Bobby Heenan

Raymond Louis Heenan (November 1, 1944 – September 17, 2017) was an American professional wrestling manager, color commentator, and wrestler. Born in 1944, he began his professional wrestling career in 1965 and performed across major promotions including the American Wrestling Association (AWA), the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), and World Championship Wrestling (WCW), where he was widely known under the ring name Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.

Heenan built his reputation through an exceptional ability to draw crowd hostility toward himself and the wrestlers he managed, a group collectively known as "The Heenan Family." Among his most notable associations, he guided Nick Bockwinkel to the AWA World Heavyweight Championship and became a central figure in the 1980s professional wrestling boom by managing King Kong Bundy and André the Giant in WWF main event matches against Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 2 and WrestleMania III respectively.

Beyond managing, Heenan was celebrated for his quick wit and comedic chemistry with commentator Gorilla Monsoon. He retired in 2001 at WrestleMania X-Seven following a seventeen-year run as a color commentator. He also authored two books and briefly hosted a parody talk show on WWF Prime Time Wrestling. Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2002, he died from complications of the disease in 2017. He has been inducted into the Professional Wrestling, WWE, and Wrestling Observer halls of fame, and multiple commentators have called him the greatest professional wrestling manager of all time.