For the second time this year, a former Extreme Championship Wrestling star was found dead in his Tampa-area home.
Mike Alfonso, who wrestled under the name Mike Awesome, reportedly committed suicide Feb. 17 at age 42.
Like former ECW champion Scott “Bam Bam” Bigelow, who died in January at age 45 of still-unknown causes, Alfonso’s amazing agility belied his size. The 6-foot-6, 290- pound Alfonso emerged as one of grappling’s top high-flying big men as The Gladiator during the 1990s in Japan. That led to his landing a prominent spot in ECW in 1998.
Alfonso had two stints as the promotion’s world champion in 1999 before making a controversial jump to World Championship Wrestling the next year following a financial dispute with ECW management. To disparage the competition, WCW officials wanted Alfonso to desecrate the ECW title on television a la Debra “Madusa” Micelli with the World Wrestling Entertainment women’s belt in 1995. But ECW owner Paul Heyman got the stunt blocked, a cash settlement and forced Awesome to return and drop the title before leaving.
While he received a significant raise in WCW, Alfonso’s career began to slide downhill when cast with such lousy gimmicks as “That ’70s Guy” (a spoof of the similarly named television show that stemmed from his mullet hairstyle) and “The Fat Chick Thriller” by incompetent matchmaker Vince Russo, who now works in the same capacity with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling.
Alfonso did have a brief resurgence when WCW was purchased by WWE in 2001, becoming the first “outsider” to win one of the latter’s championship titles. But ongoing injury problems and his inability to find a WWE niche led to Alfonso’s departure in 2002.
After returning to the independent scene, Alfonso retired and became a Tampa real estate agent so he could spend more time with his wife and two young children. But Alfonso did have one more in-ring moment where he was truly awesome, stealing the show at ECW’s legendary One Night Stand pay-per-view show in 2005 with a wild match against long-time rival Masato Tanaka.
GETTING BURNT
Wrestling Society X (10:30 p.m. Tuesdays, MTV) returned this week after a one-week preemption. The action-packed show didn’t air last week as network officials felt a segment in which Ricky Banderas threw a fireball in the face of WSX champion Vampiro was inappropriate content because of the possibility of copycat behavior by younger viewers.
While such a stance is commendable, it doesn’t explain why MTV initially approved the angle, which is a major part of WSX’s upcoming story lines, when the promotion taped its shows in November.
MMA NOTES
Randy Couture will end his 13-month MMA retirement on pay-per-view Saturday night when facing Tim Sylvia for the Ultimate Fighting Championships heavyweight title in Columbus, Ohio. UFC mainstays Matt Hughes and Rich Franklin also will try to rebound after losing their previous bouts. … Teams coached by legendary MMA fighters and brothers Ken and Frank Shamrock will compete against each other on a taped episode of the International Fighting League, which airs Friday nights on Fox Sports Net. The upstart IFL also will debut March 12 on MyNetworkTV with a weekly two-hour Monday night show.
‘SNAKE’ SIGHTING
Jake “The Snake” Roberts will be appearing on a Division One Pro Wrestling show at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Davie P.A.L. Gymnasium, 4300 SW 57th Terrace. Call 954-554- 7688 or visit
More wrestling news can be found at observer.com. Questions can be sent to Alex Marvez c/o the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 200 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301, or e-mailed to . Please include your full name and city of residence. Because of volume, no phone calls will be accepted and letters will not receive a written reply.
