Original subtitles

♪

[Narrator] In 1998, the World Wrestling Federation

enlisted 16 wrestlers in a radical experiment:

an unscripted, legitimate, prize-fighting tournament.

Let 'em fight for real, man. Put on gloves.

Let 'em 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 risked 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 was fucked up.

It was looking kind of sad.

The guys were gassed and blowing up,

and the crowd wasn't really getting with it.

[Audience] [booing]

They got hurt. They got embarrassed.

And they got their careers shortened.

It was 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 Monday night,

millions would tune in to watch WWF or WCW.

The battle was fought through an escalation

of bold and provocative new ideas.

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 -

T.L. Hopper, The Goon, Mantaur...

What is this? It looks like a half-man, half-beast. Hey!

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 scenes?

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.

'Cause there's nothing fake about it.

It may be predetermined, it may even 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 match maker, a manager, a trainer.

Everything in wrestling, for the last 40 years.

[Vince] When I started working for the WWF,

at the time, Vince's inner circle, they were 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.

[Jim] Vince McMahon is, is somebody that

is never gonna 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 in 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 down 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 match making,

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.

[screaming]

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 Raw,

across the country.

So, number one, you can't-- you don't want to insult

their intelligence 'cause 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 gonna make a casual television viewer

watch this product if they weren't a wrestling fan.

To maintain their edge, WWF needs a

constant stream of original ideas,

something audiences have never seen before.

Look, here's the deal, man.

You gotta 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. Got into wrestling in 1974 so,

my career has lasted for many generations,

as a broadcaster, as administrator,

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 braggadocios bully bastard.

I know of at least ten guys in this locker room

that'll kick your ass. I went to Vince McMahon and

I proposed the idea of a Brawl For All.

And he goes, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Vince, we're becoming more,

and more, and more, and more real.

Let 'em fight for real, man. Put on gloves,

let 'em go out there, let 'em 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 unpredictable fight.

The challenge is to find 16 competitors

with nothing to lose.

♪

I got stabbed with the bottle, the wine bottle.

I was in a bar fight and they broke a bottle

and stuck it in.

When they stuck it in, it 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 Gunns.

Cowboy gimmick. We rode horses out.

That was pretty cool.

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

- Yeehoo! - Yeehaw!

Yoo!

For whatever reason, everybody that comes in as

a tag team, eventually, they get split up.

When Billy and I were split up it-- my career kinda...

ah, don't want to say fizzled.

I guess you could say it fizzled out.

Just, I had a hard time adjusting to it though.

I, it was a little difficult.

When I was first approached, it was Bruce.

He says, "Hey, you know, we're gonna do this

Brawl For All, kind of a tough man contest."

I go, "How are you gonna do that?"

I said, "Nah," said, "don't want to do it."

I thought it was a stupid idea.

And then, Kevin Kelly, he said,

"This here will be great for your career."

He says, "You're kind of stuck right there at the middle

and, you go through this," he says,

"you'll have a great run with Austin 'cause that's--

the winner of the tournament's gonna get

a run with Steve Austin."

And 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 I 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 under-utilized wrestlers,

with the lure of cash prizes and main event status.

Well, there were a lot of tough guys in the locker room.

I... I think when I looked at this thing,

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

[Jim] 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 favourite 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 Rock's taking over.

So, now, I'm like, I gotta make a change.

They're not doing nothing with me.

Bruce Prichard had called me and said,

"Hey, we're doing this thing. You get," I think,

"$10,000 if you fight and so much more if you win.

And, you're wearing gloves." And I'm like, "Hell, yeah!

I'll do it." Type of stuff I do anyway,

so I was in right from the beginning.

Darren Drozdov, 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 a hold of ya,

you'd get one in the face.

I'd run into the WWE offices

to have a meeting with Vince McMahon.

Vince loves that kind of humor.

If you're a writer and you come up with a skit that

involves puking, taking a dump,

peeing, he'll probably buy it.

He's gonna puke! He's gonna puke!

