Dr. Death was saved by the bell and came out fighting in the third round. Essentially immobile, Gunn tore him to shreds, landing a left hook that knocked the All-American out, dislocating his jaw and ending his chance to be a top player in the WWF.
“I immediately got hit and knocked right back down. I didn’t even realize I had been knocked out,” Williams said. “I was just worried about my leg. When I talked to my wife that night she told me I had been knocked out. I didn’t believe her. Not Dr. Death. Tough guy Steve Williams? I’d never been knocked out in my life and I’ve been hit with some heavy stuff. I said, ‘Nah.’ She said, ‘Oh yeah. Your eyes were rolling around in the back of your head. Are you sure you’re okay?’”
It wasn’t what anyone in the office wanted, one of the perils of real sports. Without the ability to pick and choose winners, the unexpected becomes the expected, the unusual the usual. It also divided the locker room. WWF stars may have been fierce competitors behind the scenes, but in the ring they were teammates. As WWF manager the Jackyl wrote in the Winnipeg Sun, this changed the dynamic:
There was also the philosophical issue of pitting the guys against each other in a way that seemed to suggest that the tension backstage could be upped in a dangerous way. We wondered how the fans would react, and what message were we sending them about the traditional pro wrestling that was our livelihood? At the end of all the backstage debate, the bottom line was that nobody knew what was going to take place on live television once that bell rang. Due to the very realistic nature of this concept, there was a “sellout at the monitors” in the back as everyone from Austin to the ring crew guys crowded to get a look at what would happen. As most of us saw, Bart Gunn possesses a left hook and a calm assassin’s demeanor, which perfectly suited the competition, as perhaps it hadn’t suited him in the normal WWF environment.
Gunn may have been the only one not surprised by his win. He had been nervous about participating from the get-go, making sure that the front office wouldn’t be upset if he disrupted their plans for Williams. Bruce Prichard, the WWF employee tasked with putting the tournament brackets together, assured him that the company would be behind him even if he beat Williams.
“I asked if I was going to get any heat,” Gunn recalled. “Obviously you want Steve to win this, based on the vignettes you’re doing. You aren’t paying any attention to the other guys. If you want, why not save me and him until the end, we’ll work it, and I’ll let him beat me. He said, ‘Ah, that won’t be necessary.’”
Gunn was steamed by the perceived lack of respect. Williams paid the price. “Nobody liked it,” Williams said. “The fans didn’t like it. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I was able to make a star out of it, but it wasn’t me. Bart Gunn — God bless the kid. He knocked out a legend.”
The WWF deserves credit for plowing forward with the concept even as their carefully laid plans were thrown awry. “Jim Ross was steaming,” Gunn said. “Jerry Lawler and all these guys were needling him because that’s all Ross had been talking about for weeks: ‘Steve, Steve, Steve.’” Instead of Williams, they seized the moment and pulled Gunn from obscurity. Wade Keller mused over the implications of this unforeseen upset: “WWF fans didn’t care about him a month ago and now he’s probably going to be too over with fans to be held back in the Midnight Express tag team. The goal of the concept was to create something different that made for compelling viewing and to create some new stars from the muddy undercard. Bart is the first to rise above . . . Ross, who is a big proponent of Dr. Death, worked hard to establish that Doc is out of his element with boxing gloves on. He said he’s had his bell rung before and he doesn’t win every fight, but he’ll be back. The WWF had big plans for Doc. I wonder if that will change now? It showed that main-eventers do have something to lose by participating in the shoot fights.”
It wouldn’t have been wrestling if they didn’t try to spice things up a bit though. Gunn did a pull-apart brawl with his semi-final opponent the Godfather just a week before their fight. He also engaged in a war of words with Ross, accusing the announcer of downplaying his win to protect the Oklahoman’s old friend Williams.
“I knocked out Dr. Death Steve Williams with a good left hook,” Gunn said. “And when I go home and watch television, all I hear is you and everybody else making excuses for him.”
