#unless its to vince russo. fuck vince russo

[blowflyfag]

Pro Wrestling Illustrated: September 1996

FROM THE DESK OF…Stuart M. Saks

I THOUGHT I WAS in hell. 

Men were brawling recklessly, chairs were crunching skulls, and garbage cans were pounding backs. One-by-one, more men kept joining the fray. The fans’ screams of delight were drowned out by blaring rap music. I was there, yet I wasn’t. Everyone was involved in some way or another. Battlers. Spectators. Sound men. Security guards. Not me. I was merely an observer. Close enough to sense the raw emotions of the event, but far enough away to feel protected from the sheer horror of it.

“___ you,” one of the battlers screamed at a spectator who made the mistake of using the wrong finger to express his  view that the battler was number one.

An image of Lou Thesz came into my head. I eliminated it quickly. He should not be exposed to this! 

Then again, this isn’t for everybody. That’s what the promoters of Extreme Championship Wrestling keep warning us.

“ECW! … ECW! … ECW!” The spectators chanted in unison after seeing a sampling of extreme wrestling. These are not fans of wrestlers per se; they’re fans of the concept that nothing is to be held back in an effort to bring them what they want. Ever.

Brutality? Almost always. Breathtaking aerial wrestling? More than you’ll see anywhere north of the Mexican border. Beautiful women? Hey, 95 percent of the audience is comprised of males between the ages of 18 and 35, and after being Dudleyed into submission, it’s good for the eyes to look at Beulah McGillicutty for a few minutes. 

My walk through hell occurred in the strangest of places. This was not even the official ECW hell hole–the ECW Arena on the mean streets of South Philly. This was an auxiliary hell, in the quiet upper middle-class Philly suburb of Plymouth Meeting, in an all-purpose auditorium called Lu Lu Temple.

I was not there to cover wrestling matches on this evening. Bill Apter and Craig Peters were taking care of that. But Lu Lu (no relation to Ed Norton’s deceased dog) is only a few miles up the road from our Ambler offices, so, with my Friday evening free, I went merely to record my thoughts of the big picture.

Randomly …

***

[2 Cold Scorpio and Sabu literally risked their necks in their ECW TV title match. ECW fans have grown almost jaded by such action, and their reactions aren’t proportional to the efforts the wrestlers put forth.]

ECW belongs in the family-oriented Lu Lu Temple like that Charlestown Chiefs of Slap Shot fame belong in Madison Square Garden … I love the fact that some of the wrestlers made themselves available to the fans before the matches began. Craig Peters might not agree. He was sitting on the stage behind the seats with Beulah, taking credit for her being on the cover of June ‘96 edition of PWI, when a fan interrupted their conversation and said, “Hey Beulah, you’re in PWI.” Only this was the July edition, and the article the fan was making reference to was Craig’s “In Focus” column in which he rated some of the more prominent women of wrestling in various categories. This is great, I thought. More brownie points for Craig. Craig, however, knew he was in trouble. Beulah finished ninth on his list of 10! “Sex appeal–zero?!” she shrieked. Craig responded sheepishly: “But look at the reason why. You’re pregnant.”

“Zero?!” she shrieked. “But–” “Zero?!” … As match time approached, I heard a fan yell, “ECW rules!” Talk about your classic oxymoron. I bet you could fit a copy of the ECW rule book on one page of PWI—and still have room for pictures. There are no rules in hell. Referees? They have them, but they don’t even make a pretense of counting to four when traditionally illegal acts take place. The fans booed both referees when they were introduced, but I don't see why. They do exactly what the fans want them to do–nothing … I saw a young fan throw a flattened soda can toward the ring. The promoter also saw it. Acting swiftly and properly, he had the fan tossed … And, yes, there was wrestling at the Lu Lu Temple, too. In fact, I’d venture to say that the match between TV champion 2 Cold Scorpio and Sabu was one of the 20 best matches I have ever seen. Too bad the ECW fans didn’t appreciate it. About a minute into the match, many of the fans started with that ignorant “Boring!” chant. I suppose they just couldn’t wait for the wrestlers to get past that feeling-out phase before really getting down to business. 

[Beulah McGillicutty gave Craig Peters an earful when she discovered that out associate publisher had given her a zero in the sex appeal category in a recent “In Focus” column.]

