Paul Wight, The Giant

Paul Donald Wight, Jr. was born on February 8, 1972 in Aiken, South Carolina.
Before he was known as The Big Show in the WWE, he was known as The Giant in WCW.
Paul debuted on WCW during the Bash at the Beach in 1995.
Paul called himself The Giant and claimed to be the son of André the Giant.
He said he blamed Hulk Hogan for the death of his "father", joined the Dungeon of Doom, and began a heated feud with Hogan.

The Giant was in one of the most unusual wrestling matches I have ever seen, the "Monster Truck Battle" at Halloween Havoc.
The "match"took place on top of Cobo Hall, with each man driving a monster truck and trying to force the other truck out of a circle, as in a sumo wrestling.
Hogan won the match when the Giant got out of his vehicle and appeared to fall from the roof.
(This all started because the Giant ran over Hogan's Harley-Davidson Motorcycle with a monster truck)

Amazingly, not only was the Giant not dead, but he showed up later that night and challenged Hogan for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
The Giant got the win by disqualification after Jimmy Hart (Hogan's manager) interfered.
The "swerve" came when Hart said Hogan had signed the contract for the match, not knowing there was a "title changes hands by disqualification clause" in it.
So The Giant became the champion.
It didn't really matter anyway, because of the controversial finish of the match, the title was held up.

Another amazing (to me at least) match in the WCW was an episode of WCW Monday Nitro when Goldberg faced the Giant in a no disqualification match.
Goldberg gave him the delayed vertical suplex and then hit the Jackhammer on The Giant.

The Giant's contract expired on February 8, 1999, and he went to the then WWF.

David Flair

David Flair was born David Richard Fliehr on March 6, 1979 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is the son of the legendary Ric Flair.

David first showed up in the WCW at the age of 14, in a backstage segment with his family and his father a Starrcade 1993.
He appeared again in 1998 sitting in the front row of WCW events, getting into it with Eric Bischoff and the nWo.
David made his in ring pro wrestling debut at WCW/nWo Souled Out on January 17, 1999, teaming up with his father.

David stayed with WCW from 1999 to 2000.
He then left and worked for the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and the World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (WWF, WWE) from 2001 to 2002.
David went to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) in December 2002 and left in early 2003.

After TNA David worked for several Independent promotions including the IWA.

David is married now and lives in Shelby North Carolina.

During his career, David held the IWA Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship, the NWA Wildside Tag Team Championship with Romeo Bliss, the NWA World Tag Team Championship with Dan Factor, won the NWA Tojo Yamamoto Memorial Cup in 2002, the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship, the WCW World Tag Team Championship with Crowbar and the NWA World Tag Team Championship with Dan Factor.
He also held the AFE Heavyweight Championship.

Mike Awesome, part 1

Mike Lee Alfonso (January 24, 1965 – February 17, 2007) better known by his ring name Mike Awesome, was an American professional wrestler best known in America for his work in ECW, WCW, and in WWE and also in Japan for his work with Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling under the name The Gladiator. Throughout his career, he was known for being exceptionally agile for his size.

Alfonso grew up with Michael Bollea. As a result of Awesome's aunt (his father's sister) marrying Hulk Hogan's brother, Awesome and Bollea (the future Horace Hogan) were cousins and the two began to consider a career in wrestling during Hulk Hogan's famous WWF run in the 1980s. Alfonso received training from Steve Keirn's training camp based out of the Pro Wrestling Federation (PWF). After wrestling for the PWF in 1989, teaming occasionally with Brett Sawyer, Alfonso moved around throughout various independent promotions, including a brief stint in the United States Wrestling Association (USWA) under the tutelage of Nate The Rat, a manager there. In that same year, he made his first television appearance for World Championship Wrestling -- as a masked jobber from San Juan, Puerto Rico named The Pro.

Early 1980s: "Big Mike" graduated from King High School in Tampa and worked out at the infamous Stan's Gym on 56th Street. He exuded energy and had an aggressive sense of humor, the baseline of his career to come. Mike was known to say "I can’t see him, but I can smell the smallness". His work ethic made him a fixture and standout at the hardcore bodybuilding cauldron.

Alfonso moved on to Japan, joining Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) in late 1990 and using the name The Gladiator.

In 1993, Alfonso appeared in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) for a short period (as "Awesome" Mike Awesome) before returning to FMW. In 1994, the Gladiator finally captured his first title, teaming with Big Titan to defeat Atsushi Onita & Katsutoshi Niyama in the finals of the FMW Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship Tournament. They lost the title that April, but Awesome won them again with new partner Mr. Pogo in October. As the Gladiator, he faced and defeated Hayabusa for his first major singles title, the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship in September of 1995, but was forced to vacate it due to (legit) injury the next February. In May of 1996 he won the title for a second time, then unified it with the FMW Independent Heavyweight Championship after defeating W*ING Kanemura in that December. The next August, teaming with Hisakatsu Ooya & Mr. Gannosuke he won the vacated FMW World Street Fight 6-Man Tag-Team Titles, holding all three belts at once, but within a month lost all three during an epic feud with Masato Tanaka.

Awesome was involved in a backstage altercation with members of a Yakuza group at an FMW event, as a result of several Yakuza members beating up his friend and fellow wrestler Sabu. As a result, Awesome, along with the rest of the foreign wrestlers, didn't leave their locker room for over two hours, because Yakuza members were waiting in the hallway. It took Atsushi Onita to smooth things over with the group and get the foreign wrestlers safe passage out of the arena.