On the other side of the bracket, confusion reigned. Darren Drozdov, an unexceptional former football player best known for an uncanny ability to puke on command, advanced despite going to a draw with the 40-something Road Warrior Hawk in the first round. In the commentary Jim Ross explained that Hawk had suffered a broken nose so Droz was selected to continue. He snuck by Savio Vega, who was in no condition to compete, but Droz looked like he’d never even seen a fight before in his life, let alone participated in one.
Marc Mero was also back, despite losing his first round matchup against Steve Blackman. A legitimate martial artist, Blackman was actually serious enough about the contest to train for his second fight. But his preparation backfired when his knee wasn’t up to the strain of training and he was unable to continue. Of course, no one bothered to tell the crowd though, so Mero moved forward with no explanation. Mero, the former boxer, expected to make the most of his second chance, but his opponent Bradshaw was having none of it. The Texan bent the rules, unclear in the first place, to the breaking point, angering wrestling critic Christopher Robin Zimmerman: “Bradshaw’s blatantly cheating, putting Mero in a headlock and rabbit-punching him. Bradshaw gets a takedown for five and Mero again looks to get the five for the most punches. This seems to make Bradshaw look like a damn wuss who wants to take the shortcut to get the win — much like Blackman destroyed Mero pointswise with takedowns and not bothering with punches . . . Bradshaw is announced the winner. What bullshit. It’s completely obvious they WANTED Bradshaw to move on and they made sure he won — it was a fix.”
By the semifinals, critics on the fence initially, like Meltzer, were calling the experiment a success. The ratings were proof that it worked, even though fans in the arenas still weren’t responding positively to the bouts. The human cost, however, was staggering. Drozdov tore a bicep, Vega’s neck never recovered and he was gone from the WWF for good, Williams was out of action for months, and the Godfather suffered a hairline fracture of his ankle after falling awkwardly when Gunn knocked him out in the semifinals. In the other bracket’s semifinals, Bradshaw continued to flout the rules, hitting Drozdov with rabbit punches on his way to winning a razor tight fight.
Bradshaw had made it to the finals by the skin of his teeth. All of his wins were super close, foul plagued, and often controversial. That all came to an end against Gunn in the tournament finale. Bradshaw was competitive in the staredown, as intense as any we’d seen in the competition. Once the bell rang, it was immediately clear he was outclassed. Gunn knocked him down quickly, but he made it to his feet to face the referee’s standing eight count. Bradshaw’s eyes were glazed, but the fight was allowed to continue, albeit not for long. Bradshaw had trouble getting his bearings and was dropped by two more hard punches. It took smelling salts to revive him, and Gunn was suddenly king of the wrestling tough guys.
Gunn won $75,000 for taking the tournament. Bradshaw’s series of tainted wins helped him to the $25,000 prize for second place. But the following months proved Gunn’s fears were warranted after all. There was no big push to the top of the cards after his win. Instead he disappeared from the WWF.
“I’m going, ‘Hey, where’s my run? Where’s my run?’” Gunn said. “And they’re saying, ‘Hey, we don’t know what to do with you. We don’t know how to use you. We’re working on it.’ Meanwhile I’m sitting at home.”
To be fair to Ross and other decision makers, Gunn had never been considered a hot commodity. At the end of the day, his ability to beat up novice wrestlers in a modified toughman contest could only take him so far. His work in the ring and his interviews were lif
eless and uninspired. Almost anyone else could have been propelled to stardom. Bart Gunn, however, just didn’t have it in him.
The company sent him to Japan, the one place besides the WWF back office that beating Williams really meant something. Teaming with Johnny Ace, Gunn finished near the top of All Japan Pro Wrestling’s Real World Tag League, an annual tournament featuring some of the world’s best wrestlers. Gunn looked out of place, several notches below amazing Japanese wrestlers like Kenta Kobashi and veteran Americans like Stan Hansen and Vader.
