Original subtitles

In 1998, the World Wrestling Federation enlisted 16 wrestlers in a radical

experiment, an unscripted, legitimate, prize -fighting tournament.

Let them fight for real, man. Put on gloves. Let them go out there. Let's

legitimately see who the toughest guy is.

The brawl for all was probably the worst idea in the professional wrestling

business. Wrestlers risk their bodies and their careers for a chance in the

spotlight. For some, it would all come crashing down in the brawl for all.

A lot of people did get hurt. I would f*** up.

It was looking kind of sad.

The guys were gassed and blowing up, and the crowd wasn't really getting with

it.

They got hurt.

They got embarrassed.

And they got their career short.

There's a train wreck. Come on. Watch it. Just watch.

You'll see.

By the late 90s, wrestling had become a global phenomenon.

Two companies were competing for dominance in a TV ratings war. As every

night, millions would tune in to watch WWF or WCW.

The battle was fought through an escalation of bold and provocative new

Some still resonate today.

Others are long forgotten.

On this episode, we reveal the inside story of what's been called wrestling's

worst idea ever.

This is Vince Russo here for The Brand.

We will talk about anything today but professional wrestling. Why?

Because I hate wrestling, bro. I don't want to talk about wrestling. I'll talk

about your mother, your grandmother, your grandfather.

My name is Vince Russo. I was a head writer at WWF Magazine.

Around the time when I started writing the magazine, like 95, 96, the product

was horrible. There were characters at the time that were so bad.

PL Hopper, The Goon, Mantar.

I'm like, there's no way he's getting his head in the ring.

And sure enough, he cannot get in the ring.

Times were changing, and the WWE kept going backwards.

With the Internet, the secret was out of the bag. People know this is fake.

What they really want to know is what kind of really goes on behind the

That's where everything was moving.

There's a lot of people that try to say it doesn't matter whether people know

that it's rigged. I don't like to use the word fake.

It does matter. Why don't you like to use the word fake? Because there's

fake about it.

It may be predetermined. It may be choreographed. It can be manipulated.

But there's nothing fake about guys breaking their bodies down. I'm Jim

Cornette. I've been a promoter, a matchmaker, manager, trainer, everything

wrestling for the last 40 years.

When I started working for the WWF at the time, Vince is in a circle. They

lifers. They had been in the wrestling business forever, and I felt that they

were looking at the wrestling business from within.

I came as a fan.

Vince McMahon is somebody that is never going to be fully understood. He's a

genius and a demon. Vince McMahon has no other hobbies.

I doubt very seriously if he's gone to the grocery store or been to a movie in

over 40 years.

But Vince McMahon has always been the WWF.

I got a call from Vince's assistant.

And she said, Vince wants to see you up here immediately.

So I literally think I am going up to his office to be fired. Then as I walk

his office, all the minions, Bruce Prichard, Jim Ross, Pat Patterson, Jim

Cornette, and Vince has got the Raw magazine in his hand. And he slams it

on the table and he says, this is what our television show needs to be.

And from that point on, I...

became involved in the writing of the show.

Vince Russo brings an outsider's perspective to the secretive world of

matchmaking, and he isn't afraid to push his own vision of what wrestling could

be. At first, I was like, okay, he's a goof.

He's never been involved in wrestling. He doesn't know how this stuff works. We

can try to explain it to him. And within a few months, I realized he didn't want

to learn. He wanted to do wrestling the way he wanted to do it, which was the

Jerry Springer Show.

The Jerry Springer show was the hottest thing on TV.

We literally would sit there and write Monday Night Raw with the Springer show

playing in the background. This approach would become the Attitude Era.

You had angles where guys were stealing each other's wives or, you know, one guy

stole the other guy's dog and cooked it and fed it to him. Back then, man, you

had fraternities on college campuses gathering every Monday night to watch

across the country. So, number one, you can't, you don't want to insult their

intelligence because they'll never watch it again. And number two, you don't

want to mamby -pamby it.

That's what I was all about during the Attitude Era was.

What was going to make a casual television viewer watch this product if

weren't a wrestling fan?

To maintain their edge, WWF needs a constant stream of original ideas,

audiences have never seen before.

Look, here's the deal, man.

You've got to bring something to the old man. He's looking for an idea.

What's the next big thing?

I don't know.

How about this? Okay.

I'm Jim Ross.

Gun wrestling in 1974.

So my career has lasted for many generations as a broadcaster, as

and executive vice president.

