All Japan November 1998 from AJPW TV (Bart Gunn debut under WWF contract, Brawl For All angle)

23:20 Bart Gunn's debut on AJPW TV after signing with the company in October 1998. The episode aired November 1st, 1998 and on the screen it clearly mentioned Steve Williams and the "KO". At 1:09:53 is his first match on syndicated TV, dated November 15th. Amazing pop from the crowd when his name flashed the screen. Because he won the Brawl For All and knocked-out Dr. Death in real-life, along with his toughman/strong style of wrestling, Giant Baba and Mrs. Baba took great interest in signing him as a top gaijin for the company. He quickly became a fan favorite, and the AJPW commentary team often spoke about him being "the man who KO'ed Steve Williams". He'd continue main-eventing in Japan until 2004, having great success. This is a rather significant episode. Besides heat with Jim Ross, I think this was also a huge and greatly overlooked reason why Bart Gunn was fed to Butterbean so quickly. Mind you, Bart signed to AJPW weeks before appearing here, all while he was still under WWF contract. The date of this episode was indeed in "November 1998", not at all 1999. I remembered it all while it was happening, collecting tapes and spending a lot of time on dial-up internet. The Butterbean match at WrestleMania happened on March 28, 1999. Also, anyone know where I can get his spade shirt saying "The Movement"? I always like that shirt and want to wear one 😎👍. Basically, during the time Bart was "sitting home" from the WWF, he was making a big name for himself in Japan making lots of cash outside of his $75,000 tournament prize money. This must have pissed off Vince McMahon, who is well known to not appreciate these kinds of things. At that time in late 1998/early 1999, McMahon didn't have anything in creative for Bart to do. Knowing that he had heat in the WWF, he likely knew he was going to get buried and made a backup plan joining AJPW, where creative was significantly better for carders. I didn't predict the Butterbean match to happen, but at the time I had the feeling that Bart would get buried for all this, losing to everyone from Steve Austin and HHH down to Meat and Chaz. I thought the WWF would only let him win on the C-shows and D-shows against local jobbers. It would be similar to what happened to The Renegade in WCW, who I was also a big fan of. In 1999, Bart Gunn would change his name stage name to Mike Barton. So no, Bart Gunn's career didn't "end" after the Brawl For All. His WWF career did, but certainly not his Japan career, which was by far his prime years. He was main-eventing up to late 2002 in AJPW. From that point to 2004, he would main-event in NJPW. To me, the Brawl For All was the beginning of his prime time, opening many doors for him. Also, outside of storyline interviews and kayfabe promos (he often did this on radio/podcasts at the time) Dr. Death didn't have serious heat with Bart Gunn. They got along well and had great chemistry in the ring. After a storyline "revenge match" on a major January 2001 PPV, which Doc won, throughout the rest of 2001 Doc, Bart, and Mike Rotunda formed a successful tag-team trio. You can say that Bart became a member of the Varsity Club, haha 😄. That alone shows that Doc and Rotunda had respected Bart. Even though Doc was my idol since the age of 4, I was also a huge Bart Gunn fan and never blamed him for the infamous hamstring injury. For those rambling that Doc could have killed Bart with those suplexes on Raw (which was March 1999), remember that Bart could take nasty bumps like that given his Japan background, which was the same wrestling style as Doc's. Bart Gunn had a neck just like Kenta Kobashi's 😉.