The Smoking Gunns | |
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The Smoking Gunns at a WWF event in 1996.
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Statistics | |
Members |
Billy Gunn Bart Gunn Sunny |
Combined weight |
534 lb (242 kg; 38.1 st) |
Debut | April 1993 |
Disbanded | October 1996 |
Promotions | WWF |
The Smoking Gunns were a professional wrestling tag team of kayfabe brothers Billy Gunn (Monty Sopp) and Bart Gunn (Mike Polchlopek). They portrayed cowboys in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) from 1993 to 1996. As a team, the Smoking Gunns won the WWF Tag Team Championship three times.
Polchlopek and Sopp began teaming as the "Long Riders" in the International Wrestling Federation. Polchlopek wrestled as Brett Colt, while Sopp was known as Kip Winchester. They won the IWF World Tag Team Championship together twice before signing with the World Wrestling Federation.
The Smoking Gunns made their WWF debut in April 1993. Their first pay-per-view appearance was at the King of the Ring 1993 in an eight-man tag team match. The Gunns and the Steiner Brothers scored the win over The Headshrinkers and Money Incorporated when Billy pinned Ted DiBiase. Their next big match came at SummerSlam 1993, when they teamed up with Tatanka to defeat Bam Bam Bigelow and The Headshrinkers.
From their debut until January 1994, they would fire blanks in the arena with real guns, but then they received complaints from families that they were scaring children, which caused them to stop firing guns in the arenas.
Although they continued to wrestle as a team, they did not appear together again on a WWF pay-per-view for over a year. In the fall of 1994, the Gunns began a feud with the Heavenly Bodies (Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray). The Bodies attacked the Smoking Gunns and destroyed their cowboy hats. In return, the Gunns grabbed the Bodies' robes and tore off the wings. The teams had a series of matches at house shows, but the feud did not end with a blow off match. Instead, the teams faced off as part of a 5-on-5 elimination match at Survivor Series 1994. Billy and Bart joined forces with Lex Luger, Mabel and Adam Bomb in a loss to Ted DiBiase's team of King Kong Bundy, Tatanka, Bam Bam Bigelow and The Heavenly Bodies.