Shooters

by Jonathan Snowden

  “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Mr. T had learned that lesson the hard way at WrestleMania 2 back in 1985. The two stars had a fixed boxing match, but could barely lift their arms after a few minutes in the ring. Boxing was hard stuff and used a set of muscles that are dormant in most people, even athletes like the great WWF performers who were used to tough physical activity.

  Layfield’s opponent was Mark Cantebury, another giant wrestler who was playing a farmer called Henry Godwin. It was a role that required him to wrestle in the mud and get dumped in pig swill and suffer various livestock-related indignities. The two went toe to toe, at least for a matter of moments. Then they started heaving for breath. In the Observer, Meltzer was less than impressed: “Bradshaw was awarded the decision over Cantebury, although if you kept score, it should have been a draw, as Bradshaw won two of the three rounds, giving him a 10–5 edge, but Cantebury did take him down once. There was a period in the second round where Bradshaw rocked Cantebury, although he never knocked him down. That was more like watching a low level toughman contest as two big guys banged away with no form or skill, and even with the short one minute rounds, both were noticeably gassing 40 seconds into it.”

  Meltzer’s Pro Wrestling Torch counterpart, Wade Keller, was immediately excited by the prospects, not just for the company, but for the wrestlers who were stuck on the undercard with seemingly no escape: “The fans reacted to the Mero-Blackman shootfight Brawl for All with boos in part because they didn’t know it was a shoot. Once it is established that the matches are shoots, fans will probably be much more receptive, even if the wrestlers involved aren’t over. Some, though, will remain upset because they just want to see acrobatic style pro wrestling. I really like the concept of shoot fights for a number of reasons. One, it is novel and intriguing to watch. Two, it will inspire some mid-card wrestlers to get into better shape. Three, someone languishing on the undercard could get over after a few impressive fights. Will the WWF have to become regulated again in the states where they have fought so hard to be deregulated? Or will they claim the real fights are fake, too?”

  As reporters began to dig, the real reason for the Brawl for All came to light. It wasn’t just a tournament to keep wrestlers on the undercard busy, or even a scheme to draw all important television ratings. The idea was to catapult one man to stardom: recent import “Dr. Death” Steve Williams.

  The Doctor

  In the 1980s, two men stood out in the American wrestling scene, both revered by their peers as the toughest guys in the business. Williams was a legendary figure in the industry. A former football star at the University of Oklahoma, and a four-time wrestling All-American in his spare time between football seasons, he was considered unbeatable. The only one in his class was Tonga Fifita, who wrestled in the WWF as Haku.

  Haku was a mild-mannered guy — unless you insulted the wrestling business. That was his trigger. Unfortunately for loudmouths across the country, wrestlers hanging out at a bar tended to attract notice and jealous catcalls. Haku had his own way of dealing with the debate about whether wrestling was real or fake.

  “When I walk in and you tell me it’s fake, I’ll show you how fake the business is,” Haku said. “Whether I take your teeth out or take your eyeballs off or whatever it was in those days. Maybe they’re going to kick my butt around, but watch it — I’m coming back and finding you. But those were those days. I’m glad nobody picked up a gun and shot my ass. But in those days, that’s how it was.”

  Haku’s most legendary battle didn’t happen in the ring or battling his way through a throng of angry fans to get back to the locker room. His legend was born at a hotel near the Baltimore Airport. That’s where he introduced a hapless opponent to the Tongan version of “got your nose.”

  “When they were ready to close, we had a few drinks, and on our way out there were five guys just sitting there,” Haku remembered. “Of course, the same thing came out. The ‘fake’ stuff. ‘Hey, are you guys with those guys — wrestlers? The fake wrestlers on TV?’ You know. I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll show you.’ And I reached over without thinking . . . grabbed his face, and bit his nose off. Then the fight started. Me and Silva kind of cleaned house there and left. I’ll never forget it.”

