BART GUNN was feeling pretty good about himself. The WWF (now WWE) wrestler born Michael Polchlopek had just finished winning the controversial Brawl For All tournament in the summer of 1998, seemingly setting himself up for a big match at WrestleMania XV in March of 1999, even though he didn’t do himself any favours by beating ‘Dr Death’ Steve Williams in the tournament quarter-finals.
See, while pro wrestling has predetermined outcomes, this tournament, described as being under ‘shootfighting’ rules (real strikes and takedowns), didn’t, and when Williams was knocked out by Gunn, a planned pay-per-view match between Dr Death and Steve Austin fell by the wayside, making Florida’s Gunn not the most popular man in WWF headquarters.
“They thought they couldn’t control me,” said Gunn in an interview with Title Match Wrestling.
He did win, though, and his reward was a match on sports entertainment’s grandest stage, Wrestlemania.
This one wasn’t going to have a predetermined outcome, either.
He was going to have a boxing match with a 32-year-old from Alabama named Eric Esch, better known as Butterbean.
With a record of 41-1-1 with 32 KOs, the 5ft 11ins, 300+-pound brawler was already a household name to boxing fans thanks to his appearances on Top Rank events that garnered him the nickname ‘The King of the Four-Rounders’.
He had even been on a WWF card before, winning by disqualification (in a scripted match) over Marc Mero in 1997.
That match was forgettable, but Butterbean was still under contract to WWF, so he got a phone call.
“The whole Brawl For All thing, I had nothing to do with it, originally,” Esch tells Boxing News. “And then Bart destroyed everybody.
“They said ‘it’s time to bring Butterbean in to show him; if he’s really a tough guy, we’ll find out’. Maybe it was because they knew I’d teach him a lesson.”
Gunn was a tough guy, but he was not a boxer. And WWF’s attempts to rectify that situation before the two entered the ring at Philadelphia’s First Union Center may have been well-intentioned, but proved ultimately fruitless.
“WWF sent me to a boxing gym for five weeks to learn how to box,” Gunn told Title Match. “Wrong move. Now, everything I’ve done for 20-25 years that worked for me is wrong. So, I go into this fight as a green fighter, my first fight, with five weeks of training.”
It was a lot to ask of a pro wrestler to become a boxer in a little over a month, not to mention doing it in front of 20,000 fans in Philly, and nearly a million watching on pay-per-view.
You might assume Gunn would have an edge over Butterbean, having worked in front of WWF crowds before, but Esch wasn’t buying it.
“I’d been on the biggest cards there already was,” he says.
“I had been on all the major cards, so I was used to the crowd.
“I don’t know if Bart was used to that type of crowd and that level yet.
“As big as the crowds were, that can take a lot out of somebody and can bring up a lot of nerves.
“He had a lot of pressure on him. Bart’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong. He’s a tough, tough dude, too. He went on and fought a lot of big guys and beat some professional fighters afterwards.”
But on March 28, 1999, Esch knew how this one was going to end.
“Oh, I did,” Esch laughs. “He went and trained with a boxing trainer. He should have trained like I did; I trained like Brawl For All rules: go out there and get it done.”
He did. Esch didn’t even need referee Vinny Pazienza’s last-minute instructions to “fight hard and kick some ass”, and he certainly didn’t need the judges, who included Chuck Wepner and Kevin Rooney.
As for Gunn, he was in trouble from the opening bell.
Two big right hands from Esch sent him to the canvas, but he rose at the count of eight and wanted to fight on.
“If it was a different ref, they would’ve stopped the fight earlier,” says Esch.
The fight continued, for one more right hand that knocked Gunn out as soon as it landed.
The pro wrestler fell to the canvas, hitting his head on the ropes on the way down. It was a frightening scene, but Gunn soon woke up and made it to his feet.
It all took just 35 seconds.
“It was a bad knockout, it really was,” said the man who delivered it. “I’ve knocked out a couple like that. [Louis] Monaco when I hit him and knocked him out cold, it was probably pretty close to that.”
Yes, it was a wrestling show, but it was a boxing match on a wrestling show, and as far as that goes, Butterbean’s finish of Gunn was one of the most devastating boxing knockouts you’ll see.
It effectively ended Gunn’s stay in the WWF, though he would continue to wrestle elsewhere, and even dabbled in mixed martial arts, beating UFC veteran Wesley ‘Cabbage’ Correira in his 2006 debut.
As for Butterbean, there was talk of him continuing with WWF, but he already had a boxing career going.
“Many times [WWF boss] Vince [McMahon] and I would sit and talk,” says Esch.
“A lot of guys are kind of jealous about it, because we’d just talk, and Vince would say to me, ‘You’re more of a wrestler than a boxer; you need to think about that.’
“But the money wasn’t there compared to what I was making fighting. That just wasn’t the same level money-wise, and it wasn’t feasible at that time.”
Don’t believe him? Esch’s match with Gunn came in the midst of a 1999 campaign in which he boxed 13 times, going 12-0-1 with nine knockouts.
The highlight was a pay-per-view (!) event he headlined with former Mike Tyson opponent Peter McNeeley. Esch won via first-round TKO, and he would remain unbeaten until a decision loss to Billy Zumbrun in 2001.
Esch boxed for another 12 years before hanging up the gloves in 2013, mixing in independent pro wrestling, mixed martial arts and the occasional movie appearance (most notably Jackass: The Movie, when he splattered Johnny Knoxville in a department store with real punches).
It wasn’t a conventional career, but it was a memorable one he could be proud of.
Retirement was a tougher slog for Esch, who blew up to more than 500lbs. But, oddly enough, what saved him in a way was professional wrestling, which came back into his life when former wrestler Diamond Dallas Page appeared on a podcast with him and told him about his DDP Yoga system.
“I was doing a podcast and Dallas comes on and started talking about a show he was doing,” says Esch. “It was me, [mixed martial artist] Bas Rutten and [bodybuilder] Flex Wheeler, and Flex told him, ‘You’ve got to have Butterbean on.’.
“So, Dallas called me and we worked it out and it happened.
“It was supposed to be a three-month deal. Ended up being four months and then I stayed four months longer.”
Today, Esch weighs in at 285lbs, and at 58 years old, he’s feeling good enough to want to make a comeback, announcing during a promotional tour for Lucky Energy Drink that his target is – who else? – Jake Paul.
“I think it’d be a great fight,” says Esch. “He wanted to run his mouth about me, talk bad about me, so why can’t he back it up? That’s my view.”
He wouldn’t mind getting a shot at Mike Tyson, as well, but you can almost hear in his voice that he knows that the odds of either fight happening are slim or none.
That’s OK, though, because he’s healthy, happy and, according to him, hitting harder than ever.
“Right now is my prime,” says Esch. “Seriously, I’m hitting harder, I’m stronger, I’m faster. I’m so much better now than I was.
“It’s never too late. If you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything.”
