The night Butterbean brutally KO’d a hapless WWF star at WrestleMania — was it real or fake? An investigation

In this Uncrowned series, combat sports television commentator, historian, officials trainer and regulator Sean Wheelock takes an in-depth and analytical look at infamous matches from MMA, boxing, pro wrestling, bare-knuckle and the long and confused history of mixed-match fighting to determine whether controversial bouts were Shoots (legitimate competition) or Works (predetermined results).

Who: Eric “Butterbean” Esch (super heavyweight boxer) vs. Bart Gunn (WWF star)

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When: March 28, 1999

Where: WrestleMania XV at First Union Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

THE SETUP

Eric “Butterbean” Esch vs. Bart Gunn was the fifth match on WWF’s WrestleMania XV card (main-evented by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin vs. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), as well as the culmination of the promotion’s infamous Brawl For All tournament, which had run the previous June through August. Billed as a completely on-the-level mixed-match fight, it was in essence the reward for Gunn, who had emerged from the 16-man Brawl For All field with four wins — including a third-round knockout of presumed favorite Steve “Dr. Death” Williams in the quarterfinals — and the widely-reported $100,000 first prize.

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A secondary performer at this stage of his career for the WWF, Gunn had elevated himself to a marquee spot at WrestleMania XV through his surprising run of outstanding form in the tournament, creating a prime opportunity he certainly would not have received otherwise.

Without question, Gunn had not been expected to win Brawl For All by the fans, and certainly not the WWF itself. But he claimed the competition by recording successive wins over his tag-team partner Hardcore Holly, Williams, The Godfather and finally Bradshaw, across the summer months of 1998. There is no doubt the tournament bouts were all shoots — they were so incredibly sloppy and awkward as to eliminate reasonable doubt. But the Butterbean vs. Gunn fight raised suspicion — partly because it was included on the WWF’s annual premiere showcase, and mainly because it appeared to be such an obvious mismatch in favor of Butterbean. The idea of the bout being worked made genuine sense. Add to this that the boxer vs. wrestler matchup escaped regulation by the notoriously difficult and heavy-handed Pennsylvania Athletic Commission, and the ingredients for legitimate debate were fully in place.

The rules for the Butterbean vs. Gunn match were the same as those used in the Brawl For All tournament — and they were byzantine, to say the least. Participants wore 16-ounce boxing gloves, but were somehow still expected to grapple. All bouts were scheduled for three one-minute rounds, with 45-second rest periods in between. The WWF-assigned judges were there to keep a complicated scorecard which tallied who landed the most punches per round (worth five points), finished a clean takedown (also worth five points), and recorded a knockdown (worth 10 points). For Gunn vs. Butterbean, the three judges seated ringside were Gorilla Monsoon (in what turned out to be his final appearance on a televised WWF event), Chuck Wepner (Our guy! See my feature on his match vs. Andre the Giant for this series) and former Mike Tyson trainer Kevin Rooney. A victory could come through knockout, TKO, or through the points tallied by the three ringside judges, if the full three rounds were completed. All standing strikes — other than those from the gloved punch — were illegal. Strikes on the ground of any kind were completely forbidden, as were all submissions. Thus, in essence, the rule set reduced the bouts to Toughman-style boxing with the added element of takedowns.

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And of course. it was through the amateur Toughman Contest scene that Eric “Butterbean” Esch had launched his boxing career.

Ultimately, Butterbean became a five-time World Toughman Heavyweight Champion before turning professional in October 1994. By the time he reached the WrestleMania XV ring in Philadelphia, Butterbean had remarkably achieved status as one of the better-known names in boxing, having amassed a pro record of 42-1-1, and the unofficial title of “King of the Four Rounders.” Although he eventually went on to lose a 10-round unanimous decision three years later to then-53-year-old former world heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, Butterbean had fought just one non-four rounder when he entered the Gunn fight — and that was a scheduled six-rounder.

While never seen as an elite-level boxer — or even anywhere close to that level — Butterbean became a minor celebrity through a combination of his rotund physique (standing just under 6-feet and always weighing over 300 pounds), small-town persona (he lived in Jasper, Alabama), and legitimate knockout power. Although fighting far from A-list competition, Butterbean still had solid boxing skills and a finisher’s instinct. Of his 42 victories by the time of WrestleMania XV, 33 had come by way of TKO or straight knockout. And Butterbean was constantly active in the sport, having fought four times in the 12 months leading up to the Gunn bout, including a third-round TKO win vs. Patrick Graham in Las Vegas just six weeks prior on an Oscar De La Hoya undercard. At 32 years old, and in the midst of a 28-fight unbeaten streak, Butterbean was at the height of his powers.