On the homefront, the WWF’s creative team couldn’t think of a single idea for Gunn. They brought him back for a brief feud with his former partner Holly, even getting a returning Williams to interfere in the match. Now wearing a mask, which apparently made the distinctive Dr. Death unrecognizable to the announce team, Williams was managed by Jim Ross himself. The WWF, especially lead writer Vince Russo, was looking to push Ross out as the lead announcer in favor of Michael Cole. This was his fallback position, and his heart wasn’t in it. Fans were confused by the babyface Ross siding with a masked man who seemed to be a villain. Williams was failing and failing fast. “He was supposed to be my manager and I was supposed to be a heel,” Williams said. “But Jim didn’t like hearing the boos. So we were kind of going nowhere.”
Gunn fared little better. His angle with Holly was scrapped. It was decided Brawl for All was what Gunn did best, so they’d give him one more shot at it — but they wanted to take things up a notch. Instead of pitting Gunn against other wrestlers, the WWF looked to bring in a major combat sports star to take on Gunn at WrestleMania XV. Former UFC sensation David “Tank” Abbott was considered, but the promotion ended up settling on rotund boxer “Butterbean” Eric Esch.
Packing 400 pounds on his 5'11" frame, Butterbean was a gimmick boxer, usually featured in four-round bouts as a TV novelty act before the serious fights started. But appearances can be deceiving — he was a skilled fighter who had once gone to the limit with former champion Larry Holmes. Sure, Holmes was 52 years old at the time, but Butterbean had a lifetime of boxing experience. Gunn had just a few months training with Marc Mero’s old coach in New York.
Incredibly, many fans and wrestlers were picking Gunn to win. At least the ones who believed it would be a real contest. Most thought it would be a worked bout. So did boxing star Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza, who was brought in to referee the fight. Wrestling historian Basil Devito Jr. explains, “Not until shortly before the Brawl for All actually began was Pazienza convinced that Butterbean and Bart Gunn were going to be involved in a legitimate fight; this was not a predetermined event, and I think that surprised Pazienza — he hadn’t come to Philadelphia expecting to handle the responsibilities of a true referee.”
Pazienza didn’t have to work long for his paycheck. Butterbean knocked Gunn down in the first few seconds and them knocked him cold with a huge right hand. It was this knockout, not the tepid live crowd response to the tournament, that killed the Brawl for All. Gunn hadn’t just made himself look bad by losing in a devastating fashion in just 35 seconds. He had made the company, the business, and the boys look bad too. If a joke boxer like Butterbean could beat him, and he beat the other wrestlers so easily, what did that say about the wrestling industry?
The WWF needed a new shot of credibility. Gunn’s had been killed dead by Butterbean’s massive punching power. The disgraced Gunn was shipped off to Japan — permanently — and Dr. Death wasn’t far behind. But the WWF office had a new idea to bring legitimacy to their show. In the months between the beginning of the Brawl for All and the ill-fated WrestleMania showdown, the company signed a wrestler that would turn the business upside down. An Olympic hero, 1996 gold medalist Kurt Angle, was coming to Raw.
24
YOUR OLYMPIC HERO: Kurt Angle
The boos rang down from the rafters, quite a change of pace for the man in the middle of the ring. Just four years earlier the 1996 Olympian had been cheered in this very city, winning the gold medal and impressing the world with his grit and determination. None of that mattered in 2000, not to these wrestling fans. Less than a year into his WWF career, Kurt Angle already had the people right where he wanted them, as he told the crowd in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome how much better he was than their hometown sports heroes like John Rocker or Isaiah Rider.
Angle was the virtuous babyface. Too virtuous. He preached the three I’s (intensity, integrity, and intelligence) and later became an advocate for abstinence. This might have made him a huge babyface in the 1970s. In a wrestling boom spawned by the antihero “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, it made him a heel. Big time.
Angle told Fox Sports, “I was the Olympic hero that saved the nation. Then the fans started booing me because I was coming off like a square. So I started feeding off of that and started to act like more of a square and started preaching to people about my three I’s and they didn’t want to hear it. So I started grinding them about their town and how bad their athletic team sucked and I wasn’t lying. That’s how I came up with the line ‘It’s true.’ I would say, ‘Your team stinks,’ and they would boo, and I’d say, ‘No it’s true, it’s true.’ Before I knew it, I was one of the biggest heels in the business, whereas 15 years ago I would have been a huge babyface. The business has been changing, and you have to change with it.”
