Few ideas in the history of WWE have been as puzzling in retrospect as the Brawl For All tournament. Though not MMA because there were no submissions, the tournament was a boxing/wrestling hybrid held on Raw during the summer of 1998, and any wrestler who wanted to take part was allowed. Competitors wore gloves and fought in three one-minute rounds, trying to knock each other out. Takedowns were worth points, and judges decided the winner if the matches went the distance. Oh, and did I mention the whole thing was legitimate? The idea was that Steve Williams, who had recently signed with WWE and was known as a true tough guy, would win the tournament and emerge as a money challenger to Steve Austin. Unfortunately, bottom-tier worker Bart Gunn defeated (and injured) Williams en route to winning the tournament, and the company was stuck with having devoted two months of build to a man they had no interest in pushing. WWE had no idea what to do with Gunn until WrestleMania XV, when they booked in him a Brawl For All match with professional boxer Butterbean. Butterbean slaughtered Gunn, who was soon fired, and the tournament was never spoken of again. Williams was also released shortly after he recuperated.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
