I was allowed to be a DPS warrior in raids and at one point was matching or outdoing Rogues for damage.
I can't remember how often I switched between being the guild's main tank and DPS warriors. I wanted to do DPS but due to activity and skill concerns I was always roped back into being the MT. Upside was I was basically collecting the top-tier gear for both specs. But DPS warriors were always somewhat competitive. Poor DPS Paladins were basically never viable in high-end raids during all of vanilla.
Also the warsong PVP battleground with a raid equipped main tank was fun ... well, for us.
Used to speed run Stratholme and Scholomance as a fury Warrior because my healers loved the chaotic challenge of keeping me alive.
Ha, I remember [Righteous Orb] farming there, which eventually just turned into speedruns. Our healer needed them and by the end we were going in with 3 dps warriors, a mage and a priest, just smashing through it. Occasionally we'd only be 4 people and invite some random (conditions is we got the orbs, but we don't care about anything else). Many though we were mad for going in without a tank. Good times.