In 1998, Tough Enough was an absolute disaster.  Nonetheless, Bob Holly doesn’t believe that it should have been that way.  He was recently a guest on The Steve Austin Show.  He believes that if not for injury, Steve Blackman would have been the runaway winner and a real credible tough guy threat:

“[WWE] decided on this Brawl For All. I can’t remember who came up with this crazy concept, but I wasn’t even supposed to be in it. I wasn’t even on their radar to be in it. Tiger Ali Singh backed out of it, he said he was going to beat everybody, but when it came down to it, he backed out of it and so [Bruce] Prichard called me and asked if I wanted to be in it. I was, so I got in it. When Steve Blackman heard about it, he wanted in, so they put Steve in it. And, actually, Blackman probably would’ve won the whole thing. He was taking this thing so seriously, and this is the mindset of Steve Blackman, he was taking it so seriously he was actually working out with guys, preparing for this Brawl For All, shooting in, taking guys down, like, obviously, boxing was included. He was practising, doing that, and the guy that he was practising, training with was a lot heavier than Steve and ended up rolling on his knee and it messed his knee up, so he had to back out if it.”  H/T WrestlingInc

Holly also had some amusing insight on how Bart Gunn felt about the competition:

“Like Bart said, if they would have just told him what the deal was, he would’ve had no problem putting Steve [Williams] over basically. And so, Bart just went out there and did what Bart does. Bart knocked him out and ended up screwing up their whole thing and that’s how Bart ended up moving on and obviously knocking out The Godfather, and knocking out Bradshaw, and making his way to the end.” H/T WrestlingInc