Pulling pranks or “ribs’ is a time-honored tradition in pro wrestling that keeps the boys entertained while on the road and nobody did it better in his day than Bobby “The Brain” Heenan.
During a recent episode of What Happened When, Tony Schiavone spoke about many subjects concerning Heenan and himself. Tony went into why Heenan was angry at him for years as well as when he first heard Bobby Heenan was suffering from throat cancer.
Tony Schiavone’s walk down memory lane wasn’t all sad. The former voice of WCW also got the chance to discuss Bobby Heenan’s legendary love of pulling ribs on people. Pranking someone was a specialty of Heenan’s and Tony discussed some of Bobby’s favorite ways to get one over on someone. As it turns out some of Heenan’s best pranks weren’t even on his fellow wrestlers because he found people who had nothing to do with pro wrestling sometimes made the best targets.
“I remember one time we went into a convenience store in Salisbury Maryland after our show and we just knew Bobby was up to something and Bobby would do something like, ‘okay get ready’ or ‘watch what I’m gonna do here.’ And he walks up with a — I don’t know what he had. He could of had soda, could’ve had beer or whatever. He walks up to the counter where this big lady is and on the counter are all these different things like they had placards with maybe gum to sell like how they have 24 Hour Energy [drinks] to sell [now] up on that.”
“Bobby does one of his prat falls and falls forward and knocks down everything on the counter. Everything goes splat! And the lady says ‘oh, oh!’ And he says, ‘oh gee whiz I’m sorry. It’s been a long day let me help you pick it up.’ So now he’s trying to help her pick things up and the more he’s picking things up the more he’s making things worse. And now he reaches and he says ‘here let me have this’ and he accidentally hits her in the boob and he goes, ‘oh gee whiz I’m sorry I’m just very sorry.’ And she says ‘that’s okay I’ll pick it up’ — that happened more than once. That happened in Maryland, that happened in New Jersey where he would do a prat fall like that to make us all laugh. And of course we would have to run out trying not to laugh but it was just Heenan being Heenan.”
“One time we pulled up to a place in New Jersey, it was a gas station. And it was odd, you would pull up to the gas station — this was back in the 90’s and then you would pull up after the gas station there would be this person sitting there and then you would pay for it. So we pulled up and there was this huge fat black lady in there and I knew Heenan was gonna say something smart so I pulled up to her and just cracked the window ever so slightly so I could slide out the credit card and Heenan said ‘is there any air left in there?’ And we all laughed again.”
“The best story though was when we were in Pensacola and we used to take the first flight out every morning back to Atlanta, and we’re talking about early morning and there was always a bunch of us that did that in production people and us. I was always there, [Mike] Tenay was always there, Heenan was always there and there was one clerk checking us out in Pensacola. And this is not the days where the Marriott slides your bill underneath the door. This is the Pensacola hotel, whatever it is we’re all in a line there. There was this old guy buffing the floor in the mornings. And he has the orange extension cord across where we are lined up and Heenan says: ‘alright I got something.'”
“And as Heenan wraps his leg around the slack of this extension cord as much as he could do it. And when it was his turn to come to the front he trips, pulls out the extension cord — pulls it out of the plug. The buffer goes out of the guys’s hands and Heenan now is grabbing the extension cord trying to get it off his foot and he pulls it up and now he’s fighting with the extension cord like it’s a f-cking gimmick match and like it’s this big snake and he’s going back and forth and back and forth and just doing an over-the-top show for all of us at 4 o’clock in the morning. And then he finally get it down and we help him pull it off and he goes up to the front and he falls forward and he knocks things down on the counter. That was Bobby Heenan, it happened all the time and we loved him for it and he just continued to do things and make us laugh.”
“So those are some of the things I remember about Bobby but it was always a treat traveling with him, it really was. Because he kept us entertained. He’s The Brain.”
It goes to show you nobody really knows what’s going on inside someone’s head but it’s a good thing Bobby pulled all of those shenanigans when he did or the cops might have been called a couple of times. At least we’d have security video so fans could see Heenan wrestle with an extension cord.
It’s been a busy week full of news. If you’d like to catch up on some of the top stories from this week, check out some of the links below:
- WATCH: Matt Hardy says “it’s happening” and makes huge Broken reference
- JBL confirmed story about Enzo Amore’s backstage heat on Bring It To The Table, says he won’t last long
- John Cena lands lead role in Transformers spin-off “Bumblebee” movie
- WATCH: Chris Jericho in heated F-Bomb altercation in New York City
- Bram lost his cool during an indie match and destroyed Ravie Davie’s face
- A stripper writes about her experience with a “high” and “stuck up” Enzo Amore
- Why Edge & Christian’s WWE Network show was canceled, more cuts on the way?
- GFW hits a few snags trying to file trademarks on Broken Universe
- Is WWE planning on making some releases soon?
- Steve Austin’s beloved Hershey The Wonder Dog has passed away
- AJ Styles tells who’s idea it was for him to win the US Title at MSG House Show
- WWE could be sending main roster stars to NXT in next Superstar Shake-Up
- Latest updates in the on-going Hardy Boyz/Anthem Sports negotiations
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit What Happened When with Tony Schiavone with a H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