But get down to business they did; more accurately, I should say get up to business. These two men performed aerial feats that rendered the term “high-risk” a gross understatement. In one memorable sequence, Scorpio had Sabu in trouble and mounted the turnbuckles. Sabu lifted himself off the canvas, ran across the ring, sprung off a chair that had been left near the ropes, and maneuvered his body so that he was able to grab Scorpio around the neck with his legs. Sabu then reversed his momentum and “Franken-steinered” Scorpio from the turnbuckles down to a table at ringside. When I was a young wrestling fan,  a dropkick was a spectacular move. This was beyond belief! The fans were appreciative; thy should have fallen out of their seats … I guess you can’t give people too much because their natural inclination is to always want more. Ultimately, you’ll have nothing more to give them, and one day you may even find them chanting “Boring!” rather than “ECW!”

[thesportssoundoff]

What Happens When You Take A Bad Idea And Make It Worse? LET’S TALK ABOUT THE BRAWL FOR ALL!

Joey

March 11th

The Mother Fucking Brawl For All.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd actually get around to this but there are miracles around us and what better time than now? The Brawl For All is generally regarded as one of the worst ideas of all time in a business with an entire genre dedicated to grown men and women smashing each other with fluorescent light tubes and slamming one another on beds of nails and thumbtacks. In a business that up until the mid 80s featured nazis goose stepping around and up until 2003 or so regularly and routinely featured women wrestling in their bloomers, the Brawl For All is the one idea that every human being unanimously believes was a disastrous failure. It's the one unanimous tire fire that not even it's most ardent supporter can put out. Not even WCW's junkyard battle royale which featured multiple injuries due to WCW not gimmicking the cars and just having guys taking bumps onto cars and through glass windshields is hated this much. The Brawl 4 All is one of those things people can't even sum up with "It was bad!" and move on. You have to go through layers and layers and levels of badness. You have to view it almost as an affront to your sensibilities, as a personal attack on you as a fan. Hell not just as a fan but as a human being!

Vince McMahon and company have failed in previous ventures before and ventures after. The XFL, the World Bodybuilding Federation, the ECW relaunch, 65% of the undercard Attitude Era angles, their really expensive WWE Films attempts. Some could even argue that the brand split originally was a failure in some respects given that Smackdown never really got going on its own and Raw declined sharply from the brand split onward. That said those failures at least had SOME inkling and morsels of promise behind them. Not the Brawl For All. It was a bad idea from the start, a bad idea during and made even worse by what happened afterwards. Also? The Brawl For All is one of those things that every wrestling fan and every wrestling personality has a hard opinion on, the kind of shit that lends itself to so much gossip, rumor and conversation. Over the next few weeks, I want to discuss the Brawl 4 All a bit more. I want to delve into it because it's as close as we'll ever get to a universal no hope no spin failure by the WWE and because...well...it's one of my favorite fuck ups of all time. It's always been something that fascinated me from watching it live as a casual fan to laughing at it as a smart fan when I stumble across it to making a near yearly pilgrimage to youtube to watch every single fight of it I can find before it got yanked. It's one of those wrestling stinkers that like December 2 Dismember or the Heroes Of Wrestling card that I'm magnetically attracted to. Every wrestling fan FEELS for the Brawl For All even if those feelings are utter disdain for everyone involved with it.

The Concept And How Fucked It Was From Jump

To get why this even happened, you have to go back in a time capsule. Despite catching fire in 1998, the WWF (for the purpose of being as thorough as possible here, we're gonna call 'em as they were when this happened) is still struggling to keep track with WCW Nitro. They're in the midst of an 83 week long ass eating from Ted Turner's Atlanta based wrestling promotion and "good ideas" are running dry. Understand that at this point the WWF has the single hottest property in the business but that sole property isn't enough to get over the hump vs the NWO, the cruiserweights, an ascending Bill Goldberg, Bret Hart, the return of Sting and what was genuinely just a better overall card. Even if Wrestlemania 14 gave birth to so many great stories going forward (Austin vs McMahon, the hard reboot of DX as a faction, Kane vs Undertaker's first match), WCW is in the midst of its highest grossing year ever. Vince McMahon has James Harden putting up 50 points a night and winning on his back but he's still looking up to the Golden State Warriors. Making matters worse, both companies are in the pro wrestling equivalent of an arms race.  Remember how when the UFC and Bellator in 2014 and 2015 signed anybody with a pulse because they were trying to fill up two insanely bloated schedules? It's a bit like that. Anybody who is good (and not a walking flag factory so to speak) is either in WWE or WCW at this point which means if you ONLY have two hours of content, you've got a lot of guys doing nothing.