  Williams didn’t have a fight quite that insane in his wrestling scrapbook. But he had more than 20 years of strongman feats and bar brawls to sustain his reputation. His legend started all the way back at Lakewood High School, where he broke his nose in a match but finished the season wearing a hockey mask, earning his Dr. Death nickname. Williams may have been the best heavyweight wrestler of his generation. Wrestling only part time in college, and having joined the team with the season already in progress, he competed against men who were wrestling full time. Despite the tremendous disadvantages, Williams pinned top stars like Dan Severn and took future Olympic champion Bruce Baumgartner to the limit in the 1982 NCAA Finals, falling 4–2 in the final match. Meltzer says the heavyweight limit in college wrestling was created with Williams in mind: “The top coaches were wanting to impose a weight limit on the heavyweight division, because the feeling was the 400-pound heavyweights who couldn’t really move but also couldn’t be moved easily, were leading to dull matches and making the heavyweight division appear to not be athletic. They decided to come up with an upper weight limit, and few know this, but it was Steve Williams, the 285-pound weight limit in the heavyweight division, which still exists to this day, came from. Williams entered the tournament that year at 285 pounds. Most of the real athletic heavyweights were around 240, but there was no denying Williams was quick, powerful, and conditioned at 285, so the feeling at the time was that was the heaviest weight you could maintain still being a great athlete at.”

  Williams came up in Bill Watts’ Mid-South Wrestling. It was a hard gig, one with long miles and violent audiences. When the oil riggers and other crusty men who made their living in Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana got riled up, the action outside the ring was often more violent than anything that happened in the squared circle. The heels needed police escorts just to make it to the back alive. Unless you were Williams and partner Hercules Hernandez, who together once took on 10 fans at one time — and battered them all on their way to the back for a beer.

  Williams recalled, “I told [opponent] Ricky Morton he better hurry up and beat me. Because those raging cajuns were coming over the barricade. We got to the back and someone had locked the door to the heels’ dressing room. When you’re a heel down in the south, a lot of crazy stuff can happen. We were fighting to survive. That’s just how the business was back then, when we had the people.”

  Watts liked his performers tough, and Williams was his favorite. He saw something of himself in the young star. Both were Oklahoma graduates and big strong guys. But that hardly made Williams unique in that territory. “It was all tough guys,” Williams remembered. “Ex football players, former wrestlers, bouncers.” Like most pro wrestlers, the boys liked to relax after the matches at the nearest bar, but the locals had other ideas, often wanting to try their luck with the big wrestlers. Watts had no problem with the wrestlers handling their business — as long as they came out on top. Said Watts, “If you got into a fight at a bar, I didn’t care, but if you lost I fired you. It was that simple — if you were going to go out and make an ass of yourself, you’d better win.”

  Williams was built like a fireplug. He was solid muscle, the functional kind that could do real damage. His was not the lean and cut figure that would end up defining the wrestling industry in the post–Hulk Hogan generation. He was simply big and his strength was put on display for the world to see. Fellow wrestlers were marks for the strongman act every bit as much as the fans. Williams would take a huge wrestler like Ray “Big Bubba” Rogers and press him over his head five or six times, never even changing the expression on his face.

  Williams was a rough-and-tumble performer, what other wrestlers called “stiff.” When you finished a match with
“Dr. Death” you felt it. Combined with an interview style that didn’t fit into the more flamboyant “sports entertainment” McMahon created in the 1980s, Williams was lucky to find the perfect home for a man of his talents in Japan. Wrestling for Shohei “Giant” Baba’s All Japan Pro Wrestling, Williams became one of the most popular foreign attractions in a country that loved its professional wrestling.

  Williams and tag team partner Terry Gordy were dubbed the Miracle Violence Combination. While some of the Japanese nicknames for American wrestlers sounded goofy in English, this one was spot-on. Williams and Gordy were indeed a particularly brutal team, perfect for a promotion that was upping the ante on extreme stunts and ultra-violent matches. Williams became the promotion’s champion in 1994, beating the top Japanese star Mitsuharu Misawa in a fantastic match in Tokyo.

  Drugs plagued both Gordy and Williams throughout their careers. Williams was arrested multiple times at airports with steroids and other pills, but those arrests came in the United States. He was busted with pot at the Narita Airport in Japan, a serious crime in that country that often involves major prison time and would usually prevent a foreigner from ever returning to the country.

