I think when Hogan goes people will whine about him being racist and probably being overrated. When Vince dies, people will rejoice because to them, the product may get better because he's dead.
I don't know about Vince. No matter where he makes his sporadic appearances, he gets treated like a conquering hero. There might be a rouge voice or two who thinks that way, but I feel the vast, vast majority will be upset and choose to remember the good things
I always loved the heel announcer. They were the original trolls. The Brain was the best.
A few weeks ago, before his death even, I was randomly rewatching a bunch of oldschool WWF clips from my youth. I laughed so hard at one of his lines I had to rewatch it a bunch of times.
Fast forward to 1:00 for the short version
Spoiler:
"Jannetty tried to dive through the window to escape! What an act of cowardism."
I'll always associate one of my favorite memories of my grandmother with the Brain. She wasn't well from the time I was born. Had a stroke around that time, wasn't self-reliant, sometimes not completely aware of everything around her. Still was able to cook or play games occasionally in a limited capacity.
One night we were playing cards or bingo or whatever and I was watching one of those old house shows that they used to show on MSG network. They're doing the backstage interviews and I believe he was with Andre. He was doing his usual backstage promo with Mean Gene and out of nowhere, my grandmother looks up and said...
"Oh, SHUT THE HELL UP BOBBY!"
First, I was stunned because I had no idea she was comprehending any of this.
Second, how the hell did she know who he was?
"His name is right there on the screen"
There are very few memories I have of her being that aware. Another, oddly enough, was very close to the end when she was in the hospital and knew that I was watching the Raiders on TV. But initially I got a bit excited because I thought she was a closet wrestling fan, but no, she was just reading his name off the screen and Bobby had done his job well enough to piss off an elderly woman who rarely had the faculties to realize what was going on around her.
Rude spoke about it before he died. He said he didn't see why he needed a manager because he was great on the mic.
Just got off the phone with a childhood friend. We reminisced about Bobby. He hasn't watched in over a decade but he said he was gutted when he heard the news and ofc mentioned how awful it was to be so great at talking and then not being able to talk.
Just got through watching most of those shoot interview clips, they're fantastic. My favourite line was Bobby relating what Gorilla always said about the business: "If you're not in this business to make money, you're a fool."
I saw that whole shoot interview probably about ten years ago. If anyone remembers when You Tube was the land of the illegally uploaded wrestling shoot interviews, it was then. I must have watched over 100 shoot interviews back in the day. Anyway if I remember correctly, at the beginning of this one, Heenan apologizes for his voice. I think it was before he was diagnosed with cancer, but I would assume this is about the time when his troubles began
That book is up on XWT for download and has lots of seeders atm. I got it a couple of days ago.
That Schiavone clip I linked earlier is pretty much 5 minutes of Bobby stories and then 15 minutes of Tony reacting to Conrad reading excerpts from Bobby's book.