10 Times WWE Hurt Itself By Punishing Its Stars

10. Bart Gunn Wins The Brawl For All

In August 1998, WWF embarked upon one of the most embarrassing follies in the history of the company. It was called the Brawl For All tournament, and it was designed to... actually, no one knew what it was designed to do. What we got was a series of clumsy, amateurish shoot fights, as a succession of the WWF's hardest low-to-midcard performers, dollar signs winking in their eyes, attempted to legitimately beat each other up for a $100,000 purse.

Bart Gunn didn't have a fantastic upside as a technical wrestler, but - unbeknownst to his bosses in the WWF - he had a hell of a right, and a hell of a left too. He creamed every opponent, including the intended victor, 'Dr. Death' Steve Williams (yes - the company simply assumed he'd win), and wiped the floor with Bradshaw in the final. Still, there was something to be salvaged here. As Shawn Michaels pointed out on commentary when Gunn knocked Bradshaw out like it was nothing at all: that's how you make a name for yourself.

The Brawl For All might have accidentally buried 'Dr. Death', but Bart Gunn was tall, stacked and good-looking, a little like a heftier Randy Orton. Average wrestler or not (he wasn't awful by any stretch of the imagination), he'd just pulverised the hardest men in the WWF. There was money to be made there.

Instead, Gunn was booked to fight Eric 'Butterbean' Esch at WrestleMania XV, months after his Brawl For All victory, and long after the aura from that triumph had faded. Flabby and unprepossessing to look at, Butterbean was the real deal: a professional boxer who made a living travelling all over the country knocking men out, and everyone knew it - including Gunn himself. Gunn was knocked out in less than thirty seconds, and so violently that it looked like he'd been hit by a sledgehammer. Seemingly punished for being good enough to win a shoot tournament - and for not being the guy they'd wanted to do it - he was released soon afterwards.