He's gonna-- Yeah, he's gonna puke!

Whatever it takes, you know... We'll do it this way.

I'll come in as Puke, right.

You know, it got my foot in the door or whatever,

and you know, I just went from there.

Russo's idea is gaining traction,

but not everyone in the WWF is convinced it'll work.

I first heard about the Brawl For All, I believe,

at one of the TV tapings when they were

mentioning it was gonna be starting in the next few weeks.

And, as I grasped what they were talking about,

I got more and more concerned about it.

You don't know that it's not gonna 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 some of them have never been in a bar fight.

Now the wrestlers are living out their fantasies.

And the result's just chaos.

♪

With the unusual concept of combining

professional wrestling and real fighting,

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 paper,

threw it in a 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 real deal.

Then, you had a guy like Marc Mero,

who was a legitimate gold gloves champion.

Mark Canterbury. 6'5, 300.

Punches like a bull.

John Layfield Bradshaw.

He's a big 'ol rough and tough Texan.

Brakkus was a body builder. He didn't have the mobility.

Brakkus 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.

Hawk would have no problem pulling a

guy's eyeball out and eating it, or biting his nose off his face.

Bart Gunn was hard working, dependable, loyal.

You could rely on him.

Droz was a no fear kinda guy.

Bob Holly was a badass on a street level.

Carl Ouellet. Big time talented kid.

Godfather. He beat up people, like, for a living.

Dan Severn was a UFC Hall of Fame'r.

A Superfight champion, a Triple Crown winner.

Ron Harris walked into bars for one reason,

and that was to fight.

2 Cold Scorpio had decided he would try and break out

of the Flash Funk ha-ha gimmick.

The one man that stands out is recent WWF acquisition

Steve Williams, also known to fans as Dr. Death.

He was 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. Death" Williams.

He was a homegrown sentimental favorite.

I think he was four-time all-American football.

And, I believe he was four-time all-American wrestler, too.

Toughest guy in the business.

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

Jim Ross's boy.

Took a lot of heat for that, saying that,

but he's Jim Ross's boy.

You hear about the stories in Japan.

He just beat the Japanese up,

drop 'em on their head.

Agh!

The reason for 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 fight.

You know at some point in the locker room,

like, these conversations really had to 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 premiers June 29th 1998

on Monday Night Raw.

Each match consists of three, one-minute rounds

with five points awarded for each landed punch

and each take down.

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 so...

Maybe 2, 3, 4 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.

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

[match bell ringing]

Anybody that knows anything can tell right off the bat

these guys do not know how to box,

and it's just sloppy.

You've gotten away from all your moves and all your set ups.

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 looked 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, and...

are take downs legal?

I don't know if that's a take down or a knock down or...

[match bell ringing]

Is that a take down?

That should be a take down right there. You think?

You've got a referee that's never refereed boxing

or a competitive fight. You've got judges that have

never judged any type of competitive fight.

When you've got stupidity on this grand,

biblical scale, anything is possible.

I mean, again, I gotta be honest with you...

As a, as a pure television viewer, I'm...

I'm totally entertained by this.

Dan Severn 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 guys started saying,

"Let's just punch each other."

Make it exciting, 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 The Midnight Express.

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

You know, I just thought that was a really

shitty way of doing it. "So, yeah, we drew 'em.

We drew 'em all out of the hat.

That'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 gonna go out and,

and whack each other. Started... kinda weird.

'Cause, we travel together. We shared rooms.

You know, we always ate together, go train together.

Said, well, I gotta hit him or he's gonna hit me.

Oh! A smack!

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

Here is your winner, Bodacious Bart!

Yeah, 'cause-- Well, actually, we had to get in the car

'cause we stayed in the same room that night.

It was a little quiet, 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 Ouelett. Had sight in one eye.

Should he have been in Brawl For All? Hell, no.

What are we thinking? He's blind in one eye.

I don't even remember who the first injury was.

Was the first of several. It was one after the other.

