There Will Never Be Another Brain

He was one of a kind
Photo Credit: WWE.com

My brother and sister are twins. I’ve been honored to speak at each of their weddings. And one of the things I said about each of them is you can find maybe half a dozen people who would label them a best friend — and they’d all be right. Find me half a dozen wrestling fans who came of age in the late 1980s and they’ll likely each have their own favorite Bobby “The Brain” Heenan moment — and they’d all be right.

Favorites are subjective, of course, but you simply can’t say one Bobby Heenan moment is the best. And that’s because for all of his iconic performances — leading Andre the Giant into war with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania III, living and dying with every second of Ric Flair’s momentous run in the 1992 Royal Rumble, underscoring the formation of the New World Order at Bash at the Beach 1996 — Heenan built his legacy by being pitch-perfect week in and week out on WWF television while it was taking the world by storm.

Heenan cracked up his on- and off-screen colleagues on Prime Time Wrestling. He strode to ringside on syndicated shows like Superstars and Wrestling Challenge, parting the crowds for the likes of “Ravishing” Rick Rude, the Barbarian, Haku and Mr. Perfect. He bumped for babyfaces as part of many angles and came back the next week with an even larger air of indignant supremacy, carrying himself as bigger and more important than anyone in the arena or watching at home.

The beauty of living in 2017 is that although our childhood heroes age and pass on, their careers live on just a few clicks and taps. All we need is the spare time to find ourselves back in our parents’ living room on a Saturday morning, reliving performances we didn’t know were anything other than a guy like the Brain trying his damnedest to win, losing if he must — but always, always cheating.

The temptation, of course, is to let these tribute posts become little more thank links to YouTube compilations or Network timestamps or verbatim quotes of the lines that made the man a legend. And there’s nothing wrong with that kind of roundup. After all, it’s unlikely for anyone to have seen all of the man’s great work, and certainly we wouldn’t be able to remember it all if we had. To say nothing of the chance to dig more deeply into the in-ring career that dates back to the early 1960s, or uncover the late-stages gold buried between ugly piles of tailspin-era WCW.

It doesn’t matter what my favorite Bobby Heenan memories are, or why, because they’re my memories and you have your own. Besides, my favorite thing about Heenan isn’t a singular moment but that he’s the embodiment of my wrestling awakening. For almost every kid, the first time wrestling catches an eye it’s because a human superhero is finding a way to emerge victorious over an unspeakable villain. And for a lot of kids, that works out pretty well until they start to wonder if maybe there isn’t a little bit more to what’s happening on the screen, if maybe they might rather find a different way to kill a few weekend hours that doesn’t involve so much suspension of disbelief. And hey, that’s fine, too, there’s a great big world out there and far be it from me to tell someone else what to enjoy.

But for a lot of us, wrestling being different didn’t keep it from being fun. As we started to feel differently — maybe not fully understanding — about who we cheered and why, we began to grasp the show only worked because of the bad guys. A Rick Rude, a Mr. Perfect, a Bobby Heenan, the absolute elites knew how to pull every string, how to embody a persona so fully it was impossible to accept it as character work because every word, every motion, hell, even the winks were tweaking the crowd in ways we couldn’t begin to process because the raw emotion was overpowering.

I don’t know when I first appreciated Heenan’s '92 Rumble commentary as craftsmanship. I don’t know the first time I watched WrestleMania III and just stared at Heenan in that white and gold tuxedo instead of the titans in the ring. I don’t know the first time I dozed off listening to Bobby and Gorilla announced some show I'd seen a dozen times but wanted to listen to again because what better soundtrack could there be. But somewhere along the way, I realized Heenan was the greatest, and that opened up not just the chance to enjoy whatever new work he produced but to go back, time and again, to everything I’d already seen to appreciate it on another level.

There’s two people whom I will always hold up as the absolute essence of what it means to work in professional wrestling, Randy “Macho Man” Savage and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. You may like others more, but no two men ever did it better. And when Savage died unexpectedly in 2011, it ripped me apart because he didn’t go out the way he wanted. Not even close.

The Brain didn’t either, of course. As has been noted, the cruelty of a man known the world over for using his voice being unable to speak in his waning years is a stone cold reminder that illness doesn’t discriminate and life is anything but fair. And in 2017 going out at 73 is still far too young, even in a business that has called far too many home long before their time.

But Heenan had those shining moments. He experienced the cheers at WrestleMania X-Seven. He went into the Hall of Fame three years later. He knows he was loved, and in a performer’s life I don’t know if there’s a higher praise. I’m sad for his family, the friends who actually knew and worked with him over the years and sure, the fans who thought they knew him because he was as much a part of childhood as anyone else in popular culture. But I’m glad we can celebrate Bobby Heenan’s life and legacy without fearing he never felt the adulation, never knew how many he reached.

A lot of people wonder why there aren’t managers or big stables in pro wrestling any more. Or they ask why it’s so hard to have good heel commentary. It’s because you can’t improve upon perfection. Vince McMahon can try to build Roman Reigns in the same way he tried with John Cena, the same way he tried with Hulk Hogan. And along the way there are minor successes. But there will never be another Brain, nor should there. Bobby Heenan wasn’t just one of the best, he was the cream of the crop. Rest easy, Brain. We love you.