Well my friends, we’ve seen a little bit of everything, a drunk Giant, a drunk hippie, a LIKELY drunk Texas bully get some comeuppance, and we’ve even seen the man who may have killed TNA, Vince Russo, stir up a mess of legal trouble, but now we move on to our #1 Greatest Unscripted Disaster in Pro Wrestling History.
In a sport where there are few legit tough guys left, those remaining, or at least those who thought they were, signed up for a little diddy in the late 90’s that we fondly remember as the “Brawl For All”. A shoot fight style tournament to declare the legit baddest man in professional wrestling.
And before we get started, of course this wouldn’t be possible without John Cheese and his Magic Pimp Bus, so I have to send a big thanks out to him first and foremost. And with that out of the way, let’s get down to it my friends.
#1. WWE Tries Out Actual Real Fighting, Proves Wrestlers Suck at It
So what do you do when your sport is based on fake fighting, but real fighting is stealing your audience? That was the situation in 1998 that resulted in the Brawl for All, and it was universally considered to be the single stupidest fucking idea the WWE ever let go past the “drunken dare” stage. At the time, the UFC and tough man competitions were getting huge, and not being satisfied with just dominating the wrestling world, the WWE thought, “Let’s directly compete with them by pitting untrained fighters against each other in real hand-to-hand combat. What could possibly go wrong?”
Well, other than shattering the illusion that these guys could actually fight. For example, one of the bigger stars in wrestling at the time was “Dr. Death” Steve Williams, and he was marketed as a brutal tough guy. They were about to give him a big push, which means he would have gotten a major storyline, some extremely important matches, and the spotlight. In fact it’s said this entire event was created specifically to get him over. What happened instead was that he got his ever-loving fucking ass kicked by a guy named Bart Gunn … the same guy in the above video. Not only did he get knocked out, but he injured his knee in a takedown. And just like that, Dr. Death’s actual wrestling push was over and the creative team was pissssssed off.
“Not in the face! Not in the face!”
The second thing that went wrong was that several wrestlers ended up legitimately injured. See, it turns out that when you get a bunch of 300-pound untrained dudes taking haymakers at each other, it tends to fuck up the human body. Who could have known?
A countless list of guys suffered a variety of injuries, some minor, some permanent. Some of the men on the injury list included LOD Hawk, The Godfather, Dr. Death (as mentioned), Henry Godwinn, and the guy who got it worst was Savio Vega (who received a permanent neck injury from the fight).
They kept this thing going forfuckingever, and it was so painful to watch. The crowd would chant “boring” during the matches (you can hear them doing it in that Dr. Death fight). The punches were as much awkward and clumsy as they were dangerous. No one knew what the hell they were doing. And worst of all, the people in the audience didn’t pay for a real fight — they paid for some good old-fashioned fake-ass wrestling. But they kept Brawl for All rolling regardless, right up until Wrestlemania, where the winner of the tournament, Bart Gunn, won the honor of fighting a real professionally trained boxer, Butterbean. Finally, we can see what happens when the best wrestling has to offer takes on a mediocre, overweight boxer! Surely this won’t ruin any childhood illusions!
You know what’s coming next. Here’s Butterbean knocking Gunn’s soul completely out of his fucking body in the first round of that fight:
That’ll teach you to try and get over in a shoot fight without our permission! So now you see what happens in a world where scripted rasslin’ tries to book a storyline in the real world.
And that my friends, was the Brawl For All. Needless to say, there was never a second season. I hope you’ve enjoyed this countdown of the 5 Greatest Unscripted Disasters in Pro Wrestling History. If you have other disasters you would have liked to seen on this list, tough, write your won. 🙂
