Mike Awesome
WCW completely blew it with Awesome, who had the potential to be a NEW main event level talent for them.
Coming in from ECW, and already notorious for walking out on the Extreme league while still their Heavyweight champion, and even attempting to bring the ECW title to Monday Nitro, Awesome immediately made an impact in WCW, but then was completely buried with two of the worst gimmicks of all time in "That 70's Guy" and "The Fat Chick Thriller".
Seriously? Is that really the best they could come up with for a 7 foot, 300lb+ powerhouse destruction machine like Mike Awesome?? It pisses me off just thinking about it.
Awesome had the size, power, look and moveset to make a huge impact on WCW's heavyweight division. He was devastating in ECW, and his array of powerbombs are still the best I have ever seen. Other than Mike Awesome and Undertaker, I have never seen such a big man dive over the top rope, he could hit frog spashes, and everything he did looked brutal. Awesome was a sure fire superstar and WCW (and later WWE wasted him).
He should have been booked as an immediate threat to the WCW title. The company was suffering from a lack of new Heavyweight talent, with old guys like Hogan, Nash, Savage, Hart dominating the title scene, with only Goldberg as a home-grown young main eventer (DDP was home-grown but was already old by then). Awesome could have been something fresh and exciting in the title scene, as alot of fans would not have seen him in ECW and he could have been one of WCW's new breed of main eventers.
I would have loved to have seen Mike Awesome collide with Goldberg for the title, or Awesome powerboming Hollywood Hogan through a table, then standing over the broken body of The Hulkster, raising the WCW title in the air, signalling the new generation had taken over...
Sadly, we never got to see it and Awesome was saddled with the ridiculous gimmicks instead. RIP Mike "Awesome" Alfonso, a true talent who was never given the opportunities in the big leagues that his talent deserved.
