Concept art for Earthquake‘s 1998 WWE return has surfaced on the internet.
In 1998, John Tenta made his return to the WWE on the May 25 broadcast of RAW is War. Tenta was repackaged as Golga upon his return to the promotion and began wrestling under a gold mask as one of the Oddities.
The WWE Vault YouTube channel recently dropped a new video of never-before-seen Earthquake dark matches from 1989 to 2001. The uploader also posted concept art for Tenta’s 1998 return in the community section.
John Tenta made a few appearances as Earthquake for WWE in 2001
However, the concept art never got to see the light of the day as Tenta didn’t get to relive the Earthquake gimmick until 2001, when he competed in 20-Man Gimmick Battle Royal at WrestleMania X-Seven. He worked a dark match before a SmackDown taping as well.
Nevertheless, the concept art shows what could have been had Vince McMahon not gone a different creative direction with Tenta during the Attitude Era. Check out the concept art for Earthquake’s 1998 WWE RAW, courtesy of X/Twitter user @MengsMullet below.
WWE Vault released concept art for John Tenta’s 1998 WWF return. Golga was almost named Plague, Pestilence, Anthrax, Hazard, or Contagion. Better yet, if you look at the final shot, they almost had him looking like Abyss years before Abyss pic.twitter.com/0rpC2qlJIi
— Meng’s Mullet (@MengsMullet) May 20, 2025
John Tenta died of bladder cancer on June 7, 2006. He was posthumously inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2025 as part of The Natural Disasters. Tenta’s family received the HOF ring on his behalf.
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