The idea came from Vince Russo.

So get inside his head. Hell, I don't know.

The idea from the Brawl for All was really simple, okay? I was not a big fan

of JBL. John Layfield.

I was from New York. John was, you know, from Texas. I thought he had a big

mouth. I thought he was full of himself.

I thought he was a bully.

We were backstage at a show one day, and John Layfield made the comment that if

this were real, I would beat everybody's ass in the locker room.

So now I'm sitting there, and I'm saying, you braggadocious bully bastard.

I know of at least ten guys in this locker room that have kicked your ass. I

went to Vince McMahon, and I proposed the idea of a brawl for him.

And he goes, what do you mean? I said, Vince, we're becoming more and more and

more and more real. Let him fight for real, man. Put on gloves. Let him go out

there. Let him fight. Let's legitimately see who the toughest guy is.

Vince gave the idea his blessing, and we went on with the brawl for all.

The top stars have nothing to gain risking their reputation in an

fight. The challenge is to find 16 competitors.

with nothing to lose.

I got stabbed with a bottle, a wine bottle, in a bar fight. They broke a

and stuck it in. When they stuck it in, they went in and up, punctured a lung,

lung collapsed, shredded the diaphragm and lacerated the liver.

Everybody knows me as Bart Gunn here in the States, part of the smoking guns.

Cowboy gimmick. We rode horse adapt. That was pretty cool.

Hey there, I'm Bart. And I'm Billy.

For whatever reason, everybody that comes in as a tag team, eventually they

split up.

When Billy and I were split up, my career kind of, I don't want to say

I guess it's good to say it fizzled out.

I had a hard time adjusting to it, though. It was a little difficult.

When I first approached, it was Bruce.

He said, hey, we're going to do this brawl for all, kind of a tough man

I go, how are you going to do that?

I said, no, I said, don't want to do it. I thought it was a stupid idea.

And then Kevin Kelly, he said, this here would be great for your career. He

says, you're kind of stuck right there at the middle, and you go through this,

and they say you'll have a great run with Austin because that's the winner of

the tournament. He's going to get a run with Steve Austin.

At the time, he was the hottest thing going.

And then, of course, you work with the top, top guy, you get top, top pay. And

thought about it, thought about it, and that's when I decided that I would go

ahead and do it.

The WWF approaches their toughest, most underutilized wrestlers with the lure of

cash prizes and main event status.

Well, there are a lot of tough guys in the locker room. I think when I looked

this thing, I'm like, Godfather, like, was probably the toughest guy.

Big 6 '7", 6 '8 guy, worked in bars, had been a bouncer.

My real name is Charles Wright.

I wrestled for many years in the WWF as everything from Papa Shango to Kama,

joined the Nation of Domination with The Rock and that whole group, and then

became my favorite person ever, The Godfather.

Selling white girls on TV, talking about getting high, and selling pussy. I'm in

the Nation of Domination now.

They're building up Mark Henry.

The Rocks take it over.

So now I'm like, I got to make a change. They're not doing nothing with me.

Bruce Pritchard had called me and said, hey, we're doing this thing. You get, I

think, $10 ,000 if you fight. There's so much more if you win.

And you're wearing gloves.

And I'm like, hell yeah, I'll do it. That's the stuff I do anyway. So I was

right from the beginning.

Darren Drozdoff was one of my favorite recruits of all time. Came out of the

University of Maryland.

He just wanted to compete.

They brought me in as a football player to see if I could learn the sport.

We saw footage of him puking on an NFL game.

I threw up all the time.

If I was throwing up at that time, if I could grab ahold of you, you'd get one

in the face.

I brought him to the WWE offices to have a meeting with Vince McMahon.

Vince loves that kind of humor. If you're a writer and you can come up with

skit that involves puking, taking a dump, peeing, you'll probably buy it.

He's got to puke! He's got to puke! He's got to puke!

Whatever it takes. I thought, we'll do it this way. I'll come in as puke.

I got my foot in the door or whatever, and I just went from there.

Russo's idea is gaining traction, but not everyone in the WWF is convinced

work. I first heard about the Brawl for All, I believe, at one of the TV tapings

when they were mentioning it was going to be starting in the next few weeks.

as I grasped what they were talking about, I got more and more concerned

it. You don't know it's not going to work until you try it. I didn't kill the

idea in my mind's eye when I first heard it. There was no precedent for it.

And you're taking guys out of their element and putting them into their

imaginary element of what they pretend they know, and that's bar fighting.

