Why Ken Shamrock Wanted No Part Of Infamous WWE Tournament
Former WWE Intercontinental Champion Ken Shamrock has explained why he gave a wide berth to one of the company’s most infamous ideas.
Prior to joining WWE, Ken Shamrock was one of UFC’s biggest stars during the early days of that company. Shamrock, therefore, might well have been top of the list to take part when WWE decided to hold its own fighting tournament – Brawl For All.
Brawl For All turned out to be a disaster as injuries saw the roster lose several stars including Dr. Death Steve Williams who was slated for a feud with WWE’s biggest star at the time Stone Cold Steve Austin. However, Shamrock had no interest in turning his sports entertainment bouts into real fights.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Ken Shamrock explained why he wanted no part of the catastrophic tournament as he spent a long time gaining the trust of his peers in the company:
I was asked, I said no. Listen, I got paid big money, big, big money to fight [in the UFC]. So now they’re asking me to do this thing for free? Listen, I think anybody that has been involved in pro wrestling understands how hard it is to gain trust in the locker room. If guys don’t trust you, they’re not going to work for you. They’re not going to allow you to do things that they feel they may get hurt with.
So that was one of the things that Bret [Hart] really instilled in me was being able to make sure that I had a relationship with the locker room. I would go up and say hi to people, shake their hand, be open to suggestions, building relationships, because you got to build trust.
These guys got to trust me to go in the ring with them, and then they asked me to fight. I’m like, so now I’m going to go in there and beat the hell out of these guys and then go back and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a pro wrestling match.’ I just felt like that was kind of going against the grain of what I was trying to do there.
I guess they were paying, I don’t know how much it was, 50 grand or something if you won it? You guys asked me to come here and do a certain thing, and we negotiated a contract for that, and now you want me to actually fight? So I’m doing two things now, and I just felt like, yeah, this is not for me.
Ken Shamrock Paid No Attention To Ridicule
Ken Shamrock continued by noting that he felt there was an attempt to shame him into taking part but that wasn’t something he paid much attention to:
I am not persuaded by insults and by ridicule, people saying ‘You’re afraid to go against the pro wrestlers and you’re afraid to get in there, you’re afraid of this guy, you’re afraid of that guy…’ That does nothing. You’re not going to shame me into trying to fight somebody. I mean, if I’m going to fight them, I’m gonna fight them, and we’re gonna negotiate something, and we’ll do it. But I’m not gonna be shamed into fighting.
It just felt like that’s what was trying to happen, not WWF, just the fan base, because they were pro wrestlers and they’re pro wrestling fans, and by me saying, no, I didn’t want to do that. I’m not going to do that. There was that whole scene behind the scenes where people were saying, yeah, the Shamrock is afraid. I’m thinking to myself wow, how soon people forget.
Bart Gunn won the Brawl For All tournament by defeating Bradshaw in the final with the likes of Steve Blackman, The Godfather, Droz, Savio Vega, and Bob Holly among the field.