For the second time this year, a former Extreme Championship Wrestling kingpin was found dead in his Tampa, Fla.-area home.

Mike Alfonso, who wrestled under the name Mike Awesome, reportedly committed suicide on Feb. 17 at the age of 42.

Like former ECW champion Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow, who died in January at age 45 from 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 after 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 World Wrestling Entertainment's 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 matchmaker Vince Russo.

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 rival Masato Tanaka.

"STONE COLD" RETURNS: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin will serve as the special guest referee for the "Battle of the Billionaires" bout between Umaga and Bobby Lashley on April 1 at Wrestlemania 23. Umaga and Lashley are the respective representatives of WWE owner Vince McMahon and Donald Trump in a match where the loser's billionaire will get his head shaved.

GETTING BURNT: Wrestling Society X (8:30 p.m. Tuesdays, MTV) returned this week after a one-week pre-emption. The show didn't air last week as network officials felt a segment in which Ricky Banderas threw a fireball in the face of Vampiro was inappropriate content because of the possibility of copycat behavior by younger viewers.

While the stance is commendable, it doesn't explain why MTV initially approved the angle when the promotion taped its shows in November.