It's bad news for Bad News.

Taking a moment to raise a glass to the memory of former WWF wrestler Bad News Brown, who passed away yesterday morning at 63 (!).

A couple of memories about Bad News:

1. The guy was probably the original WWF badass. Black guy, black trunks, black glove, shaved head and full beard ... put it all together, and it made for a very intimidating package (and there was one other piece of the puzzle that completed the package that I'll talk about in a couple of moments). A real no-nonsense heel who relied solely on his badass-ness and didn't need a gimmick or mic skills to get over. Hated him to death at the time of his WWF run, but I was reminiscing a few weeks ago and thinking, in retrospect, just how awesome he and Ted DiBiase were as super-effective heels.

2. Never got a run with one of the WWF's two singles belts at the time, which is too bad. The one match I remember most was on USA's old Tuesday Night Titans program (or whatever it was called at the time), when he wrestled jobber Scott Casey for what seemed like 20 minutes. BNB's "gimmick" at the time, if you can call it that, was that he was undefeated and unbeatable. Casey nearly defeated him at several points in the match, and I was rooting so hard for Casey to steal a win (except I don't think he had much of a finisher - maybe a dreaded "lariat," since he was from Texas - so that would have been an issue standing in the way of a victory) ... and then out of nowhere, BNB hit his "ghetto blaster" finisher for the pin. God, I hated him.

3. The other match that stands out was his turn on Bret Hart at the Wrestlemania IV battle royal. BNB and Bret Hart (before Hart became "TBTI, TBTW, TBTEWB") had eliminated all of the other competitors and had seemed to agree to split the win and the trophy. Hart was preening for the crowd (he was a heel at the time as well), when BNB hit the ghetto blaster on Hart and tossed him out of the ring, which cemented his badass reputation. (Think of sort of a pre-Stone Cold Stone Cold Steve Austin. Today, Bad News would probably be the biggest face in the company, except he would have been ... 63? Really???)

4. Probably the thing I recall best about BNB was the fact that he walked to the ring without entrance music for the bulk of his run. Can you imagine that today? No entrance music? We're now in an era where the WWE uses entrance music for run-ins, for crying out loud - which dampens the "surprise" element of the run-in, it would seem.

R.I.P., Bad News Brown.