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Gunn, meanwhile, saw his career heading in the opposite direction prior to becoming the Brawl For All champion. Having been with the WWF since 1993, Gunn found early success in the promotion, partnering with Billy Gunn as The Smoking Gunns to win the WWF World Tag Team Championship on three occasions. But by the time the Brawl For All was first discussed in 1998, Gunn was a 34-year-old veteran stuck in the pro-wrestling gray zone of being neither a star nor a jobber. As Gunn’s tag-team partner of that time Bob “Hardcore” Holly wrote in his entertaining 2013 autobiography “The Hardcore Truth,” both of them were frustratingly part of a collection of “the mid-card guys floating around doing nothing.”

But as he entered WrestleMania XV, Gunn suddenly and unexpectedly was experiencing a real career upswing in the WWF. This was a marquee match against a fairly high-profile opponent from outside of pro-wrestling, and with the added luster of former boxing lightweight and super welterweight world champion Vinny Pazienza serving as the referee. While certainly not Stone Cold vs. The Rock, it was nonetheless a big match on the biggest pro-wrestling show of the year.

THE FIGHT

In his capacity as the referee, Vinny Pazienza brings both fighters to the center of the ring for the stare down and a quasi-overview of the rules. Sporting a pair of gold hoop earnings and a tight all-white shirt, “The Pazmanian Devil” concludes with the words, “Now fight hard and kick some ass.” Butterbean moves backward toward his corner (which contains his manager and Toughman Contest founder Art Dore), so as to keep his eyes firmly locked on Gunn, holding a look of menace on his face. Not once does he turn his back.

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Announced at 330 pounds, and dressed in his hallmark American flag-themed red, white and blue boxing trunks, Butterbean moves immediately toward the center of the ring upon the opening bell, banging his gloves menacingly together in the process. Gunn, 80 pounds lighter than his opponent at 250 pounds, and five inches taller at 6-foot-4, wears slightly too long blue boxing trunks. He comes forward as well, but is a step behind his opponent and holds his hands low.

The first punch of the fight is a Butterbean right hand that lands hard and clean to Gunn’s head, followed immediately by a left hand to the chin, which spins Gunn 360 degrees. The wrestler resets his footing, comes forward again and flings a left jab, which Butterbean skillfully slips. Butterbean then returns with a right to the body and a step-in left, which narrowly misses Gunn’s head. Gunn then throws another left jab, which Butterbean again slips, then effective rolls and lands with a left hook to the body.

Trying to time Gunn, who moves straight backward and then forward in a lunge, Butterbean throws four more body shots, none of which land cleanly. Gunn then lands his first punch of the fight — a left jab to Butterbean’s head — but is caught immediately with a very hard overhand right. This power punch to the jaw sends Gunn reeling off-balance backward toward the ropes, causing the wrestler to involuntarily drop his hands in the process. Reflexively sensing the moment at hand, Butterbean pressures forward and unleashes a four-punch combination, the second of which is another big right hand to Gunn’s jaw.

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This punch sends him toward the canvas face-first — and while he’s falling, the final punch of Butterbean’s sequence lands as a cupping right hook to Gunn’s head.

Gunn lands hard on all fours, and then quickly postures up to his knees. But as he’s severely rocked, Gunn wobbles off-balance and winds up braced onto his right knee, with his outstretched right glove holding the middle ring rope for support. From this position, Gunn takes the count from Pazienza, who hits eight just before Gunn pops back to his feet. Pazienza allows the fight to continue, after asking him, “Are you good? Are you good, Bart?” Gunn replies, “Yeah, I’m good,” and readies himself for the next onslaught.

At this point on the live broadcast commentary, Jerry Lawler exclaims: “If I were you, Bart, I’d go for a takedown. Takedown!”

With single-minded purpose, Butterbean explodes into the pocket. Gunn feebly pushes a left jab to the body, just before Butterbean lands his own left jab to the body, used as a setup for a crushing overhand right, which violently turns Gunn’s head and knocks him completely unconscious. Pazienza immediately recognizes the severity of the blow and waves off the fight, rather than starting the the count. Butterbean raises his arms in triumph, as the victory is his by way of KO, just 35 seconds into the fight.

THE CASE FOR A SHOOT

Anyone who’s seen Butterbean’s punch that finished Gunn, and somehow doesn’t believe it was real, lacks a complete understanding of both combat sports and human physiology. It is, in two words, f***ing brutal.