When I come up here, I've never been to bar fighting. Now the wrestlers are

living out their fantasies, and the result is chaos.

With the unusual concept of combining professional wrestling, and real

the architects of the Brawl for All make final preparations.

They went around to all the talent and asked who wanted to participate.

The story was, and I didn't see this hat, but the story was that the pairings

were chosen at random by drawing names out of a hat.

What we did, and we did it in my office, had Savio Vega.

We had a brown paper bag. I wrote everyone's name down on a piece of

threw it in the bag, and Savio drew the names. And the first name drawn was the

first name on the bracket and so on and so forth. So that's how the brackets

were made. As the brackets are set.

These 16 men become the official competitors in wrestling's first ever

legitimate prize fighting tournament. You knew Steve Blackman was like the

deal. Then you had a guy like Mark Merrow, who was a legitimate gold gloves

champion. Mark Cannonberry, 6 '5", 300, punches like a bull.

John Layfield Bradshaw, he's a big old rough and tough Texan.

Baracus was a bodybuilder. He didn't have the mobility.

Baracus had about as much business in the brawl for all as I would.

Savio Vega always had like a little bit of a belly, but could take care of

himself. Hogg would have no problem pulling a guy's eyeball out and eating

biting his nose off his face.

Bart Gunn was hardworking, dependable, loyal.

You could rely on him.

Droz was a no -fear kind of guy.

Bob Holly was a badass on a street level. Carl Ouellette, big -time

kid. Godfather, he beat up people like for a living.

Dan Severin was a UFC Hall of Famer, a Super Fight Champion, a Triple Crown

winner. Ron Harris walked into bars for one reason, and that was to fight.

Too Cold Scorpio had decided he would try and break out of the Flash Funk ha

gimmick.

The one man that stands out is recent WWF acquisition Steve Williams, also

to fans as Dr.

Death.

He's like a little brother. We brought him out of college, gave him his first

job. Introducing first in the red corner, from the University of Oklahoma,

Steve, Dr.

F. Williams.

He was a homegrown, sentimental favorite.

I think he was four -time All -American football, and I believe he's a four

-time All -American wrestler, too. Comes kind of busy.

Does this face look like he's ever been scared?

Jim Ross' boy.

A lot of heat for that, saying that, but he's Jim Ross' boy.

You hear about the boy from Japan, he beats the Japanese up, drop them on

head.

The reason we're bringing Dr. Death into WWE was to eventually have a run with

Stone Cold.

So we thought if this works out and Doc can pull his way through this

tournament, we might have him ready to have a program with Austin.

These guys for years and years go out there and they have a choreographed

You know at some point in the locker room like these conversations really had

come up. Like how bad an ass is Steve Blackman? Now it was real. Now a lot of

these questions were going to be answered.

Scheduled over a two -month period.

The Brawl for All premieres June 29, 1998 on Monday Night Raw. Each match

consists of three one -minute rounds with five points awarded for each landed

punch and each takedown. The last man standing will receive a $75 ,000 cash

prize.

We are watching the Brawl for All for the first time in over 20 years.

Look, look, look, look, look, look at this. Here, look, look.

See?

Oh, this is great, man, catching up. God, I was 28 years old, and I'm 50 now.

Maybe two, three, four hours before the match, getting ready to fight a UFC

fighter.

Well, me, I was outside with some of the girls smoking cannabis.

And that just goes to show you, one, that I was always smoking cannabis.

not the big deal. It's I had no fear.

Anybody who knows anything can tell right off the bat these guys do not know

to box, and it's just sloppy.

You've gotten away from all your moves and all your setup.

It has nothing to do with wrestling.

Jim Ross had to try to explain to the fans why these guys may be great

wrestlers, but they look like two drunks in a bar right now.

It's not just the fans who are frustrated.

The chaos of the fights makes them difficult for anyone to follow.

I was so confused when everybody got signed up and the rules kept evolving

takedown is legal.

I don't know if that's a takedown or a knockdown or... Is that a takedown? That

should be a takedown right there.

You've got a referee that's never refereed boxing or a competitive fight.

got judges that have never judged any type of competitive fight. When you've

stupidity on this grand biblical scale, anything is possible.

I mean, again, I got to be honest with you. As a pure television viewer, I'm

totally entertained by this.

Dan Sever narrowly defeats the Godfather in the first round, but senses his

reputation as a decorated fighter is at risk if he continues on.