The Brawl For All on its surface and without malice seems like an awful idea to try and remedy that. Pit sixteen dudes in a shoot tournament and let them go at it with set rules in place. It gets guys on TV, gives them something to do and at the end, in theory, the winner doesn't just get a big financial prize but come out in the end as a star. It's a chance to do something with a section of guys who are doing absolutely nothing at all. Sounds good, riiiiight? Well now let's break into some sexy rumor mongering about what this really was about:

-We can start with the mastermind! Vince Russo is the man who apparently concocted this concept which should be somewhat redeemable if what I laid out above was entirely 100% accurate. It's not entirely the case, even according to Russo's own words. Per Vince Russo, a large reason the Brawl For All came to be was that he had a beef with one of the wrestlers (Bradshaw aka John Bradshaw Layfield aka that guy who got flattened by ring announcer Joey Styles) consistently bloviating that he was the toughest guy in the locker room. Right off the jump, any sort of noble designs are whittled away. Now often in pro wrestling, there's 100 different stories to the same single event often shared by people IN the same room. Imagine how pronounced it is that a) everybody agrees that it was Russo's idea, b) everybody is under the impression that it was over a tiff with a pro wrestling with no shoot fighting experience and c) EVERYBODY agrees it was one of the worst concepts imaginable. The Brawl For All's entire seed was planted not so much out of a design to get guys work and on TV but out of wanting to see a loud dude get punched up. That's insanity out the gate.

-The Brawl For All was by invitation only and depending on who you believe, the process to select wrestlers was rather...exclusive. Bruce Prichard discusses in his podcast with Conrad Thompson that he was the guy who had to round up the talent to fill enough spots in the tournament. Prichard says he had to play to the egos of wrestlers and in a separate interview, Bart Gunn talks about how he got recruited basically by another member of the writing team as well. The name Bart Gunn will become pretty important down the line so jot that down in your notebooks real quick. Wrestlers were recruited with what seems like a pretty easy enough pitch and one I'd imagine that the UFC uses today  with their fighters; basically a "I mean don't you believe you're the toughest dude here?!" and a "We'll pay you!" and we're off to the races. Despite this, the Brawl For All struggled to get people to fill in the spots in no small part due to the fact that no star is going to partake in an absolutely stupid concept like this when they can just make their money being a star. The Brawl For All isn't even a TUF; it's a PFL tournament where all the dudes nobody else wants are lumped into a tournament format with the golden carrot of a $100,000 prize at the end of it.

-Perhaps worth more than the $100,000 prize was the either legit or illegitimate golden carrot of the winner getting to work a program with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Understand that no one single act was as hot and drawing as much money at this time as Steve Austin was. He was the it guy, the biggest star in the business and noway near close to peaking as a talent either. The Brawl For All $100,000 prize? That's cool and all  plus that was basically the downside guarantee for a year's worth of work. The opportunity to work with Stone Cold on a pay per view? That's the big money ticket. That's the opportunity to be a made man like how working with Hogan in the 80s was. For top guys, that opportunity may come along at any given point. Again going back a bit to TUF and the PFL, imagine if the UFC offered eight of its guys the chance to compete in a tournament for $100,000. Enticing! Now imagine the winner gets to fight Conor McGregor on a PPV. Tell me if it doesn't get every guy not named Khabib and Tony Ferguson jumping into it. That would be a great no doubt can't miss opportunity!

EXCEPT

-It was probably a lie. Scratch that. We can factually tell that any sort of Austin match for the winner was a lie since every person involved (sans one) says it was real and the winner never actually got said shot. Imagine if the tournament wasn't build on anything truthful but instead on a "The winner will be in the mix" from Dana White. While Bruce Prichard says there was no official plan for the winner to face Steve Austin, everybody else involved from talent to wrestling guru Jim Cornette seems to suggest there WAS a plan in place for the winner to win. That is, assuming of course, the winner was the guy they thought was going to win all along. More on that in the future but just know that the Brawl For All's fighters were flirted with a hush hush unofficial promise of facing Steve Austin that was probably never going to be fulfilled unless won by a specific party. Bart Gunn says he was told the winner would face Stone Cold and well....more on that at another time. Let's just say sports entertainment and combat sports have a long storied history of perhaps listening to the matchmakers a bit too closely.

