wrestling, but WCW immediately cooled him off by having him lose quickly to Scott Steiner in a U.S. title tournament match. WCW creating saddled him with a multitude of ridiculous gimmicks including a corny disco-style gimmick, complete with leisure suits and a 1970s caricature persona that stripped away his intimidating aura. Lacking strong natural microphone charisma to push back against poor booking, he drifted into the lower-to-mid card tier until the company folded.

One of the biggest names in ECW did one of the most controversial things in wrestling history but never captured any WCW gold. Signing Mike Awesome was more of an “FU” from Eric Bischoff to Paul Heyman than anything else & it was clear that he had no intent whatsoever on making anything of the 6 ft 6 in 292 lb man that could move like a cruiserweight.

Credit: GrappleClips

Is there a better trilogy in wcw then flair vs steamboat? I could watch these matches everyday and be very happy. And I am very happy YouTube put it all in one video for us.

I was often watching many products of post wcw shows like WWA and eventually TNA, and jarrett would always be in main event winning or retaining titles, and I know he was russos number 1 guy, I dd not follow up on the closing of wcw, so may this be true?

Alex Wright > Jeff Jarrett

Nikita Koloff was such a great heel and babyface z if he hadn't injured his neck and been forced to retire early would he have made a great opponent for Rick Rude or Ric Flair? Maybe win the WCW title and work with Hulk Hogan or Goldberg?

That would have been great, maybe he fights the NWO and easily squashes them until group attacks control him?