He decides to drop out of the tournament altogether, which sends the Godfather

into round two.

Nobody knew what was going on, and that's when Guy started saying, let's

punch each other.

They get excited. Just throw punches.

Somebody gets knocked out, they get knocked out.

At the time, I was wrestling with Bob Holly. We were a tag team. We were

actually Midnight Express.

But my first bout and his, they put us against each other.

I just thought that was a really shitty way of doing it.

So yeah, we drew them. We drew them all out of the hat. It's just the way it

came out.

No, I'm not buying that one.

As the reality of the situation takes hold, Brotherhood...

and professional relationships are put aside.

My friend, my partner, we're going to go out and whack each other. It started

kind of weird. We traveled together. We shared a room. You know, we always ate

together, go train together.

Well, I got to hit him or he's going to hit me.

I didn't go easy on him. I wanted to win.

Do you recall what it was like afterwards?

Yeah, well, actually, we had to get in the car because we stayed in the same

room that night.

It was a little quiet, a little awkward.

I think we might even have had a match or something the next day together, you

know, as a tag team.

Vince McMahon can't keep his finger out of anything. So even something that's

supposed to be a legitimate shoot, he probably said to himself, as long as

they're really fighting, we can play with the matchmaking all we want.

People have talked about they've had the Dr. Death theory that this was skewed

to Dr.

Death, putting him in there with a one -eyed guy. No, it wasn't.

Carl Ouellette had sight in one eye. Should have been a brawl for all hell

What are we thinking?

He's blind in one eye.

I don't remember who the first injury was.

It was the first of several. One after the other.

I tore my bicep and I tore my quads and tore my ACLs. It was like it was jinxed.

Vince could have pulled the plug on this any time he wanted to, but he chose not

to. It didn't take but one week of TV to convince me that this...

thing has shit the bed i dreaded having another night of brawl for all matches

because you never knew who's going to get hurt tonight because it seems to be

inevitable and enough is enough the brawl for all tournament is already on

rocks but through the chaos an unlikely hero is set to emerge

when i was in the ninth grade

i weighed 89 pounds i was the shortest kid in class So I got picked on

constantly. They slap you in the head, they push you, they trip you, knock your

books out of your hands.

Then I got older, grew up, got a little bigger, and then I kind of went back,

and everybody that kind of picked on me, I went back and paid them a visit, let

them know what it was like.

After an awkward victory over his tag team partner in the first round of the

Brawl for All, Bart Gunn awaits his next opponent.

Well, what happened was Bruce calls me up.

He says, oh, Bart, just going to let you know we're going to be fighting Dr.

Death. I go, really?

He says, yeah. I said, oh, so you changed the brackets around.

And I go, well, Bruce, why don't you guys leave it like it is and save us for

the end? I said, you know, I'd be more than happy to work with you guys because

everybody knows you guys want him to win.

He goes, no, no, we got all the faith in the world in Dr. Death.

That tells me right there it was designed for him.

Absolutely. I already knew that because any time they actually advertised the

brawl for all, they talked about Steve.

I said, okay.

I said, well, let me ask you this.

Am I going to get heat with you guys when I beat them? She goes, oh, no, no,

We got all the confidence in the world in them.

Now, Bruce at that time had known Doc for a long time just like we all had and

think kind of giggled. Sure, yeah, knock out Dr. Death. When they said that, it

kind of made me feel like now they're already putting him with me now.

Maybe they don't have any confidence in me and I'm just a nobody.

Well, why wouldn't you have confidence in Dr. Death?

Is that a sin?

He was a...

Four -time All -American in wrestling in Division I.

They don't give that stuff away.

As soon as I walked in the door, Pat Patterson walked right up to me. He

oh, so you're going to knock out Dr. Death, are you?

And at that time, I was just furious.

It just pulled my blood because they nagged at me all day long. Oh, yeah,

going to knock them out. You're going to knock them out. I go get something to

eat or anywhere in the hall, somebody would have something smart out to say.

They're all back there. They got their little clans and yakking. So just kept

all bottled up all day long.

When that match came on, it was standing room only at those monitors.

It became very, very, very real.

As both men head to the ring, Dr. Death is the overwhelming favorite.

At that time, I was so furious because of what everybody in the office was

saying.

And I was more tunnel vision. I wasn't seeing it any other way. I was going to

go out and beat him.

So they were toe -to -toe. Just thinking in my mind, okay, this is it. This is

what I'm going to have to do.

The stakes are high in this matchup, and the brawl for all.