-The rules for the Brawl For All? Well those were a mess. According to Bruce Prichard, the rules were still being worked out the week of. According to Steve Blackman (a dude who Bob Holly admits would've won the whole thing), there were plans to allow leg kicks and those rules just happened to get yanked the week of. The glove size seems to change depending on who you ask as the WWF says they were 16 ounce gloves but Bart Gunn argues repeatedly they were 22 ounce gloves. Some of the guys admittedly didn't even think it was a shoot fight either and at least one fighter fought thinking it was a work. According to Bart Gunn, even halfway through the tournament he kept expecting it to be a work suddenly.  The "official" Brawl For All rules had points for takedowns, points for a knockdown and points for more punches thrown across three one minute rounds. The scorecard part doesn't even matter at this point. To be honest, it didn't even matter then.

So let's talk about the big problem here

So imagine putting together a tournament designed around the concept of "Who's the toughest guy!" in a show where the audience is conditioned to believe that the toughest guy is the world champion or if the champion is a heel, the toughest guy is the babyface chasing said champion. We already in theory know who the toughest guy is or at least we're willing to suspend our disbelief. Also if we're to believe that the winner of the tournament is the toughest guy in the company, why aren't the big name tough guys we've been told are the tough guys competing in it? The concept falls flat right there on its own but the hole isn't deep enough. We gotta go from six feet to nine feet so now imagine that you've come up with this concept that pees on the first rule of your product. Make it worse. Make it so that the audience is being told to believe that what they see HERE AND ONLY HERE is legitimate.  NOTHING is as frustrating in pro wrestling as "a shoot." For those not addicted to sports entertainment meth, a shoot is something on the program that the audience is led to believe is real. Now for something to be "real" on a show that's already "real" then that in turn means what we're seeing is fake, right? So a "real fight" on pro wrestling ultimately means that what we're seeing is fake. Now most wrestling fans since the 70s and 80s have probably believed wrestling in some form or fashion is/was not real. We accept it as entertainment and as Jerry Jarrett once lovingly put it "theater of the illiterate." The key is to not remind us that what we're seeing is clearly fake (a problem wrestling fans seem to be having right now with Ronda Rousey). Reminding the audience that what they're saying is predetermined scripted fakeness and then asking them to invest into the REAL portion of the product that breaks their illusion only works if a star is doing it. It doesn't work if a bunch of random dudes and mid carders are doing it. Imagine if in the middle of one of those UFC Embedded gimmicks, we saw Conor McGregor rehearsing the press conference lines and then he went out to try and sell his beef with Cowboy Cerrone as legitimate. You've already hurt the audience's feelings and the Brawl For All actively did that at a time where all WWF fans wanted was to watch Stone Cold kick ass and DX make inappropriate jokes. You've brought DOWN the segment.

So now we're nine feel into the hole. Let's go sixteen feet deep. Nope! Let's go from here to fuckin' middle earth on this bad boy; pro wrestling is a TEAM effort. It requires two or more able bodied people to work together to create a magnificent fake fight spectacle that tells a story and ends with you becoming emotionally invested in its finish and what's to come. That requires participation. Now come up with a tournament where guys are going to beat the holy shit out of one another FOR REAL and then have to go back to participating with one another as if nothing happened! Every single wrestler involved in the Brawl For All has spoken about the bad blood and residual effects the Brawl For All had. Also remember these are not trained fighters either. Some of these guys are amateur wrestlers who probably haven't done that for years. Some dudes dabbled in kickboxing or BJJ on their spare time or in years outside of wrestling had some formal combat sports . Some of these guys were bodybuilders by trade and some of these dudes were just pro wrestlers who happened to have a few "So and so cleaned out a bar room with one hand and six beers!" type magical fishing trip stories. So you're taking a bunch of ego driven (some chemically enhanced) guys and sending them out there to beat each other up on a Monday or a Tuesday and then magically get over it in time to make the house show loop where they're going to team together. We've officially come out the other end through China, folks.

And yet despite all of this very obvious right in front of our faces warning signs, the Brawl For All existed.

Next time we'll talk about who was in it a bit more---and why IF the Brawl For All had a true tertiary motive designed to elevate one guy to superstardom, it was an even bigger failure than humanly possible.

[thesportssoundoff]

“No but seriously, he has one eye” The Brawl For All Combatants Ordered Out!