  “It was a bad mistake. I was involved in a lot of drugs and a lot of alcohol back then,” Williams admitted. “It almost cost me my career with that company and it ended up taking Terry’s life.”

  Williams served a one-year suspension and Baba was able to pull strings to get him back into Japan the next year. But the damage was done — his career as a Japanese headliner was effectively over.

  In 1998, Ross was able to talk Williams into joining him in the WWF. Once Watts’ right hand man, Ross now served in the same capacity for McMahon. He was in a position of power and could promise Williams he would get a fair shake in an organization stocked top to bottom with fiercely political stars who would lobby hard to keep their positions as the WWF’s top stars.

  “Ross was a University of Oklahoma football mark. He loved everyone that came out of that program, me included,” Williams said. “He loved all that stuff.”

  The Brawl for All was supposed to be Williams’ ticket to the main event for a promised program with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. His reputation was so huge, his legend so large, that it seemed like a given he would win, despite being 38 with almost 20 years of hard wear on his big body. Williams wasn’t sure about the concept, but the lure of big money was calling his name. He says he was promised $100,000 to take the tournament. Meltzer reported $75,000. Either sum was a pretty figure for a man whose career seemed on its last legs.

  Originally Williams was the one ringer in the tournament. Neither Dan Severn nor Ken Shamrock, two UFC veterans, were considered. Shamrock was too big a star and Severn was thought to have too much of an advantage. Williams had actually beaten Severn in the past in amateur contests but was years removed from his glory days.

  “I was pressured to do it by who I am in the business,” explained Williams. “Because I was the strongest guy in wrestling and the toughest man in the business for so many years. I was worried about hurting one of their guys. In a shoot you can go for a takedown and take out a guy’s knee like that. Instead, that happened to me.”

  The Best Laid Plans

  By the time Williams made his first appearance in the tournament, fans had seen three weeks’ worth of fights. It wasn’t a huge success, but it wasn’t a failure either. It maintained ratings, keeping the status quo, but that was deceiving. It was maintaining those ratings with what was considered second-rate talent, guys who would normally have hundreds of thousands of viewers clicking over to WCW’s competing program Monday Nitro.

  Puerto Rican star Savio Vega was the most impressive of the first round competitors in the early going, battering the overly muscular Brakus and bloodying his nose. It was an instructive moment for wrestling fans. Brakus was muscle-bound and shredded, 300 pounds with almost no body fat. Vega seemed doughy in comparison, one of the few WWF wrestlers who competed with his shirt on to protect the world from his jiggling chest. But none of that muscle could help Brakus defend a punch or a takedown, and Vega dominated.

  Vega recalled, “We all sat down before and they told us, ‘This is okay, this is not okay.’ One of the things they said was no kicks. I was like, ‘What? Come on.’ Because the only guy who knew how to kick was me . . . Brakus, he was a nice person. He thought it was going to be a work. I told him, ‘No, brother.’ After that he was mad at me.”

  Fans were starting to become intrigued by the Brawl for All concept, but two names dominated the conversations — Severn and Shamrock. Originally prohibited from throwing their hats in the competition, both were invited to participate. Shamrock, who was rising up the ranks and already a star, declined. He was a professional fighter and knew that he hadn’t trained for a fight. Severn, whose calm and laid-back persona wasn’t getting over with WWF fans, jumped at the opportunity.

  “When they first announced the concept they said, ‘Ken and Dan, you’re not going to be a part of this.’ A few weeks later they gave me a call and said, ‘Do you want to be in the Brawl for All? I asked, ‘How much?’ They gave me a figure and I said, ‘Sure.’ It was that easy. A no-brainer,” explained Severn.

  His fight with the “Godfather” Charles Wright showed that it wasn’t just wrestling fans who had lost touch with their amateur wrestling roots — the announcers had too. Even Ross, who had been such a fan of Hodge, Jack Brisco, and Williams, didn’t seem to recognize what he was watching. Severn took the Godfather down twice in the first round, even going so far as to turn him over and pin him, clearly not understanding the rules didn’t allow for much actual wrestling.