He took me down.

I was kind of surprised at that.

But then at some point, Bart switched up his game plan and took Doc down.

Uh -oh.

He was like halfway out of the ropes, and he's like, damn, brother.

And then I just said, sorry, what do you want me to do with the shoot?

It's not like we're out there working.

Then at some point, Doc tore his hamstring. And now suddenly, Dr. Dusty

Williams has become a 300 -pound one -legged man in an ass -kicking contest

where you need to be mobile.

You know, right there at the end, I caught him a couple times. He was

staggering. And I thought, man, he's fixing to go down.

And then it happened. Boom, boom, boom.

And down goes Doc.

He's out, cold.

And I was like, oh, shit.

And my heart sunk. And I got a bad feeling in my stomach because I knew

went Dr. Death's WWF career.

Dr. Death's injuries are so severe, He's forced to undergo a lengthy

rehabilitation, but the damage to his reputation proves far worse.

Within a year, he'd be out of the WWF entirely.

There comes Russo walking down the hallway.

I said, are you happy?

You just cost the company $5 million in one night. And he looked at me and went,

what are you talking about? I said, you idiot.

Dr. Steve Williams just got beat on live television in front of everybody.

What difference does it make how Bart Gunn's going to be a star now?

I said, I want to kill you.

I would like to just squeeze you until your britches are full and your eyeballs

pop out.

Dr. Death, I'm sure we could have done a lot with him, but it's not like he was

coming in at his peak or his prime or on his way up. It's probably fair to say

his best years in wrestling were behind him, but no doubt about it, you know,

that injury definitely cut his career short.

Kind of quiet when I went back.

Management didn't say anything to me. I had all the heat on me then, because I

just knocked out JR's boy.

This whole Dr. Death element in the Brawl for All has been so grossly

overthought that it has embarrassed me about some of my peers and some of my

friends that actually believe there's another story. There's this covert

that's going on. We'll never really know the answer.

Come on.

Grow up.

I didn't really see anybody from the office after that.

So it's kind of like, you know, you guys were picking at me, and, you know, I

did what I was going to do.

Bart secures his place in the semifinals where the godfather awaits.

In the other match, Draws takes on Bradshaw.

Oh,

yeah.

Absolutely. Well, I'm sure I reminded him a couple times.

Should have gotten freaking points for a takedown there.

That was a takedown under any rule, screwy or not. That was a takedown. How

would you call this one, JR? Who do you think? What's close? Very close in my

book. I'm on Draw's side here.

Here's your winner, Rachel.

There it is.

Boo. I cried bullshit.

Now I'm going to be bitter for the next couple days.

You guys are going to be bitter. I got tears in my eyes. I'm, like, fired up,

like, shit.

And I had me wondering, of course, I don't know if the people upstairs, if

wanted me to fight Bart at the time, and I still think that it was, you know,

that I won the fight. But Bradshaw didn't go around bragging because he

I so badly wanted Bradshaw to get his ass kicked.

That's all I cared about because he was so cocky. He was so confident when he

made the remark. He couldn't back out of it now because I would be the first one

to say, wait a minute, whoa, I just wanted him to get his clock clean. I'm

honest. With only one fight left before the final, it's up to Bart Gunn or the

Godfather to keep Bradshaw from having the last word.

Working at this club right here in the 90s, and I was the manager from 5 o

'clock in the morning to 1 in the afternoon, and I hated pimps. And I

if there's any pimps behind this bar, they better not be here in the next five

minutes because I will knock you off your bar stool.

And I swear to you, I would walk behind the bar, the pimp was sitting there just

cracking me as hard as I could, and they'd start running. But yeah, man.

I used to be able to knock people out by slapping them in their face.

The Godfather's second round victory over Too Cold Scorpio advances him to

final four.

He's just two wins away from claiming the $75 ,000 prize.

Standing in his way is tournament underdog Bart Gunn.

Well, this is going to be a tough fight. It's big, but I'm watching him like

shadow boxing stuff.

I go, wow, he's got boxing skills.

I went into that fight way overconfident.

I'd been smoking all day, yeah, but I smoke all day, all the time.

Just before I fought Bart, he says, I'm going to knock you out.

And I'm like, yeah, okay, good luck.

Do you remember anything of what you were thinking before going into that

Get him.

Don't let him take me down.

Don't cold face, okay?

I get myself up, come out throwing leathers.

And here we go. This is going to be a slugfest, JR.