So a few weeks ago, I presented you with a beginning outline of what I'm aiming to do here. A chance to take a long look at the Brawl For All; a concept so insiduous that I imagine even Vince McMahon has aimed to bury it in the deepest recesses of his mind. The first time out we looked at its genesis, the concepts and the back stories beyond the concepts:

http://thesportssoundoff.tumblr.com/post/183395306465/what-happens-when-you-take-a-bad-idea-and-make-it

NOW let's take a long look at who participated, who didn't participate and the fallacy behind the entire project IF rumors are to be believed.

A Hot Take To Lead Us Off

This is something I long theorized but a long look at the people involved in the Brawl For All confirmed it for me. So by and large, the Brawl For All was a stupid dumb concept. Agreed, right? Well what if it could've worked elsewhere? Now again the rules are dumb, the genesis behind it was dumb, everything about it from stem to stern is full of stupidity. Allow me to argue that it COULD have worked; just not in the WWF. When you see the roster the WWF was working with here, it's not going to blow you away on paper and we obviously have a mighty fine idea of how the execution went. What about a different Brawl For All roster? Saaay (in 1998 when this happened):

Rick or Scott Steiner- Decorated All American wrestlers for the University of Michigan Scott Norton- Legitimate tough guy bad ass professional arm wrestler, former bodyguard of Prince Jerry Flynn- Taekwando practitioner, former mixed martial artist Earnest Miller- Three time karate champion Glacier- Professional karate man dude prior to pro wrestling Brian Knobbs/Jerry Saggs- The JBL's of WCW in more ways than one seemingly Meng- All time legendary tough guy and bar room savage Barbarian- Genuine tough guy El Dandy- Jam Up Guy Serious Professional All Around Good Man

Plus the other litany of guys who were noted shooters or tough guys on the undercard. Let's also be fair and note that the South was a touch more receptive to the UFC at this point in time than say the East Coast as well. Perhaps it could've worked with a better roster and perhaps WCW, with its glut of shooters and tough guys respected in the industry, would've been better suited for a Brawl For All.

Or maybe it's just a stupid fucking idea with no merit. That too.

So who DIDN'T participate?

Well let's start with the very beginning and work our way back. Let's talk about some of the guys who just opted NOT to participate. For starters, the big stars were obviously not going to partake in this. Right off the jump you have to assume Undertaker, Austin, DX, The Rock, Kane, Mankind, Vader and the like are not going to be participating. This was about giving a bunch of guys they kind of didn't give a shit about something to do so that meant no sacrificing top stars. It was filler programming and obviously everybody doing important shit was busy doing important shit. Also of note was that the WWF did not want originally the likes of Dan Severn, Steve Blackman and Ken Shamrock in it. Ken apparently wasn't interested and made the argument that it didn't benefit him given the fact that he was a genuine UFC star still to take a pit stop in pro wrestling. At the same time, Dan Severn was asked not to participate at first and then had to be coerced into taking a spot when injuries happened. The same goes for Steve Blackman who was signed up after a few drop outs occurred, primarily due to the promise of Blackman being allowed to throw kicks in the tournament. The dropouts are hard to pinpoint but Tiger Ali Singh is one of the more notorious ones per Bob Holly. I've also read around that Ahmed Johnson was at one point supposed to be in it but I've never been able to confirm that (or remember the shoot interview that it was mentioned in). The point is that on its face, the Brawl For All was going to be a shoot fighting tournament without the two genuine proven shoot fighters in case you're curious about the true idea behind it.

Also as an MMA fan, I can't help but notice the # of "I was a last minute addition" stories these guys have. Lord knows that has to be a common thing said by guys like Sean Shelby and Mick Maynerd to get some of these fights done. I'd imagine that "We need a guy and you're going to help us out!" sweet talk happens to this day. My immediate thought is that they were either a) having a tough time filling spots in the Brawl For All and started telling people they were in need of last minute additions or b) most of these guys regret doing it and figure saying they were last minute replacements helps take the edge off.

So who WAS in?

We got sixteen names so buckle up and pour a drink or two.

8-Ball- Ron Harris aka 1/2 of The Blu Brothers aka Vince Russo's Creative Control. Vince Russo has never been a master of subtlety and so I suppose it's no surprise that one of his top angles was "Gang Warz" pitting an all white stable (The DOA) vs an all Puerto Rican tag team (Los Boricuas) vs a mostly all black tag team (the Nation Of Domination). Needless to say, Vince Russo makes it hard to defend him sometimes. To my knowledge neither Ron nor brother Don have any sort of proven fighting experience and the less said about them (and their tattoos), the better off we'll be. Ron (and Don) were rumored to have threatened Shawn Michaels on their last night in the WWF in the 90s, a rumor that seems to be corroborated by at least a few folks.