Angle adapted to pro wrestling as well as anyone before or since. From the very beginning, the WWF knew it had a star on the rise. Former world champion and WWF trainer Dory Funk Jr. remembers meeting Angle for the first time. “My first opportunity to meet Kurt Angle came in the gym at Titan Tower. I was excited at the opportunity to meet him . . . Our routine was weights in the morning followed by in-ring performance at the WWF studio in the afternoon. Kurt couldn’t wait to get to the ring. He was happy to be there and loved training,” Funk wrote on his blog. “The first thing I told Kurt was that anything he did in amateur wrestling he could work into his professional wrestling career. Kurt executes the best pro fireman’s carriage in wrestling. Kurt is an exceptional athlete. I was a fan and coach of Kurt Angle and respected him for his accomplishments in amateur wrestling, so you can imagine how good I felt after our first practice session when Kurt looked and me and said, ‘Hey, Coach, this sport is hard work, and I love it.’”
He was a natural, an amazing wrestler in the ring who also understood how to capture the fans with his interviews and innate acting talent. Before his first year in the WWF was complete he was already the world champion, taking the title from Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson in October 2000. In just four years with the WWF he was put through the ringer, through indescribable physical pain; through endless political manipulations backstage; through every goofy storyline imaginable. But no story could ever match the story of his life. If you made a Kurt Angle movie, no one would believe it. The tales of his heroism and toughness would seem too impossible, too outlandish to believe.
A Pittsburgh native, Angle attended nearby Clarion University. His heart had been set on football, but too small and a step too slow for major powerhouses like Penn State, he turned his attention to wrestling. In his final three years he finished an amazing 87–2–1. He won an NCAA title in 1990 and finished second in 1991, despite blowing out both knees and being outweighed virtually every time he hit the mat. That just set the stage for his greatest collegiate accomplishment.
Going into the NCAA tournament in 1992, Angle was 26–0. Across the bracket lurked the monstrous Sylvester Terkay. Terkay pushed the 275-pound limit to the breaking point. Angle barely broke 200 pounds most of the season and weighed in at 199 pounds for nationals. While Angle relied on speed and finesse, Terkay was a bruiser. Angle won a series of close matches while Terkay pinned every wrestler he faced, all in the first three-minute period, an unprecedented achievement.
Terkay was one of the best heavyweights of his generation and ended his amateur career with 64 pins and went 122–14 in his time
at N.C. State. In 1993 he would prove unstoppable, finishing 41–0 and winning the 1993 NCAA title, but on a single March afternoon in 1992 he met his match in Kurt Angle, who remembers the contest vividly: “In the final period, the match was tied 1–1. With 18 seconds remaining, I slicked him. I faked one way, ducking under his left armpit, and he sprawled, thinking I was going that way. Instead I went all the way across, under his right armpit, and ducked behind him. I burned him badly with that move. . . . It blew everybody’s mind because it was so quick, and I held on for the final seconds. That quickly, I’d done it. I dropped to my knees and cried that day, the same as I would in the Olympics.”
The Long Road to Atlanta
His college career complete, Angle turned his attention to learning the freestyle game. A cousin of the folkstyle wrestling he had excelled in at college, it took Angle a little time to get the hang of the new rules and methods. Even in a sport known for its hard workers and insane workouts, Angle’s intensity was legendary. There would be stronger wrestlers. Better wrestlers. But no one would outwork him. Every day for two years leading into the 1996 Olympic trials was like a scene from Rocky IV.
To prepare for his Olympic dreams he traveled the globe competing — Siberia, Bulgaria, Turkey, he was everywhere. In 1995 he shocked the wrestling world by winning the World Championship. Accusations of drug use soon followed. Angle’s workout routine had added 10 pounds of solid muscle to his frame and some were suspicious that steroids were behind the change in appearance. He was tested monthly and passed with flying colors. Compared to what would come, it was only a minor inconvenience on the road to Olympic glory.
Shooters Page 34