You know, we were punching. I think he kind of caught me.

Pretty good.

I think, oh, that kind of stung a little bit.

And somewhere in there, he hit me with something that knocked me to the ground.

And I remember going back to the corner saying, I don't have my legs. I don't

have my legs. I don't have my legs.

Every single person was at the monitor, and nobody could believe it.

His head hit the ropes, her come real close to it, kind of went out of the

and kind of hang in there. Like, wow, I hope he's okay.

I mean, the reputation of the godfather and, you know, Bart being under the

radar, I mean, unbelievable.

My wife was really upset because she was counting on that money. She was not

happy about it. She blamed it on me smoking.

And I'm like, eh.

I didn't give Bart the amount of respect that I should have.

This is a few days after that fight. I was f***ed up. And I couldn't walk.

I had to get in a wheelchair.

My leg got infected.

I got this cut out. Oh, whoo.

Maybe that was the stupidest idea in wrestling right there.

Because a lot of people did get hurt.

The injuries were a big, big deal.

Here's what it meant. It meant taking guys off the line. They were sitting at

home. They couldn't work. They couldn't earn.

And that cost the company money because they weren't able to be productive.

It wasn't a good thing.

How morally and intellectually bankrupt and irresponsible do you have to be to

create a situation where your stars get legitimately injured just to get even

with a wrestler who was bragging about how tough he was in the locker room?

He can't be feeling good about getting in the ring with Bart, man. There's no

way. At that point, that was like the finals. There was only one more left,

that was Bradshaw.

After a rollercoaster two months of combat, the Brawl for All final is set.

one -time long shot against the man who inspired it all.

Both men are trained very diligently for this contest.

Come out, just a couple punches, caught him. There he goes!

Unbelievable!

Golly! It's like, wow, it's over.

Then he got back up. I was like, whew. You okay?

Let's go.

Well, this may not last much longer. Oh, there it is.

Oh, my God.

Whoa.

There's your winner.

Take a look at a guy that has just made a name for himself in this business.

Oh,

my good night.

Man, he even had the jittery legs. Did you see the jumpy legs?

The smelling salt ain't doing nothing to him.

When Bradshaw got knocked out, it was scary because his eyes obviously weren't

there and he twitched a little bit and you could tell he wasn't home even a

while afterwards.

When I saw Bradshaw get knocked out, I could not hold back those emotions.

I'm sorry. This whole tournament was because of him and his mouth and there

was laying on the canvas unconscious.

Bro, you know the old saying, don't, don't, never, never ask for, how's that

You get what you asked for, or you know what I mean. He didn't understand even

then what he had done to this day.

The moron doesn't understand what he's done.

I believe he sabotaged the talent, the integrity of the business, got people

legitimately hurt, and killed a future superstar, and doesn't realize he did

anything wrong.

There, in a nutshell, you have the skid mark on the underwear of life that is

Vince Russo.

I'm 57 years old. Jim Cornette is my age. When is this ever going to stop?

Cornette believed in the stake of the business.

Russo more of the sizzle of the business.

and therein they have a tremendous controversy and conflict.

They'll never be on the same page in my lifetime.

Jim Cornette leaves a message on my answering machine, threatening to kill

threatening to kill my entire family. I said, I'd just like to tell you, you no

good piece of shit.

What a piece of shit you are and how you narrowly escaped getting put in a

hospital by me with a goddamn baseball bat for all you've done to me and my

friends and the careers you've ruined and the shitty wrestling that you

produced. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that from my own lips.

And I'm just like, bro, this is wrestling. Like, are you serious?

Like, you're going to kill me over professional wrestling. Why is he doing

to me? Just over wrestling?

Just over wrestling?

That's what it's always been because he just, I can't believe that he would do

this to me just over wrestling.

And wrestling has been the most important thing in my life.

With a disastrous brawl for all finally over, Bart Gunn has proven to be the

toughest guy in the locker room.

And he was ready to jumpstart his career.

But he was in for a brutal awakening.

Well, these here are the gloves that they gave me for winning the Brawl for

It is my privilege and honor to present you with these golden boxing gloves.

What was your reaction to winning this whole thing?

It was great.

I thought, man, I'm finally going to get a great push.

Jim Ross comes up, talks to me. He says, hey, to be honest, we didn't think

anybody could take Steve off his feet.

He goes, I guess we should have did our homework on you a little better.

And I said, well, probably so. You know, I tried to work with you guys, and he's

like, well, I just want you to know there's no hard feelings.