Steve Blackman- Most of the dudes who talk about the Brawl For All admit that this guy probably wins it all things being equal. Blackman had a legit karate background with some muay thai and amateur wrestling mixed in. Besides Blackman somehow overcame being bedridden for two years with malaria to become a legitimate pro wrestler so needless to say if it's a "Who wants it more?" shoot type deal, he's going to cover the grit and grind department well. Blackman is also rumored to have once taken down The Big Show and held him down until Show begged him to let him up which is akin to Bob Backlund apparently getting the Iron Sheik down and sitting on him until he either lost interest or was asked to let him up. Steve Blackman is by all intents and purposes a badass.

Bradshaw- Apparently the inspiration behind this atrocity depending upon who you ask. Bradshaw's reputation is marred now with incidents of bullying (real or fabricated), pro wrasslin' racism (goosestepping in Germany to get heat, some other old school heel shenanigans) and borderline dangerous behavior like blindsiding the Blue Meanie and beating the shit out of him when Meanie thought it was a working brawl. At this point though, none of that is really widespread and Bradshaw is just a fake Stan Hansen who looks tough and stiffs the hell out of people. He's about to eventually turn into a mute member of the Undertaker's industry before he comes a heel mercenary for hire before they turn into FUN beer drinking cigar smoking mercenaries for hire before turning into a Wall Street rich Texan chasing Mexicans "at the border" to get heat for a feud with Eddie Guerrero. I suppose you cant say Bradshaw didn't earn it at least.

Brakkus- Wooof. Brakkus was a massive German bodybuilder who apparently didn't quite understand that the Brawl For All wasn't worked. The WWF had big plans for Brakkus (if they send you to Memphis to work for Lawler in the USWA, it probably means they had a long term vision for him) but he sucked and no matter where they sent him, he continued to suck. He was bad in Memphis, was bad in ECW and ultimately this feels like an attempt to just do something with him. Again though, how good you are as a pro wrestler doesn't matter in the Brawl For All. It was about legit fighting----and Brakkus apparently according to Savio Vega had no idea he was in a real fight. Keep that in mind.

Mark Canterbury- I have NO idea why Henry O. Godwinn is listed on wikipedia by his real name but fuck it, here he is! So full blindspot up front, I LOVED Henry O' Godwinn as a kid. He carried around a slop bucket, poured what looked like puke on people, wrestled in overalls which helped him stand out and it sort of gets lost in the fact that he was given a dumb gimmick (In the mid 90s, it felt like the WWE was acknowledging how big of a slide it was in because every human being had a side hustle) that Godwinn could absolutely work. Here's Godwinn vs Bret Hart in a killer match btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9vihPkNmLM. This was before Vince Russo and company turned them from a fun midcard act into a gross-ish play on Vince McMahon's distaste for southerners. Oh and also! Henry Godwin PROBABLY is doing this with a  still kinda broken neck. He broke it in 1997, was told to take three months or more off (Godwinn gives numbers ranging from ten weeks to sixteen weeks) and he just showed back up in less than two months to work through it. Keep that in mind.

Droz- A tragic story all in all which we'll get to eventually. Droz at this point is basically coming out of a dead angle with the LOD where he was written in storyline to be feeding drugs (and whatever else) to Road Warrior Hawk in an attempt to take his place in the Legion Of Doom. If it sounds awful it's because it was and while MAYBE a good writer can make that work, we're talking about the WWF in 1998 trying to soap opera a drug pusher/drug abuse victim angle. It ultimately ended with Droz shoving Road Warrior Hawk off the titantron while Hawk was attempting to commit suicide. Again, it's as bad as you'd believe. Droz had a college football background but that's about it unless I missed some boxing or kickboxing background.

The Godfather- By all accounts the Godfather is a badass. He was hip to MMA before the UFC really caught on, was a freakishly devoted bodybuilder and he just looks like the sort of guy who would take very little shit from anybody. The Godfather is about to become THE Godfather as he's transitioning from Kama Mustafa and the Nation Of Domination's actually good muscle enforcer (Mark Henry is bad around this time and would continue to be such until about 2009 or so) but at this point I'd imagine the writing is on the wall for most of the NOD guys that the Rock is about to leave them in the dust and this group is going to theoretically die a death. The Godfather is about to take a seriously big turn but FIRST, the Brawl For All!

