Steve Blackman Thought WWE's ‘Brawl For All’ Was A Joke

WWF Brawl For All was supposed to be a legitimate tournament, but Steve Blackman thought it was a joke when he first heard about it.

Back in 1998, WWE conducted a single-elimination tournament called Brawl For All. It was one of the most controversial tournaments as it was an MMA-style tournament that resulted in several legitimate injuries. The winner of the tournament was Bart Gunn, who knocked out John Bradshaw Layfield in the finals. Recently, former WWE Superstar Steve Blackman opened up about the tournament.

While speaking to Chris Can Vliet on his Insight podcast, Steve Blackman shared that he initially thought the concept of the Brawl for All was a joke.

“[Rolls eyes] All right. I’m at home on one of my days off, the office calls me and they go, ‘We’re having this Brawl For All and it’s a real fight. You wear boxing gloves and you can do whatever you want.’ I thought it was just somebody in the office ribbing me, because you got to remember those wrestlers do nothing but rib each other. So I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure we are.’ Then, I think it was Bruce Pritchard, he’s like, ‘Steve, we’re having a Brawl For All, and you can do whatever.’ I said, ‘Let me get this straight, we’re gonna have a Brawl For All. I can kick, shoot, punch, knee, elbow…’ And they’re like, yep. I said, ‘What’s the prize?’

“And they said, Well, you get an extra five grand a week and then the prize at the end, whatever it was. I said, ‘Well, I don’t believe you, but go ahead and sign me up.’ I didn’t believe him. I thought the whole thing was a rib, one of the guys playing a joke. So we get to the next TV, I haven’t trained for this in a while, and I never forget. We get there, and they’re like, you’re fighting Mero tonight in the Brawl For All. I’m like, this thing’s real?! Okay. So we go out in the ring, and there were 16 of us in it, we’re going over the different things we could do.”

Steve Blackman weighs in on how he got to wrestle Marc Mero in the first round

In the first round, Blackman wrestled wrestling veteran Marc Mero. During the podcast, Blackman weighed in on how the conversation started for him to fight Mero.

“I said, ‘Well, he told me I’m allowed to kick when he called me.’ When we were out in the ring, Vince is like, ‘What kind of kick do you mean?’ And I should have thought faster. I stood there. And you know how in the MMA, most of us do fast, hard shin kicks. I flew with one and Vince was like, ‘No, no. ‘And Bradshaw’s like, ‘There’s no way we’re taking those.’ I’m thinking, why didn’t I just do a slow side kick or front kick or something just slower? I went out there and flew with it because I was warmed up. I’m like, Oh! So now they insisted no kicking, because I’m the only one out of 16 that wants to kick. Well, there’s no knees, there were no elbows, there’s no head butts. It’s a boxing match with takedowns.

“So they put me against Marc [Mero], who in boxing was probably the best in there. I think he won New York Golden Gloves five years. So, great. So we go out there and they said, ‘What are you gonna do?’ I aid, ‘I’m gonna take him down every 10 seconds.’ Well, if you counted, I took him down 13 times in three minutes. I shot a jab. I threw a jab. Shot through a jab. Shot the third or fourth time I threw the jab, I faked the shot, and it came over top with a bomb. He was pretty quick. He ended up dropping his chin just a hair because I caught him here, and his feet staggered, or I finally caught him on the chin a couple of inches lower, I dropped him.

“But it was funny, because those gloves were massive, brand new. It was like wearing mittens like this to box with. I’m like, Who came up with this idea? Then three of the guys got hurt, and it just was horrible for the business. The people didn’t even know what the hell was going on. I keep taking him down. People in the crowd are like, what is this?”

Steve Blackman on when he first thought he could win the Brawl For All

The former Hardcore Champion also shared that he believed that he had what it took to win the entire Brawl for All tournament.

“I did think that. And then after I fought Marc, I’m like, Okay, let me go home and train now, and let’s get moving here. So one of my friends at home was about 6 foot 3, 300 pounds, amateur wrestler his whole life. So I started working, we started training, and he waist locked me, and just as he waist locked me, I wasn’t expecting him to sit so fast, he sat on the side of my leg and tore the cartilage in my leg. I’m like, Oh, my God, this can’t be happening. We were just starting to do warm-ups. I was going to throw, he’d throw, I’d throw, and he just sat on the side of my leg, I couldn’t believe it. I had to get my leg worked on then, and I couldn’t finish the thing. And I was livid, because I wanted to get out there at that point. And so that’s what happened there,” Steve Blackman said.