10 WWE Storylines That Horribly Backfired
6. Brawl For Nothing At All
To this day, no one can explain the thinking behind it the Brawl For All tournament. It ran for two months on Monday Night RAW between June and August 1998, pitting a variety of midcard talent with legitimate reputations for toughness against each other in a genuine shoot fight with a $100,000 purse for the winner, probably more than two years earnings for most of the wrestlers involved. What this basically amounted to was sixteen large, handy men genuinely attempting to hurt one other to win, otherwise known as the opposite of professional wrestling. Neither the idea nor the execution was over with the crowd, boos and shouts of we want wrestling being commonplace throughout the tournament. The other problem with a shoot is that you cant necessarily predict (never mind control) the outcome, even with worked scoring. Midcard lifer and skilled boxer Bart Gunn ended up winning the competition, defeating and badly injuring the man WWF had tapped to win, Doctor Death Steve Williams. Williams was being groomed to take on the WWFs new tweener megastar, Stone Cold Steve Austin, but after this humiliating loss, his credibility as an unstoppable killer was toast. Months later, after recovering from his injuries, Williams would be released without fanfare. Despite his huge underdog victory, creative still had nothing for Gunn, who didnt get any form of rub from his fine showing: meanwhile, scuttlebutt (like gossip in 18oz gloves) says that the WWF were so sure of Williams victory that theyd already paid him the prize money, meaning that they had to pay out twice. Williams was certainly the only person in the tournament for whom theyd put together impressive promotional video vignettes. To this day, the Brawl For All tournament is considered one of WWFs biggest ever white elephants: a conceptually flawed, poorly executed mess of an angle that no one wanted to see, that cost them serious money and ruined careers.