From the Archives: The Gimmick Battle Royale

A gimmick welcome home for two iconic voices
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Bobby Heenan was best known as a commentator for his call on the 1992 Royal Rumble match. His 60+ minute partisan cheer session for Ric Flair will go down as one of the greatest pieces of character enhancement and frantic vocal performance in a wrestling setting in history. I'm not highlighting that match here because I didn't have time to watch it and give it its due. You can actually check out @wrestlefeed's tweets from last night, because he watched the whole event and live-tweeted it. Honestly, it's one of the greatest matches of all-time, even without Heenan's commentary, but The Brain pushed it over the top. It deserves nothing more than a dissertation and analysis and high praise, and I will need time to rewatch it so I can give it the treatment that it is owed to it.

However, Heenan did call another battle royale with high notoriety. The Gimmick Battle Royale at WrestleMania X-7 not only brought out nostalgia overload to the fans as a palate cleanser between epic matches at one of the top two Mania events of all-time, but it marked the return of both Heenan and Mean Gene Okerlund to WWE after they both left in the early '90s for the greener pastures of World Championship Wrestling. It's not the classic Heenan/Gorilla Monsoon pairing; Monsoon couldn't have been a part even if he wanted to since he died in 1999. However, Heenan and Okerlund had great rapport with each other, and it showed here. The video is 14:45 long, and about ten minutes of it is entrances with Heenan riffing over them. It's not classic Brain, but it's still great, especially coupled with the warmness of his grand homecoming to WWE.

Content warning: you're going to see a bit of Confederate flag imagery. Michael Hayes' robe is patterned after the traitor's flag, and someone actually brought the thing to the event to wave around.