That's where my bicep and-- torn thighs and torn 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

'cause you never who was gonna get hurt tonight

because it seems to be inevitable...

and enough is enough.

The Brawl For All tournament is already on the rocks,

but through the chaos, an unlikely hero

is set to emerge.

When I was in the 9th grade, I weighed 89 lbs.

I was the shortest kid in class so, I got picked on constantly.

They slap you in the head. They push ya. They trip ya.

Knock your books out of your hands.

And then I got older, grew up,

got a little bigger, and then I kind of went back and

everybody that kinda picked on me,

I went back and paid them a visit.

Let 'em 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 calling to let you know

you're gonna be fighting Dr. Death."

I go, "Really?" He says, "Yeah."

I said, "Oh, so, you changed your 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 'cause 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. And I said, "Okay."

I said, "Well, let me ask you this: Am I gonna

get heat with you guys when I beat him?"

He goes, "Oh, no, no, no!

We got all the confidence in the world in him."

Now, Bruce, at that time,

had known Doc for a long time, just like we all had.

And, I think kinda giggled and said, "Sure, yeah.

Ha-ha-ha, knock out Dr. Death."

When they said that it kinda 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 fucking four-time all-American in wrestling...

In Division One. They don't give that stuff away.

Soon as I walked in the door,

Pat Patterson, he walked right up to me. He says,

"Oh, so, you're gonna knock out Dr. Death, are ya?"

And at that time, I was just furious.

It just boiled my blood 'cause they nagged at me

all day long. They said,

"Oh, yeah, you're gonna knock him out.

You're gonna knock him out."

I go get something to eat or...

anywhere in the hall, somebody would have

something smartass to say. They're all back there,

they got their little clans and yacking.

So, just kept it 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 favourite.

At that time, I was so furious 'cause of what

everybody in the office was saying.

And I was more tunnel vision.

I wasn't seeing it any other way.

I was gonna go out and beat him.

Stood there toe-to-toe, just thinking in my mind,

"Okay, this is it. This is what I'm gonna have to do."

The stakes are high in this match up in the Brawl For All.

[Bart] 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! - [cheering]

He was like halfway out of the ropes and he was like,

"Damn, brother." And then I just said, "Sorry.

What do you want me to do? It's a shoot."

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

Then, at some point, Doc tore his hamstring.

[Announcer] ...get him down. That's a takedown!

And now, suddenly, Dr. Death Steve Williams has become a

300-pound one-legged man in an ass kicking contest

where you need to be mobile.

[Bart] You know, right there at the end,

you know, as 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!

[cheering]

The big left hand by Bart Gunn clocked the Doctor!

And down goes Doc.

He's out, cold, you know. And I was like, holy shit.

And my heart sunk, and I got a bad feeling in my stomach

because I knew here 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 a company $5 million in one night."

And he looked at me like, "What are you talking about?"

I said, "You idiot! Dr. Death Steve Williams just got beat

on live television in front of everybody!"

"What difference does it make?

Bart Gunn's gonna 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.

Kinda quiet when I went back.

Management didn't say anything to me.

I had all the heat on me then

'cause 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 action 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 kinda like, you know,

you guys were picking at me and,

you know, I did what I was gonna do.

Bart secures his place in the semi-finals

where The Godfather awaits.

In the other match, Droz takes on Bradshaw.

Fucking back of the head, you cocksucker.

That's Bradshaw for you. Dirty bastard.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

I'm sure I reminded him a couple times.

Should have gotten fricking 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?

Well, it's close. Very close in my book.

I'm on Droz's side here.

[Announcer] Here's your winner... Bradshaw!

Boo! I cry bullshit.

Now I'm gonna be bitter for the next couple days, man.

You guys got me bitter. I got tears in my eyes.

I'm like fired up, like, shit.

And that had me wondering, of course,

I don't know if the people upstairs,

if they 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 'cause he knew.

I so badly wanted Bradshaw to get his ass kicked.