And I think as soon as he said that, I thought, wow, I do got some heat.

After his victory in the Brawl for All, Bart Gunn is awaiting his big career

push. The WWF are now faced with the problem of what to do with a wrestler

didn't expect to win.

It was always the plan that whoever would win the Brawl for All would get a

promotional push. When it was Bart, the wind kind of came out of those sails.

I'm not knocking Bart Gunn. Great athlete, good wrestler, good guy.

But the way he had been presented for the previous five years was at a level

here, not here.

Examine the facts.

Nobody got over.

Not one son of a bitch that fought in that Brawl for All got over.

End of story.

They sent me home.

Now they don't know what to do with me.

Vince Russo called me up, and he said, Boris, we don't really know what type of

a storyline gimmick to put you in. I kind of sat home for a long time, not

anything. The longer I sat at home, the more frustrating it was.

They let him twist in the wind for a little while, and then, of course, Vince

McMahon got the idea because it's a gimmick.

Butterbean! Let's let him fight Butterbean at WrestleMania.

Well, my understanding is when Bart knocked out Dr. Death, Vince got pissed.

So they called me in for his punishment.

Butterbean's an overachiever. You know, he's got that bald head and he's very

white. He looks like some sort of appliance.

But boy, does he hit. Oh, my God.

Eric Esch, a .k .a. Butterbean, is a 300 -pound professional prize fighter with

more than 50 wins under his belt.

What he lacked in technique.

he more than makes up for with raw hitting power.

So at some point it was suggested Butterbean and Bart have a boxing match

because Butterbean was a great personality, great for wrestling.

I think it was presented to me, and, you know, I was like, ah, you know, I

don't, you know, sure, I guess.

You know, because I was sitting at home, I was tired of sitting at home. And

they said, hey, we're going to send you to a boxing school, you know, and they

start teaching me how to box.

The crossover match serves as both the promotional push Bart has been waiting

for and a chance for the WWF to cash in on Butterbean's mainstream popularity.

The man that will face Butterbean, Bart Gunn. Well, JR, you know, I'm not

training just to beat him. I'm training to knock him out.

Me, Butterbean, and Gilbert, we were chilling. I think me and Gil were

Butterbean wasn't smoking. And we were talking about it.

Butterbean, he told me, he said this, and I've already told Vince.

He goes, you guys are tough guys. I give you that, okay?

But you're not professional fighters.

I will beat that kid in seconds.

It's two different sports. He had no chance against me. You know, Vince kind

smiled at me when I went to the ring. He knew that it was over for Bart. He knew

that I was going to knock him out, and he wanted me to knock him out.

Walking into WrestleMania was kind of like no experience I've ever had up to

that point. This place was huge.

On March 28, 1999, the WWF resurrects the Brawl for All concept on their

largest stage, WrestleMania XV.

A talented amateur can't stand up next to a professional in any field. So there

was no reason to believe that even though Bart was a great -looking athlete

Butterbean was a big, fat, round, baked potato with arms and legs, Butterbean

was a trained and experienced professional boxer.

I didn't feel the same as I felt with the other fights because I'm different

now. I'm a boxer now, and I got this other persona.

Here we go, round one, brawl for all.

Butterbean and Bart Gunn.

I remember being in the crowd.

Something was off.

This wasn't the guy that I saw knock out the Godfather and the guy that I saw

knock out Bradshaw. This wasn't one of those fights.

Now I'm out there as a green boxer trying to, okay, hold my hands like

hold my feet like this.

When Bart tried to box, I said, this is it. I got him now, so I just went in,

charged him, just give him a couple good shots, put him to the mat.

And then when I went to the corner, I'm like, man, I hope he don't get up

because it's going to be bad if he does because he's wobbling.

When Vinny let the fight go on, I'm going, hey, you don't need to do that.

out of it. So I just give him one last good right hand.

His head actually turned around backwards.

Yeah, you know, when I got home, my kids come home from school, and they were a

little upset. They go, Dad, my friend told me you killed a guy on TV. You

Bart Gunn.

I said, he's not dead. He just looked like it.

I'll be honest, if he had a 50 -50 chance, if he went out and brawled like

did with the other guys.

But with me, he actually tried to box, which was stupid.

Very disappointed, very, very mad at myself.

You know, just wasn't happy at all.

After WrestleMania, I knew I was done. There wasn't a future left there for me

at all.

The end. That was the end there for me in the States.

A lot of old stuff here.

