Minimum Wage Nerd

The year 1999 was an interesting year for the professional wrestling industry.

At the national level, WWF and WCW were still doing huge business, though that wasn’t to say there were very obvious cracks. WWF would spend roughly half of the year with Vince Russo being the lead voice in creative under Vince McMahon, with WrestleMania 15 cited as one of the worst WrestleMania’s in the show’s history.

WCW, meanwhile, was starting to take a very clear creative nosedive. The year kicked off with the infamous “Finger Poke of Doom” on the January 4 Monday Nitro, which saw WCW World Heavyweight Champion Kevin Nash lay down for the returning Hulk Hogan in a title match. Things would only get worse as the year went on with multiple, drastic changes made on WCW’s creative team between the removal of Eric Bischoff, Kevin Sullivan’s short tenure, and the arrival of Vince Russo. WCW would also post a loss in the reported range of $9 to $11 million for 1999, a sharp fall off from the reported $33 to $50 million in profits for 1998.

ECW was experience struggles of its own. The company could never seem to find its footing, financially, with 1999 being another year of bounced checks and broken promises for many wrestlers there. The promotion would also be raided for more talent over the course of the year, purging it of many stars, even with Raven and The Sandman returning in the second half of the year.

Despite these issues, ECW was still able to put on some of the best shows in the U.S. at that time due, ironically, to their more limited national exposure. Fans would be treated to some of the most wild hardcore matches and athletic, high-flying, or technical showcases in professional wrestling at the time and manage to bring in names from all over the world.

ECW Anarchy Rulz 1999 is no exception thanks to matchups like Jerry Lynn vs. Lance Storm as the opener and a three-way dance between Yoshihiro Tajiri, Super Crazy, and Little Guido.

It was the ECW World Heavyweight Title match, though, that would leave its imprint on fans minds for the match, itself, and everything surrounding the match.

The Background

Originally announced as a singles bout, the ECW World Title match was announced as the champion, Taz, defending against the challenger, FMW Independent Heavyweight Champion Masato Tanaka. Tanaka had become a popular wrestler in ECW following his debut in 1998 thanks to his intense, physical matches and almost super-human resilience.

It became clear as 1999 went on, Tanaka would likely find himself standing across from Taz, who won the ECW World Heavyweight Title at Guilty as Charged on January 10, 1999. When the match was announced for Anarchy Rulz in September of 1999, ECW would use footage of Tanaka defeating his longtime FMW rival Mike Awesome, who was known as The Gladiator in Japan, to build excitement for the match.

This would not go unnoticed by Mike Awesome and his manager, Judge Jeff Jones, in storyline.

And then there were the backstage tensions between Taz and ECW owner and booker Paul Heyman, which started reaching a boiling point in 1999.

The longtime ECW stalwart and defending world champion was contacted that year by WCW and WWF about signing him after his ECW deal was up. Taz hadn’t signed a new deal with ECW yet, and, years later, would explain he was wary of ECW’s financial issues that were only becoming more frequent. These concerns, on top of his wife giving birth to their son Tyler, better known as Hook in AEW, that May, would lead Taz to signing with WWF.

News got out and ECW fans were not happy, booing and cursing out Taz in his final shows including Anarchy Rulz. Heyman wasn’t happy, either, as Taz had been one of ECW’s first true “homegrown stars” after Heyman took over as booker from Eddie Gilbert in 1993.

Real-life and storyline would ultimately coalesce into a world title match that, while it didn’t close Anarchy Rulz, remains the match fans best remember.

The Match

Cut to Anarchy Rulz 1999.

The world title match between Taz and Tanaka was set to go on third to last for what would be Taz’s second-to-last pay-per-view match as a contracted ECW wrestler.

After making their entrances and being covered in streamers thrown by fans, both the wrestlers and the crowd would be distracted by a disturbance at ringside. It would be none other than Mike Awesome and Judge Jeff Jones, who commentators Joey Styles and Cyrus suggests “stooged” to Awesome about ECW using the footage of Tanaka beating him in ECW to help build excitement for Tanaka vs. Taz.

Heyman would come out to join security trying to keep Awesome from jumping the rail, only for Taz to grab a mic and tell Heyman to let Awesome go. Styles made note of how Taz was talking to Heyman and hinted at the “real heat” between the two at the time. Heyman ultimately gave in to Taz’s wish, making the match a three-way dance, which meant the match wouldn’t end until two of the three challengers were eliminated by pinfall or submission.

Awesome started off bee-lining for Tanaka, playing on the pair’s history in ECW and over in Japan at FMW, while Taz stood in the opposite corner and let the pair beat on each other. Awesome and Tanaka quickly realized what Taz was doing and decided to focus all their attention on Taz. The pair would manage to land a couple of blows on Taz before the human-suplex machine lived up to his name, deliver some devastating Taz-plexes, as Styles called them, to Tanaka and Awesome.