In the summer of 1998, Awesome began appearing for ECW again, continue his feud with Masato Tanaka in the United States. Awesome began in ECW by losing to Tanaka on an episode ECW's weekly Hardcore TV. However, following the match, he delivered an Awesome Bomb to Tanaka over the top rope through a table set up on the outside. In his final appearance of his second ECW stint, Awesome lost to Tanaka again at the August Heat Wave pay-per-view event (which Awesome claimed he was never paid for).

After returning to Japan, Alfonso seriously injured his knee during a match with Super Leather, taking him out of wrestling for nearly a year. When he returned, he continued to wrestle as The Gladiator for a brief period in All Japan Pro Wrestling before returning to ECW. Almost immediately upon arriving in ECW for his third stint, he shocked the wrestling world by winning the ECW World Heavyweight Championship at Anarchy Rulz by defeating the reigning champion Tazz and arch nemesis Masato Tanaka in a three-way dance, which was signed on the spot.

John Tenta

John Anthony Tenta (June 22, 1963 – June 7, 2006) was a Canadian professional wrestler, best known for his work in the World Wrestling Federation as Earthquake.

John Tenta was born in Surrey, British Columbia. Named after his father, he was a large baby weighing 11 pounds, 3 ounces at birth. Inspired by professional wrestlers Gene Kiniski and Don Leo Jonathan, Tenta decided to pursue wrestling at age 6. He learned freestyle wrestling at North Surrey Secondary, becoming a Canadian junior champion in 1981. Shortly after his 18th birthday, he finished sixth in the super-heavyweight category at the World Junior Wrestling Championships at Vancouver.

Tenta won an athletic scholarship to Louisiana State University (LSU), where he competed in NCAA-level collegiate wrestling. At LSU he was nicknamed "Big John" Tenta, lettering on the Tiger varsity wrestling team and participating on the football team. LSU had dropped varsity wrestling to comply with Title IX in 1985, forcing Tenta to choose a new sport.

Tenta then moved to Japan to pursue a career in sumo after being recruited by a former Yokozuna who met Tenta on a trip to Vancouver. In October 1985, he joined a sumo stable, Sadogatake, run by former-Yokozuna Kotozakura Masakatsu (his stable also produced current Ōzeki Kotoōshū Katsunori from Bulgaria). Following tradition, the young sumotori took the name of Kototenta (Koto + Tenta), translated as Tenta the Harp.

Beginning the sport at age 22, he entered nearly 7 years later than many non-college aspirants. However, the combination of his size—he already weighed 192 kg (423 lb)—and training as a wrestler were to his advantage in learning and advancing in the sport. The novice won a string of 17 consecutive victories in his first six months, and was later renamed Kototenzan, Heavenly Mountain Harp. The novelty of being a rare Westerner sumotori in the mid-1980s, and the third-ever Caucasian, garnered him press coverage, and he earned the additional nickname of the "Canadian Comet".

Despite doing well as a newcomer he soon quit the sport due to the difficulty of the sumo lifestyle and the toll the hard ring surface was taking on his body. In addition, the sumo world frowned on the large tattoo of a tiger on his left biceps and, though he covered it during matches, would have required him to remove it via skin graft before moving up to the higher level competitions (in Japan tattoos are associated with gangsters). After leaving sumo, he quickly signed up for puroresu (Japanese Pro Wrestling) under the tutelage of Shohei "Giant" Baba. He made his professional wrestling debut with All Japan Pro Wrestling in May 1988. Tenta had a solid 18 month career, teaming with popular Japanese wrestlers Giant Baba and The Great Kabuki, before getting the attention of American pro-wrestling promoters.

Personal financial difficulties lead Tenta to contact WCW, Hulk Hogan, a longtime friend, lobbied to have Tenta come in, and so Tenta broke his WWF contract to join WCW.

Tenta was introduced as Avalanche and feuded with Sting, but the character name was dropped after WWF threatened legal action over similarities to the Earthquake character. He then joined the Dungeon of Doom faction as The Shark. He was even pressured by WCW management to change the tattoo on his arm of an LSU Tiger to that of a shark. He eventually left the Dungeon of Doom and wrestled under his real name after delivering a scathing promo about the many other names and gimmicks he'd been forced into in the past, including the memorable line "I'm not a fish. I'm a man".

Following a match with the Dungeon of Doom's Giant, half of Tenta's head was shaved by Big Bubba Rogers, another Dungeon member. The two would go on to feud against one another, with Rogers shaving off Tenta's beard as well.

Tenta retired from wrestling in 2004 after it was revealed that he had developed bladder cancer, in which he was given a twenty percent chance to live, assuming he continued with his chemotherapy treatments. During his November 18, 2005 interview on WrestleCrap RadioListen, Tenta announced that a recent radiation dosage did not go as planned, as it had no effect on the tumor. He also announced that multiple tumors had spread to his lungs.

The first public notice of Tenta's death was posted on WWE.com on June 7, 2006 at approximately 12:30 p.m. EDT, which read:

John "Earthquake" Tenta passed away this morning, June 7, at the age of 42 after a lengthy battle with bladder cancer. Tenta is survived by his wife and three kids.

On the June 9, 2006 edition of SmackDown! and the June 12, 2006 edition of RAW, before each show began, the WWE showed an eyecatch that said "In memory of John "Earthquake" Tenta 1963-2006."