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In a 2019 article for Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy wrote: “That is the most devastating punch I’ve ever seen in my life.” As a lifelong hardcore fan of fighting, I fully agree. Butterbean said of the punch in a 2020 episode of Vice TV’s brilliant “Dark Side of the Ring” that it “actually turned [Gunn’s head] around backward.”

The question remains, though, as to why the WWF would book such an obvious mismatch, and on their annual showcase. While conspiracy theories abound about then-WWF President Vince McMahon and his executives wanting Gunn to get destroyed as punishment for actually winning Brawl For All at the expense of a bigger and more bankable star — namely Dr. Death Steve Williams — the almost certain answer is far more mundane. In reality, McMahon and his creative team completely overrated Gunn and completely underrated Butterbean. None of these guys truly understood combat sports, and thus failed to comprehend what a highly-experienced and constantly-active professional fighter would do to an utter novice.

While never even remotely close to being a top-20 heavyweight, and looking like a 1990’s video game character (which, in fact, he became in 1995’s “Toughman Contest” from EA Sports), Butterbean could nevertheless really box. And he of course had massive knockout power, which had been repeatedly proven over his then-44-fight pro career. Gunn certainly looked the part at 6-foot-4, 265 pounds, but despite his success in running through his fellow pro wrestlers in the Brawl For All, he simply didn’t know how to box. The old adage in boxing is incredibly apt for Butterbean vs. Bart Gunn — bodies don’t win fights.

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“We all felt Bart had a chance. We bought the hype that we created,” was what WWF inner-circle member Bruce Prichard told Conrad Thompson on their podcast “Something to Wrestle With.” Prichard continued:

“Bean fought for a living, and you forget about that when you get lost in that bubble. … Vince [McMahon] was adamant that maybe Bart will throw that left hand and knock Butterbean out.”

Jim Cornette, the legendary pro-wrestling manager and historian, commented on his podcast “The Jim Cornette Experience” that his WWF colleague at the time, head writer Vince Russo, “[Didn’t know] anything about any f***ing form of combat sports. He’s seeing Bart Gunn … body looks like that. He knocked all these other guys out. [Russo is thinking,] ‘Well, maybe he’ll beat Butterbean. And if he does, then we’ll get on ESPN.’”

And it’s easy in retrospect to see how the legitimate boxing skills of Eric Esch could be lost amid his Butterbean persona of a rotund, no-necked, bald guy in American flag trunks, with a thick Alabama accent and a level of fame that far exceeded his in-ring accomplishments. Although he entered WrestleMania XV as a 42-1-1 pro boxer, the reality is that Butterbean had built his record against a cavalcade of mid-to-low-level opposition. Through those 44 fights, only 18 featured Butterbean against an opponent with a winning record. In fact, as he walked to the WWF ring that night in Philadelphia, the biggest name on Butterbean’s résumé was journeyman Luis Monaco. While Monaco eventually went on to fight and lose to a number of A-listers and B-plus-listers — including Vitaly Klitschko, Buster Douglas, Trevor Berbick and Fres Oquendo — he was in just his second pro fight when Butterbean knocked him out in December 1995.

So in Butterbean, WWF had a really big name from boxing (and indeed popular culture of the era), who wasn’t a great — or even very good — boxer. To add to this, Butterbean had done business with the wrestling promotion less than a year and a half earlier in a completely worked boxing match vs. Marc Mero. He was reasonably priced, easy to contact, and had a well-earned reputation as being a pleasure to work with, as well as a really likable guy. There were no high-maintenance requests or high-priced agents when it came to getting a contract signed with Butterbean.

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Could Bart Gunn beat Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield or George Foreman? Of course not. But could he beat Butterbean? In the thinking of McMahon and his executives, almost all of whom knew absolutely nothing about boxing, the answer was “quite possibly.”

Of course, this bout was only going to go one way — the way it did — with Butterbean violently and quickly knocking out Bart Gunn. It didn’t matter that Butterbean was a middling talent in professional boxing; what mattered was that he was a 44-fight veteran of professional boxing who was in the prime of his career. And what made matters worse for Gunn was that Butterbean’s best attribute as a fighter was his raw power, which of course he put on full and graphic display.

THE CASE FOR A WORK

Let’s start with the fact that Butterbean vs. Gunn was part of WrestleMania XV — you know, a pro-wrestling event. And then let’s consider that it was neither sanctioned nor regulated by the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission (PAC). That state governmental agency’s head at the time was Greg Sirb — a man notorious in regulatory circles for cold-calling other athletic commissions across the United States, and chastising them about what he perceived to be boxing mismatches set to take place under their jurisdiction.