That's all I cared about because he was so cocky,

he was 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 to see him get his clock cleaned.

I'm being 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 would say, "If there's any pimps behind this bar,

they better not be here in the next 5 minutes 'cause

I will knock you off your bar stool."

And, I swear to you, I would walk behind the bar,

pimp was sitting there, just crack him 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 2 Cold Scorpio

advances him to the 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 gonna be a tough fight 'cause he's big.

Then I'm watching him like shadow box and stuff,

and I go, "Wow, he's got boxing skills, too."

I went into that fight way over confident.

Had I been smoking all day?

Yeah, but I smoke all day all the time.

Just before I fought Bart, he says,

"I'm gonna knock you out." And I'm like,

"Yeah, okay. Good luck."

Hit him. Don't let him take me down.

[Bart] Stone cold face. Okay. Psyche myself up.

Gonna come out throwing leathers.

And here we go. This is gonna be a slug fest, JR.

You know, we were punching.

I think he kinda caught me once pretty good.

I was like, wow, that kinda 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.

Bart looking for the left hand,

but it's a right hand!

It's a right hand! And The Godfather is down.

[match bell ringing]

He is out cold!

His head hit the ropes, or come real close to it,

kinda went out of the ring and kinda hanging there.

It's 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 'cause she was

counting on that money. She was not happy about it.

She blamed it on me smoking. And I'm like, "Yeah..."

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

This is, this is a few days after that fight.

I was fucked up. I couldn't walk.

I had to get in a wheel chair.

My leg got infected. I got this cut out.

Oh, whoo!

Maybe that was the stupidest idea in wrestling,

right there, 'cause 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.

That point, that was like the finals.

There was only one more left and that was Bradshaw.

After a rollercoaster two months of combat,

the Brawl For All final is set.

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

Both men have trained very diligently for this contest.

Come out. Just a couple punches.

Caught him...

[Announcer] Oh! Unbelievable! Golly!

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

Then he got back up. I was like, whoo!

[Announcer] Okay. Let's go.

Well, this may not last much longer--

Oh! There it is. Oh, my god!

[match bell ringing]

Oh! Bart Gunn!

There's your winner! Bart Gunn!

Take a look at the guy that has just made a

name for himself in this business and earned it...

Oh, my. Good night.

Man, he even had the jittery legs.

Did you see the jumpy legs? Just the...

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 awhile afterwards.

When I saw Bradshaw get knocked out,

I could not hold back those emotions.

Like, I'm sorry. This whole tournament

was because of him and his mouth,

and there he was laying on the canvas, unconscious.

Bro, what-- You know the old saying, don't--

never ask for... how does that go?

You get what you ask for or...

you know what I mean.

He didn't understand even then what he had done!

To this day...

the fucking 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 steak 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 me,

threatening to kill my entire family.

I said, "I'd just like to tell you,

you no good piece of shit, you motherfucker...

what a piece of shit you are and how you narrowly escaped

getting put in a fucking 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.

And 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 gonna kill me over professional wrestling?"

[mocking tone] "Why is he doing this 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!"

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

♪

With the disastrous Brawl For All finally over,

Bart Gunn has proven to be the toughest guy in the locker room.

And he was ready to jump start his career,

but he was in for a brutal awakening.

♪

Well, there here are the gloves that they gave me

for winning the Brawl For All.

It is my privilege and honor to present you

with these golden boxing gloves.

It was great. I said,

"Man, I'm finally gonna 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 'a did our homework on you a little better."

And I said, "Well, probably so.

You know, I tried to work with you guys, and..."

And, and he says, "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 they didn't expect to win.

It was always the plan that whoever would win the

Brawl For All would get a big 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 5 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 send me home

and now they don't know what to do with me.

Vince Russo called me up and he said,

"Bart," he said, "we don't really know what type of

a story line gimmick to put you in."

I kind of sat home for a long time not doing 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 'cause

it's a gimmick: "Butterbean!

Let's have 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.

