Gunn, who mostly wrestled in tag teams, has won 13 tag team championships in WWE with three different partners (with Bart Gunn as The Smoking Gunns, with Road Dogg as The New Age Outlaws, and with Chuck Palumbo as Billy and Chuck)
Follow Us
Monty Kip Sopp, also known as , Billy Gunn was born on November 1, 1963. He is a professional wrestler from the United States. He is presently signed as a wrestler and coach with All Elite Wrestling (AEW). Gunn is most known for his work with the World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (WWF/E) from 1993 to 2004 and again from 2012 to 2015. He also worked as a trainer in NXT and as a coach on WWE’s Tough Enough. From 2005 until 2009, he was also a member of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA).
Gunn, who mostly wrestled in tag teams, has won 13 tag team championships in WWE with three different partners (with Bart Gunn as The Smoking Gunns, with Road Dogg as The New Age Outlaws, and with Chuck Palumbo as Billy and Chuck). He is also a two-time WWF Hardcore Champion and a one-time WWF Intercontinental Champion, for a total of 14 WWE championships. He won the King of the Ring tournament in 1999 and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 as a member of D-Generation X.
Sopp quit the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association as a professional bull rider in his early twenties to seek a career as a professional wrestler. Sopp, who was trained by Jerry Grey, competed for eight years on the independent circuit (including a brief run as an enhancement talent for World Championship Wrestling (WCW)) until obtaining a contract with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993.
| Name | Monty Kip Sopp |
| DOB | 1 November 1963, 58 years |
| Height | 190 cm |
| Weight | 118 kg |
| Occupation | Professional wrestler |
| Professional Debut | 1993 |
| Wife | Paula Heaney-Sopp |
| Professional Name | Billy Gunn |
READ MORE: Road Dogg Height, Name, Weight, Age, Wife, Children, Films, Profile
Following weeks of vignettes, Sopp made his WWF debut as Billy Gunn on the May 17, 1993, edition of Raw, teaming with his on-screen brother, Bart Gunn, to beat Tony Vajda and Glenn Ruth. The duo, now known as The Smoking Gunns, made their pay-per-view debut at King of the Ring, defeating Money Inc. and The Headshrinkers in an eight-man tag team bout alongside The Steiner Brothers. Gunn competed in his first Royal Rumble match on January 22, 1994, but was defeated by Diesel.
Gunn took some time off after The Smoking Gunns dissolved to recover from an injury. He beat Flash Funk at WrestleMania 13, garnering the attention of The Honky Tonk Man, who made Gunn his protégé. During this period, he experimented with a new gimmick called Rockabilly. He used this gimmick for much of 1997, and finally had a brief rivalry with “The Real Double J,” Jesse James. On the October 4, 1997 edition of Shotgun Saturday Night, James noticed that both of their professions were stagnant and proposed that they form a tag team. Gunn agreed and smashed a guitar over the Honky Tonk Man’s head to cement their newfound friendship.
On the 1000th edition of Raw on July 23, Sopp made his first WWE appearance in over eight years, reuniting alongside Road Dogg, X-Pac, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H to reconstitute D-Generation X for one night only. On November 13, 2015, WWE officially stated that Sopp had been terminated from his WWE contract after failing a drug test. He tested positive for excessive testosterone levels in a powerlifting tournament on July 25, 2015, and was suspended from the sport for four years.
2 – time Hardcore Champion
1 – time Intercontinental Champion
13 – Time World Tag Team Champion
King of The Ring in 1999
Gunn was appointed as a coach by All Elite Wrestling in January 2019. He competed in the pre-show battle royal at the AEW Double or Nothing event on May 25. On the November 20, 2019 edition of AEW Dynamite, Gunn made his first broadcast debut for AEW, competing in a battle royal. The Gunn Club stable’s perfect record in AEW came to an end on the December 1, 2021 edition of Dynamite when Billy and Colten Gunn were defeated by the pair of Sting and Darby Allin. On the April 15, 2022 episode of AEW Rampage, the Gunn Club were defeated by Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, and Wheeler Yuta) in a six-man tag team match when Yuta pinned Billy.
He is still wrestling and going strong. Even in his old age, it looks like he is never going to stop and will go for some more years and later retire in the company he is working for today. Also, as he is a well-known name in the industry it can be speculated that he is one of the best and vintage wrestlers of all time. As most of the wrestlers who wrestled from his time are nowhere to be seen but he is still kicking hard.