You said you hadn't watched the Butterbean fight.

Can you talk about why that was the case?

I don't know if I want that on air, but... I

just never watched it. I was mad at myself that I made some mistakes.

But it always stuck in the back of my mind. And then I saw, when I was in

Butterbean. I saw he was over there. He's doing MMA.

I thought, wow, this is interesting.

Because I always wanted to get a second chance.

And I said, you know, I'm going to do MMA.

And I got a fight with Wesley Cabbage.

And Butterbean fought him.

Butterbean beat him, I think, in the second or third round. Went over there.

very first MMA fight and stopped it in the first round. So I said, yeah, I beat

this guy quicker than Butterbean beat him.

One night, like on a Tuesday night, I said, hey, we got you a match with

Butterbean. So really great.

Yeah, we want you to come fight Friday.

It's like in four days.

And I said, no, no, no, no, no.

I've learned from my mistakes.

You can't even set up a match with me and Butterbean. I went 12 weeks to train

for it. So that didn't happen.

Could have turned out the same thing. Could have beat me again.

But I would have got to do it a little bit better my way.

It may sound crazy to a lot of people, but that's just kind of the way I'm

driven. And then kind of time passed, and then sad things happened in my life.

And after that, I was kind of done with the whole fighting thing, and then I

didn't do any more.

I miss being at the curtain and going through the curtain and out and

performing. You know, you got the excitement in the crowd, the adrenaline

Me going to work every day, there's not adrenaline rush there anymore.

But I enjoy sleeping in my bed every night, you know, sitting there with my

dinner at the house.

You get tired of it.

eating out all your meals, you know, seven days a week.

So... Droz's career in the WWF would continue

for another year until a tragic accident changed his life forever.

Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your injury? No problem, man.

Okay. Prior to it happening, what was your plan for the wrestling business?

You know, I really had no clue.

And the funny part is I was actually going to win that match.

You know, I didn't get a lot of wins.

Droz was wrestling D 'Lo Brown one night. And D 'Lo was a very smooth,

accomplished wrestler.

We were just going to do a powerbomb. And he had powerbombed me before.

When he picked me up, I don't know if I slipped or what.

I have this, these memories are seared in my brain perfectly.

Which stinks.

Pulled him up and we didn't go.

And we just fell forward.

But I remember going back down like this isn't right. I couldn't get my hands

down really.

And I just remember hearing crack, crack.

And I just went, oh, I just broke my neck.

I said, stop messing with me. You okay?

Can't move.

One of the cardinal rules is you're supposed to leave the ring the same way

went into it.

And I remember crying next to him, telling him, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm

it should never happen.

I was going, it's okay, dog, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

Nothing we could have done would have changed, you know, it just happens.

So, but he's a good guy, man. I still wish, I wish him the best last time I

him. Neither of us, we've talked about it, we don't know what happened.

Neither of us blame the other.

It's one of those unfortunate accidents that happen.

Bottom line is I'm here, still alive, I'm still kicking. Well, not kicking

really, but I can't kick.

But I still get to go out and I hunt.

You know, I do all the things that I can do. It's just, you know, you learn to

do things differently.

Draw is still paralyzed to this day. It's been more than 20 years.

Things happen, you know, in this business.

And it's not ballet. And that's why it especially angers me when people

it one move.

He's been in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

So don't tell me that wrestling is a bunch of bullshit.

Just some of the ways that people that have gotten into it treat it is

I feel bad.

How come? Because I don't want to see anybody get hit like that, man. Oh, my

God.

Especially now with just all the stuff we know about head trauma and

man.

Oh, man.

I really should have been thinking, man, these guys are out of their element

with what we know about concussions today. Just knowing all that today,

didn't know back then, no way, no way would I ever propose it again.

I think the brawl should be remembered for what it was, a cluster.

It sucked.

There's no reason to embrace it.

It was simply a bad idea that featured a lot of guys looking to get a rub in a

new event. That's what it was developed to do.

Create some new stars, new rubs, new opportunities. And it just didn't do it.

The Brawl for All remains the only prize -fighting tournament to be put on by

the WWE.

What could have been a career -defining moment for its champion instead became a

stark reminder of how wrestling's winners are always chosen in the

Bruce has said that the Brawl for All is the, quote, absolute worst idea in the

history of the business.

I agree with that, but they're the ones that put it on.

So explain that one.

I think they should learn from their mistakes and probably should never do it

again.

Should just kind of let it disappear.