[Jim Ross] 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 lacks 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,

I said, you know, I was like, "Ah, you know...

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

You know, 'cause I was sitting at home.

I was tired of sitting at home.

And they said, "Hey, we're gonna send you to a,

to a boxing school."

You know, and they started 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 Gillberg, we were chilling.

I think me and Gill were smoking.

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

Butterbean, he told me, he said,

"Listen, 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 2 different sports. He has no chance against me."

You know, Vince kind of smiled at me

when I went into the ring. He knew that,

that it was over for Bart.

He knew that I was gonna knock him out and

he wanted me to knock him out.

Walking into WrestleMania was kinda 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 and 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

'cause 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 like,

okay, hold my hands like this.

Hold my feet like this.

When Bart tried to box, I said, "This is it.

I got him now." So, I just went and charged and

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 'cause

it's gonna be bad if he does 'cause he's...

he's wobbling.

When Vinny let the fight go on, I'm going,

oh, Vinny, you don't need to do that. He's out of it.

So, I just gave him one last good right hand.

Oh! Goodbye! It's over.

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 friends told me you killed a guy on TV!

You killed Bart Gunn!" I said, "He's not dead.

He just looked like it."

I'll be honest, he would have had a 50/50 chance

if he went out and brawled like he 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.

It was the end.

That was the end there for me in the States.

♪

Wow. Lot of old stuff here.

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

[laughing] Um...

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 Japan - Butterbean.

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

I thought, wow, this is interesting 'cause

I always wanted to get a second chance.

And then I said, you know, I'm gonna do MMA.

And I got a fight with Wesley Cabbage...

and Butterbean fought him.

Butterbean beat him in like the second or third round.

Went over there, my very first MMA first and

stopped it in the first round. So, I said,

I beat this guy quicker than Butterbean beat him.

One night, like on a Tuesday night, said,

"Hey, we got you a match with Butterbean."

"Oh, really? Great!"

Said, "Yeah, we want you to come fight Friday."

That's like in four days. I said, "No, no, no, no, no."

'Cause I've learned from my mistakes. Says,

"If you're gonna set up a match with me and Butterbean,

I want 12 weeks to train for it."

So, that didn't happen. Could 'a turned out

the same thing, he could 'a beat me again.

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

This 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 I just had

some things happen 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 and the crowd,

the adrenaline and rush.

Me going to work every day,

there's not an adrenaline rush there anymore.

But I enjoy sleeping in my bed every night and,

you know, sitting and having my dinner at the house.

You get tired of eating out, you know, 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.

No problem, man.

You know, I really had no clue.

And, the funny part is

I was actually gonna 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 very smooth, accomplished wrestler.

We were just gonna do a power bomb,

and he had power bombed 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.

I remember going back down, I'm 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, fuck, I just broke my neck.

I said, "Stop messing with me. Are you okay?"

"I can't move."

One of the cardinal rules is you're supposed to

leave the ring the same way you went into it.

And I remember crying next to him telling him I was sorry.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It should never happen."

Droz is 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...

he's a good guy, man. I still wish him--

I wished him the best last time I saw him.

Neither of us - we've talked about it -

we don't know what happened.

Neither has blamed the other.

It's one of those unfortunate accidents that happened.

Bottom line is I'm here. Still alive and still kicking.

Well, not kicking, really, but... [laughing]

Can't kick, but I still get to go out. I hunt.

You know, I do all the things that I can do.

It's just, you know, you learn to do things differently.

Droz is still paralyzed to this day.

It's been more than 20 years.

Things happen, you know, in, in this business.

And it's not ballet. And that's why it,

it especially angers me when people diminish 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 bullshit.

♪

I feel bad.

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 everything, man.

Oh, man. Ugh!

Oof.

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,

which we didn't know back then,

no way, no way would I ever propose it again.

I think the Brawl For All 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

how wrestling's winners are ays chosen in the boardroom.

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. Ha.

I think they should learn from their mistakes and

probably should never do it again.

Should just kinda let it disappear.

♪