The two would manage to find an opening, though, and lay in their offense on the defending champion. After another brief back-and-forth, Tanaka would hit his devastating Roaring Elbow on Taz followed by a frog splash by Awesome to eliminate Taz in roughly three to four minutes.

With a new champion guaranteed, Taz would leave for the locker room in shock while the crowd jeered him off.

Tanaka and Awesome, meanwhile, kicked things into second gear in the ring and began throwing haymakers at each other for the remaining ten or so minutes of the 13 minute 48 second match. Awesome, in particular, got the jeering crowd to focus back on the match with a massive dive from the ring to the floor, an impressive feat for a six-foot-eight wrestler who weighed anywhere between 280 and 320 lbs during his career, to say the least.

The remainder of the match would see Tanaka and Awesome go back and forth with big moves, with plenty of chairs and tables getting utilized.

Tanaka would introduce chairs to the match, hitting Awesome with a few shots to the gut before running the length of the entrance ramp to crack Awesome in the head with it. Tanaka made liberal use of chairs between hitting Awesome with multiple tornado-DDTs onto a chair and laying a chair on Awesome face to hit with another chair off a top-rope dive.

Awesome wouldn’t take this lying down, hitting Tanaka with an Awesome Bomb from the ring through a table Awesome set up on the floor earlier. The massive Awesome didn’t take it easy on Tanaka, hitting him with plenty of big moves as payback for earlier, especially when Awesome got his hands on a chair.

Despite all this and multiple nasty chair shots to the head, Tanaka was able to fire back and attempted another Roaring Elbow. Awesome was able to avoid it and the two went back and forth briefly before Awesome got the upper hand with a big release German suplex followed by a spear.

Judge Jeff Jones would finally get involved somewhat, sliding a table into the ring for Awesome to use to try and put Tanaka away. The two would end up trading punches on top of one of the corner turnbuckles before Awesome got the advantage, putting Tanaka through the table with a super-powerbomb to win the match and become the new ECW World Heavyweight Champion.

Taz would return from the locker room to personally hand the ECW World title to Awesome, himself, and raise his hand, giving the new champion his personal endorsement.

Aftermath

Taz

While Taz would still be around ECW for another couple of months, he was effectively on his farewell tour before officially joining the WWF. His final pay-per-view match as a signed ECW star would be against Rob Van Dam for the ECW World Television Championship at November to Remember 1999. He would then debut for the WWF at the 2000 Royal Rumble, defeating Kurt Angle and ending the Olympian’s winning streak in grand fashion.

However, years of injuries and hard matches would start catching up with Taz at this time and was reflected in some of his ring work. Questionable booking, at the best of times, didn’t help things either as it felt at time the WWF was going out of its way to make Taz look like a fool.

By June 2002, Taz had fully retired from in-ring competition and became the full-time color commentator for the now-WWE’s Thursday show SmackDown. He would serve as a color commentator in WWE until 2009, departing the company after almost a decade.

Taz would sign with TNA shortly after this, joining the Main Event Mafia to serve as Samoa Joe’s manager before ending up back on commentary alongside Mike Tenay. The two would serve as TNA’s lead commentary team until he departed in 2015.

While Taz would appear on a WWE Network special looking back at ECW, he would remain out of professional wrestling until 2019. He would land his own nationally-syndicated morning radio show Taz and The Moose with co-host Marc ‘The Moose’ Malusis.

Taz returning to professional wrestling in October 2019 as a guest commentator for an episode of AEW Dark before officially signing with All Elite Wrestling in January 2020. He would initially split time as a manager and color commentator, leading Team Taz which included his son Hook, Brian Cage, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Ricky Starks. The group officially disbanded in August 2022 while Taz continues to serve as a full-time color commentator for AEW.

Masato Tanaka

Tanaka would continue to appear in ECW until returning to Japan around mid-2000, where he continued working for FMW through February 2001. He would begin working as a freelancer in Japan, regularly appearing for promotions such as New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Zero1, and Pro-Wrestling Noah over the next 25 years.

His travels would bring him a slew of titles, as well, from being the inaugural Never Openweight Champion in New Japan to winning the KO-D Openweight Championship, the most prestigious title in DDT Pro-Wrestling.

While he wouldn’t tie himself down anywhere, he would regularly make one company his focus for a year or so before taking opening his schedule back up for more bookings at other promotions. The most recent of these runs has been in Zero1, where Tanaka has appeared regularly since March 2025.

He would continue coming back to the U.S. over that time, as well, typically for bigger independent events and smaller “national” promotions such as Ring of Honor. However, he hasn’t taken an extended excursion from Japan for years, typically now only leaving the countries for a handful of shows a year.