Bart Gunn- At this point, Bart Gunn is doing nothing. Basically nothing. One could even say less than nothing. Bart Gunn is in The New Midnight Express, an angle that Vince Russo has claimed was apparently a way to shut up Jim Cornette and prove to him that old style wrestling couldn't work in 1998. Bart Gunn was apart of the Smoking Gunns and according to him, he had toughman contest experience. Apparently Bart Gunn got brought into the Brawl For All because Kevin Kelly had seen him wear out big guys in Tampa and per Billy Gunn, Bart was the sort of dude who could wipe out a bar room full of people if need be. That said it's not like Bart had any boxing experience or what have you.

Hawk- Another noted tough dude and one of pro wrestling's weirdest mysteries. Every old school dude be it Kevin Sullivan, Jim Cornette or Paul Heyman raves about Hawk as a talent and claims he could've been a major marquee attraction as a singles wrestler. Kevin Sullivan in particular claims that had he had the opportunity to work with Hawk and freshen him up as a singles wrestler, he could've been an Undertaker-esque attraction who drew money across multiple character iterations. Hawk is coming off his personal demons storyline which I mentioned before that sucked. At this point, he and Animal have broken down and are in serious need of repairs from a physical and character standpoint.

Bob Holly- Bradshaw and Bob Holly in the same tournament and somehow they didn't face off? In 2019, I imagine people would be rooting for a double KO (although Bob's image has softened with fans since leaving the WWE) but at this point Bob Holly is just trying to figure shit out in his career. He's teaming with Bart Gunn in the New Midnight Express after sputtering out (HA HA) as a race car driver. Bob Holly is another dude who by in large is just known as a tough guy with a bit of a bully streak tendency behind that reputation. Owner of the wrestling world famous "YOU GOT TWENTY FOUR HOURS TO LEARN HOW TO FIGHT, BITCH!" threat to Rene Dupree before he kicked the shit out of him over parking tickets.

Marc Mero- The story of Marc Mero is a rough one with a happy ending. Marc Mero was really over in WCW as Johnny B. Badd, a Little Richard knock off with a Badd Blaster that shot confetti. Johnny B. Badd was so over that Vince paid him big money to be Johnny B. Badd----only for someone to smarten him up that Johnny B. Badd was a WCW trademark so he had paid for a guy who was trained from jump to do ONE role his whole career. Marc Mero was pretty over and underrated as a wrestler (I SWEAR BY THIS) before his knees gave in. Making matters worse for him was that his wife, Rena, was the women's face of the Attitude Era as Sable. According to Jim Cornette, Marc Mero was trying to be a good husband and help get his super over wife even MORE over---so he took a powerbomb from her on TV. Mero's future big money opponent was Stone Cold who happened to be  watching the show at the time from home. Apparently Austin called up Vince McMahon and immediately asked who he would be working with on next week's Raw since he wasn't going to do any business with Mero after eating a powerbomb on TV from his wife. I don't know if this was before or after the Brawl For All though so take that for what it's worth. Either way, Mero is doing a boxing gimmick now (he is apparently a reputable legit golden gloves champion) and so it makes sense he'd be in the Brawl For All.

Pierre- This is a real shootfight tournament. Actual punches are being thrown and takedowns are implemented. This is, again, a legitimate shoot fight----and so of course one of the dudes involved in the shoot fight is missing an eye. Quebeccer Pierre/Pierre Carl Oulette/Jon Pierre Lefitte is missing an eye and was competing in a shoot tournament WITH one eye. We're not talking Michael Bisping fighting with a damaged eye for years on end, we're talking about an actual lack of an eye. This happened, people. We'll talk more about Pierre (and his amazing story in 2019) but right now in 1998, he's JAG who is bouncing between WCW and WWF looking for something to do. He's also at this point known as the guy who refused to put Kevin Nash over in 1995 despite Nash being the face of the company. PCO is the original Bret Hart, refusing to job in Canada.

Scorpio- I gotta admit I have no idea what Scorpio is doing here. I bet he doesn't know either if we're being truthful. Scorpio is one of those guys who was ahead of his time but seemed incapable of staying on the right path (whatever that means in wrestling) to get what he was due. He had come into the WWF in 1997 as Flash Funk and so I imagine Flash Funk was over and he's just killing time until the Job Squad angle.  Scorpio is apparently a legit tough guy (or madman depending on who you ask) and held a 1-0 unofficial record over Hawk after he beat the shit out of him in WCW.

