10 Real Life Events That Forced WWE Title Changes (8)

8. Tazz Wins ECW Title Whilst WWF Star Because Of Contract Issues With WCW’s Mike Awesome

The situation surrounding Tazz’s ECW World Title win on April 13, 2000 is something we’ll never see again. Mike Awesome was the ECW World Champion that had signed a contract with WCW. He already appeared on WCW Nitro while he was holding the ECW Title although he didn’t bring the ECW Title with him on WCW TV.
Paul Heyman, who was running ECW at the time, had to get the title off Awesome. He was likely very angry that Awesome left the company while he was holding the title. It made sense why Awesome left ECW because they were having money problems and WCW paid him significantly more money, but the way he went about it really upset a lot of people.
They ended up coming to an agreement that would allow former ECW Champion Tazz to return to the company to face Awesome for the ECW Title. What made that interesting was that Tazz was a WWE contracted wrestler that started there four months earlier. Heyman made the agreement with Vince McMahon, who was helping Heyman at that point, and as we all know within the next year ECW would be a part of WWE while WCW was sold to WWE as well. Tazz ended up dropping the ECW Title to Tommy Dreamer, who was still an ECW guy, soon after he won.
It was a historic night because it was a WWE contracted wrestler beating a WCW wrestler for the ECW Title. Nothing like that will ever happen again.