His last appearance in the U.S. was for DEADLOCK Pro-Wrestling at DPW Forever 2025 on March 16, 2025. Tanaka would team with Colby Corino, son of former-ECW World Heavyweight Champion Steve Corino, to defeat the team of Calvin Tankman and Trevor Lee.

Tanaka would work one match for WWE in 2005, taking part in ECW One Night Stand to battle his longtime rival one more time in the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Mike Awesome

While Awesome was effectively crowned as the “new face” of ECW at Anarchy Rulz, he would ultimately leave in 2000 after signing out of the blue with WCW. Awesome was still the ECW World Heavyweight Champion when he debuted on WCW Monday Nitro, though he did not have the physical belt with him in order for WCW to avoid any legal battles with ECW.

A deal would then be worked out for Awesome, a contracted WCW wrestler, to drop the title in a surprise title match at an ECW event in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April 2000, to none other than Taz, who was a contracted WWF wrestler.

Lance Storm, a close friend of Awesome, would reveal years later that Awesome left ECW as suddenly as he did because his contract was up and refused to sign a new deal until Heyman paid him overdue wages.

Awesome’s WCW tenure would have plenty of ups and downs, initially debuting as part of The New Blood on the April 10, 2000, edition of Nitro. He quickly found himself in programs with many of WCW top names such as Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Diamond Dallas Page. However, the rest of 2000 would not be kind to Awesome thanks to Vince Russo ideas such as “The Fat Chick Thriller” and “That 70’s Guy.” By January 2001, Awesome would get back to his more serious self after joining Team Canada as the “Canadian Career Killer” and was part of the group until WCW’s purchase by the WWF in March 2001.

Awesome would briefly join the WWF as part of the Invasion storyline and would appear sporadically over the next year before being released in September 2002.

He continued working on the independent scene in the U.S. while returning to Japan on occasion, though he did appear briefly for TNA in 2003.

His final, high-profile match would be in 2005 against his longtime rival Tanaka for ECW One Night Stand, where Awesome was greeted by some jeers during his entrance for the manner he departed ECW. By the end of the match, though, the two received a standing ovation.

Awesome retired from wrestling in 2006, becoming a real estate agent in New Tampa, Florida. Unfortunately, Awesome would be found dead by several fans after hanging himself in his Tampa home.

Final Thoughts

In spite of the problems that were becoming more and more prevalent in ECW as 1999 went on, this match highlighted what ECW could do better than anyone at the time. It managed to blur reality and kayfabe together in a way that didn’t feel forced and made a highly anticipated match even better.

It was a reminder that, in hindsight, ECW was truly the first “super-indie” to make it on something of a national stage in professional wrestling. It wouldn’t be enough to keep the promotion going, as it would shut its doors in 2001, but it did set the foundation for independent promotions such as PWG, GCW, and DPW that would become a “super-indie” for a time.

And then there is Mike Awesome who, of the three wrestlers, feels the most ahead of his time.

Taz was ahead of his time, as well, but with names like Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, and Dean Malenko, among others, gaining national exposure, the industry was catching up to what Taz had been doing at the ECW Arena for years as the ‘Human Suplex Machine.’

Tanaka was in-line with what was happening in Japan, especially with the popularity of All Japan, All Japan Women’s and New Japan. All Japan treated fans to longer matches that showcased a more physical, technical style dubbed the “King’s Road” style while New Japan had “Strong Style,” a more MMA-focused in-ring style mixed with faster matches and a surging Junior Heavyweight division led by Jushin Thunder Liger. Tanaka fit right in with this, especially in FMW where hardcore matches were also a big draw that helped the promotion stand out, much like ECW in the U.S.

Awesome, by comparison, feels like a wrestler over 20 years too early for the U.S. scene. At that time, most “big men” in wrestling worked a slower, more methodical style that could save their body and make them look like monsters against the rest of the roster.

Awesome was regularly doing tope dives and springboards into the crowd, among other things, which was mind-blowing to U.S. fans at the time given Awesome’s size. Combined with a variety of power moves almost designed to showcase his athleticism made Awesome stand out at a time when wrestling was white hot in the U.S.

Unfortunately, the two companies didn’t appear to know how to showcase this at the time between bad gimmicks or just not having him on TV at all. He wouldn’t survive to see the industry evolve into what it is today, where athletic “big men” like Awesome are sought after by WWE, AEW, TNA, MLW, New Japan, and most other major promotions. Awesome would have fit right in working wrestlers such as Keith Lee, Donovan Dijak, Toa Liona, and Damian Priest, trading power moves and high-flying spots on shows to rousing audience reactions.