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(I write this not with second-hand knowledge, but real-life experience, as Sirb had many unwelcome and unsolicited correspondence with my beloved Kansas Athletic Commission when I was a Commission Member.) Sirb was always quick to offer his unsolicited opinion on why your state commission shouldn’t allow a 12-22 fighter to face a kid who is 8-1. But he’s going to let Butterbean, who was 42-1-1 at the time, go against a boxing debutant? Seriously?

Sirb and his PAC were nowhere to be found that night in Philadelphia, because they had no official purpose at a pro-wrestling show, even one as massive as WrestleMania. The reason for this flows directly back to McMahon and his admissions about professional wrestling matches being something far removed from legitimate. In February 1989, McMahon told the New Jersey Senate that the sport was in fact “an activity in which participants struggle hand-in-hand primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators rather than conducting a bona fide athletic contest.”

McMahon had long been determined to extricate his WWF from what he viewed as overbearing state athletic commissions, many of whom were treating professional wrestling matches the exact same way they treated those in professional boxing (regulation of MMA was to come later). Quite simply, McMahon no longer wanted to pay state athletic commission fees, and deal with all of the requisite governmental paperwork and bureaucracy. So, McMahon broke kayfabe to save a lot of dollars and even more headaches per year.

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The New Jersey Senate — heavily swayed by McMahon’s testimony — voted to deregulate professional wrestling, which was the proverbial first domino to fall nationwide. By the time of WrestleMania XV in Philadelphia a full decade later, the WWF — and professional wrestling as a whole — was largely left alone by state commissions across the United States, Pennsylvania most definitely included.

But a real fight is a real fight. Inserting it on a pro-wrestling card doesn’t give a promoter a free pass to avoid a state commission, which oversees things such as the assignment of a licensed referee, judges and physicians, and which has the final approval of all bouts (so, in theory, to provide a safeguard against potentially dangerous mismatches). But it was the WWF who assigned the unlicensed judging trio of Monsoon, Rooney and Wepner, and the unlicensed referee Pazienza. This is a major red flag.

As I wrote above, Butterbean was by no means new to the WWF. In December 1997, he participated in a fully-worked boxing match (billed as a “Toughman Match”) versus Marc Mero on the D-Generation X: In Your House pay-per-view, in which Butterbean was hit by a dropkick, caught by a flying knee, and strangled by Mero’s glove tape, en route to a fourth-round win by disqualification. And of course the WWF had a history of utilizing boxing for its storylines, with Andre the Giant vs. Gorilla Monsoon in 1977, and Roddy Piper vs. Mr. T at 1986’s WrestleMania 2 serving as prime examples.

Thus, the WWF was both comfortable and familiar with Butterbean and the use of boxing by the time of WrestleMania XV.

THE VERDICT

This is a full-on shoot, and was never meant to be anything else. The violence and impact of Butterbean’s punches, most especially the final punch of the bout which completely sleeps Gunn, is really all of the evidence you need.

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That executives at the WWF, including of course McMahon himself, thought this would be anything other than what it turned out to be — a complete and utter squash — is thoroughly mystifying. The best I can figure is that none of them had ever watched much boxing, and thus had a very limited understanding of the sport. Clearly, nobody in a decision-making role at the time in the WWF had any awareness whatsoever as to what a 300-pound-plus professional boxer who entered WrestleMania XV with 33 knockouts across 44 career bouts, would do to a complete beginner in the sport. This was about as suspenseful and obvious as if they’d put a pedestrian vs. a city bus on the card.

Ignorance is, of course, bliss, as made clear by Prichard’s and Cornette’s comments about McMahon, Russo and the cadre of WWF execs, as listed above.

At the 2023 Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports (ABC) Convention in Las Vegas, I asked Sirb why he — of all people — would have ever allowed such an obvious, and potentially catastrophic, mismatch. Sirb’s answer to me was simple and honest: He assumed Butterbean vs. Gunn was just another pro-wrestling bout on another pro-wrestling show, and didn’t give it a second thought.

And in Sirb’s defense, this was technically not a boxing match — even though it played out exactly like one. Remember, Butterbean vs. Gunn was the culmination of the Brawl For All, and used the rule set that had been in place for the other 15 bouts from the series. Takedowns were allowed, the rounds were scheduled for one minute each, and the judges were using the specially-created scoring system. This is why you won’t find it on BoxRec, the definitive professional boxing database.

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Watching the bout now, it’s easy to forget all of this, because Butterbean makes the entire 35 seconds look exactly like a standard pro boxing match — albeit one with an extraordinarily violent ending, and an extraordinarily inept losing fighter.