Dan Severn- Dan Severn was told he wouldn't even be allowed to participate and then was told the day OF the taping that he was needed to take a spot. Severn is not too far removed from being a UFC everything (champion, tournament winner etc etc) and so he's for the most part a prospective favorite. That's probably why he wasn't asked to compete at first I'd imagine since the plan was PERHAPS to get somebody else over. Another rumor is that Severn is such a boring plain dude with a boring plain style (Severn admits his plan was to never throw a punch and just grapple people) that if he had won, there would've been no payoff in it.

Savio Vega- I have NO idea if Savio Vegas has a professional sports background or what the deal was. Apparently Savio Vegas asked to be in it and was also the unofficial official matchmaker (he drew the names out of a hat) and he's Puerto Rican so he's got my rooting interest right away. I think Los Boricuas at this point were in full swing and Savio was obviously the head of said stable. Gang Warz was dumb as hell.

Steve Williams- And we reach the FINAL name. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Steve Williams was a former football player at the University of Oklahoma and one of the more decorated wrestlers in Oklahoma history. He had carved out a niche in Japan by this point after establishing himself as a star in Mid South with the occasional stop off in the NWA/Jim Crockett Promotions/various regional feds and start ups. Williams didn't have any official fighting background but he was a crazy good wrestler and by all accounts a ridiculous bad ass. Jim Cornette tells stories of Dr. Death fighting fans and laying bodies to waste with little to no effort. He was also extremely popular with people in the WWF office, namely Jim Ross and Jim Cornette. Bruce Prichard doesn't QUITE say that the WWF thought Dr. Death would win the Brawl For All but he does a damn good enough impression of Jim Ross advocating for Steve Williams that I have to believe it. Vince Russo has spoken in the past about Steve Williams being Jim Ross' "boy" and how this was basically his way of seeing whether Jim Ross was right. Bob Holly has said that they were already doing vignettes with Barry Switzer and interviews as if Dr. Death won the Brawl For All. Dr. Death claims that the Triple H push of 1999 was the one Vince had promised him before the Brawl For All.

All of this brings me to my final point.....

Dr. Death was never going to be a big star in the WWF

I truly hate to speak ill of the dead and I'm trying hard no to either. Let's just speak from a more realistic pragmatic grounded stance. The kind of talent that was getting over in 1999 falls into three distinct categories. The first were talkers, guys and gals who could rap so to speak and had tremendous presence. Promo guys could carry the day and even IF you gave Dr. Death a Jim Ross to do the talking for him, let's not forget that by 1998 at this point in July there's basically just one manager actually doing anything as a talker and that's Paul Bearer. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams was not a talker and even if he was, he's certainly not the kind of talker who would fit in Vince McMahon's WWF. The second were guys who were big with "the look" according to Vince McMahon. Pull up a picture of every top star in 1998 for the WWF and then slide Dr. Death in there and ask if he fits the mold. He's unique for sure and there's the Mick Foley outlier----but imagine how long it took Mick Foley to be seen as legitimate by Vince McMahon. Even if Dr. Death is the definition of a Jim Ross style Hoss, he looks woefully out of date by 1998 standards. He in many ways, like a lot of guys who frequently toured Japan and basically were behind on the times, looked like he had been left in 1988. Lastly there were the gimmick guys; the Undertaker, Kane, The Rock, DX, Austin etc etc. Dr. Death's gimmick was that he was an ass kicker which is great but AGAIN we are to believe every human being in the WWF at this time is an ass kicker. Maybe Vince and company would've found a way to get something out of him but the chances are that Dr. Death would've never been a big star. Could he have feuded with Stone Cold? Surely! A big money draw? A multi million dollar hit? I just don't see it. Can't imagine it. Also let's be fair here, how toned down would his style have been for the WWF at the time as well? Is he going to suplex Steve Austin around after Stone Cold broke his neck? I'm not quite buying that either.

So there's your sixteen. You got a few amateur wrestlers ten years beyond their competitive days, a boxer or two, a toughman contest guy, a few dudes who dabbled in kickboxing and a man with legitimately one eye. You've got the guy who the company thinks SHOULD win it. So who won the fuckin' thing? How did they win it?

That's for next time.