  Ross and announcing partners Jerry Lawler and Shawn Michaels seemed clueless. Because Severn was using simple takedowns, and not outrageous suplexes or high amplitude throws, the threesome seemed unsure whether they were takedowns at all. Despite what should have been a dominant win, the announce crew called the bout like it was a Godfather win. When the former UFC champion Severn had his hand raised in the end, the crowd seemed more perplexed than impressed. When the tournament moved into the next round, the Godfather was the one moving forward despite a loss. Severn watched from the sidelines.

  “It was pretty lackluster. You couldn’t really do much with those giant 20-ounce gloves,” Severn admits. “I did the one match and then I was pulled out of it. I would just be speculating if I told you I knew why. Maybe because he was just a street brawler and would go out there and give them the kind of brawl they wanted. It was just cheap entertainment so maybe they just wanted a couple of chuckos to entertain them. The guys in the back were loving it.”

  Williams agreed. “The office loved seeing the boys beat on each other. Severn, I wrestled him in the amateurs, he was a pinning artist out there. He would take him down and hold them there. The WWF, they didn’t like that.”

  While it took years for wrestling to devolve into fixed matches back in the 1800s, it took only weeks in the zany world of the WWF Brawl for All. Tag team partners and friends Bob Holly and Bart Gunn had Brawl for All’s first worked match, following Severn’s snoozefest with the Godfather. Gunn was a slugger with toughman experience. Holly just wanted to get through unscathed. It would turn out to be the only match where Gunn went the distance. Holly was his only opponent to make it to the final bell.

  The next week Williams made his highly anticipated debut. He wrecked Pierre Ouellet, a French Canadian wrestler who was no match for Williams standing or on the mat. The fight raised some important questions about the entire tournament. For years the WWF had protested the heavy hand of state athletic commissions who insisted on regulating professional wrestling even though it was clearly performance art. They had succeeded in removing that regulation by admitting to the world that wrestling was merely entertainment and not sport. But now that they were promoting combat sports, it became clear some guiding hand was needed. Ouellet had lost his right
eye in a firearms accident when he was just 12 years old. He had no business in the ring in a competitive situation. Not only could he have been blinded if something had happened to his left eye, but a boxer without proper depth perception couldn’t possibly see punches coming. Ouellet was not alone. Vega had entered the tournament with a serious neck injury that was exacerbated by the tough competition. Dr. Death was also a physical mess. At his 20-year high school reunion he was in so much pain standing he couldn’t even spend an hour with old friends. Williams and Ouellet both survived without serious injury, but despite a dominant win, Williams didn’t feel comfortable with the rules or where this could be heading.

  “I was an amateur wrestler. I was never a boxer,” Williams said. “When you wear those gloves, when you cover up your palms, the wrestler can’t do nothing. I mean, I’ll fight you, but I’m no boxer. And with the gloves I couldn’t hook onto the guy, couldn’t grab him.”

  In the second round of the tournament, Williams was dethroned as wrestling’s toughest man by the unheralded Bart Gunn. Gunn hadn’t turned heads in his first-round performance and was thought to be an easy mark for Williams. The loss sent a shockwave through the entire promotion and Meltzer called it one of the most shocking moments in recent wrestling history: “Gunn, who has won toughman contests in the past, fought a much smarter fight in beating the tourney favorite. The plan was for Williams to win this tourney to set him up as a challenger for Austin and as UFC has learned, nobody can predict shoots, especially with the strange rules this has.”

  “DR. DEATH” STEVE WILLIAMS

  © GEORGE NAPOLITANO

  Williams was ahead 15–0 in the second round when disaster struck. “He faked a punch and then dropped down to take me down. Half my body went out of the ring, but he still had a hold of my legs. I could feel my hamstring tear and my knee pop,” Williams remembered. “No matter what though, I wasn’t going to quit. I don’t know how to quit. I knew I was hurt. Everyone did. You could see it.”