Bart Gunn may have won the WWF’s ‘Brawl for All’ in 1998, but he faced a monumental punishment in the form of Butterbean the next year.
The infamous tournament saw Superstars compete in legit fights, and the urban legend is that the tournament’s scoring was rigged to ensure a win for ‘Dr. Death’ Steve Williams.
On a recent edition of the “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” podcast, Butterbean recalled facing Gunn at WrestleMania 15, where he knocked out the former Tag Team Champion in seconds. He said,
“Bart, to my understanding, was supposed to lose to Dr. Death. And he didn’t, he knocked him out. So I was brought in as punishment. That’s the story I got behind the scenes.
“Vince just said ‘Bean, give it all you’ve got. I was like ‘Okay, I’ll do what I can do.’ I mean, that was easy, it was pretty easy. If he would’ve come out like brawling … I went back to my tough man days … I went back to just giving everything I’ve got, just go wide open. When you’re boxing, you have three minutes, you’ve got to pace yourself a little bit. People don’t realize how long three minutes is. One minute goes too quick. And he tried to box. Bad mistake.”
While Butterbean called his victory one of the best knockouts of his career, he added that Gunn seriously suffered during the match and for some time after. He said,
“The knockdown prior to the last one, he probably shouldn’t have let him, cause his eyes were going everywhere. He was standing, and he was out. It was a bad knockout. I was told he didn’t know which way he was walking for about two weeks.”
