Bad News Brown, an Olympian who found pro wrestling success in multiple countries, is being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
It was announced today that Bad News Brown (real name Allen Coage) has joined the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2026. The ceremony is being held in Las Vegas on Friday, April 17 during WrestleMania 42 weekend. Stephanie McMahon, AJ Styles, Demolition (Ax & Smash), Dennis Rodman, and Sid Vicious are the other inductees that have been confirmed so far.
Like Vicious, Brown is a Legacy Award winner, which is how WWE honors inductees who have passed away. Brown, 63, died of a heart attack in 2007.
Brown entered pro wrestling after an accomplished judo career that saw him win a bronze medal for the United States at the 1976 Olympics. He started with New Japan Pro-Wrestling shortly after that and later competed for Stampede Wrestling in Canada and the WWF back in the US. He went by both “Bad News Brown” and “Bad News Allen” in pro wrestling.
While with WWF, Brown competed at three WrestleManias, including winning a battle royal at WrestleMania IV in 1988.
“From standing on the podium at the 1976 Summer Olympics to the center of the ring at #WrestleMania IV, Bad News Brown was a fierce competitor with an attitude to match,” Paul “Triple H” Levesque tweeted. “For his accomplishments in combat sports and contributions to @WWE, it is a pleasure to announce his induction into the 2026 Legacy Class of the #WWEHOF.”
Dolby Live at Park MGM in Vegas will be the venue for the Hall of Fame ceremony.
In every regional territory, there was that one moment that becomes the most vivid memory of pro wrestling at a certain time in a certain place. It’s the one thing that over time becomes the lasting memory of the old days of territorial wrestling. Not just years, but decades later, older fans remember it and younger fans have been told about it so many times they can visualize it, even when they often happened before those younger fans were born. In most cases, these are part of the high-water marks in the history of those promotions, usually leading to record setting business. Because nobody saved tapes, few of them are even available to be seen today.
Example of this are different in every one of the old regional territories. In Northern California, it would be when Ray Stevens jumped off the top of a ladder onto the throat of Pepper Gomez in Oakland in 1962. In Southern California, it would be when John Tolos threw Monsel Power in Freddie Blassie’s eyes in 1971.
The greatest test of an event is the memories that last over time. There have been a lot of great matches, even in the last month. But in the modern era of MMA, there has really only been one true all-time legendary battle. It’s the one people will talk about and be in awe of for decades, and that was Kazushi Sakuraba’s performance on May 1, 2000 at the Tokyo Dome.
Sakuraba, participating on a one-night open weight tournament, beat Royce Gracie in the longest modern era match, a no time limit bout that went 90:00 before Royce’s father Helio threw in the towel as his son could do nothing to stop repeated leg kicks. After that match, Sakuraba came back out and faced Igor Vovchanchyn, at the time the No. 1 heavyweight in the world. Vovchanchyn outweighed Sakuraba by more than 40 pounds at weigh-ins, and by this time after the prior match, it was probably closer to 50 pounds. Sakuraba was actually winning the fight for 10:00, but finally, he gassed, took a pounding, and at the 15:00 round break, his corner told him not to continue.
Even though Fedor Emelianenko vs. Mirko Cro Cop was the generation’s ultimate heavyweight battle, it will not be remembered nearly as well.
Before we get started this week, we wanted to send our deepest condolences and prayers to Jim Ross and his family.
This week in wrestling, PWG had a supposed show of the year contender that nobody except the live crowd can see for months, Katsuyori Shibata (thank the lord not Bad Luck Fale) won the New Japan Cup and is set to face Kazuchika Okada at the very pretty sounding Sakura Genesis in April, and WWE has continued its build to some sort of big, annual wrestling event called The Wrestling Mania. I doubt you’ve heard of it.
These are our favorite wrestlers this week. Who’s yours?
Earlier this week, Manami Toyota announced her retirement later this year after 30 years as a professional wrestler. Toyota is considered one of the greatest wrestlers of the 1990s, not that I had any idea who she was back then. I was too busy imitating Shaq Attaq and collecting Shawn Kemp basketball cards, which I’m sure are worth millions now.
I only became familiar with Toyota in recent years as my interest in Japanese wrestling has grown, and even then I’ve only seen a handful of her matches. But you know what, you don’t need to see many Toyota matches to understand how incredible she was in her heyday.
She was basically a five-star match machine in the early 90s. I would describe her style as a sprint from start to finish, like if Florence Griffith Joyner had been a wrestler. What I personally enjoyed most from the few matches I’ve seen are her astonishing array of suplexes, those insane dropkicks all the way to the floor, and her bridge. Is that weird? I just love a good bridge, OK. And hers were the best.
If you’d like to know more about Toyota’s incredible career, check out Dave’s excellent feature in this week’s newsletter.
Bad News Allen
By Arya Witner
My favorite wrestler this week is an odd choice since he retired in 1999 and hasn’t been on a nationally televised US TV show since 1990. On top of that he passed away in 2007. My favorite wrestler this week is 1976 Olympic Bronze Medalist Allen Coage aka Bad News Allen/Bad News Brown.
Ten years after he passed away he was the subject of a tribute show on Killing The Town, starring former F4WOnline co-host Lance Storm and New Japan commentator Don Callis. The story of Bad News is an interesting one. He didn’t take his first Judo class until he was 22 but somehow became a five-time AAU national champion, a two-time Pan-Am Gold Medalist, and the afore-mentioned Olympic Bronze Medalist.
From there he entered the New Japan dojo at the ripe, young age of 34 and had a colorful 22-year career with his most notable stops being in Stampede Wrestling and the WWF. After leaving the WWF in 1990 he wrestled in New Japan and appeared on Canadian independent shows over the next decade. In addition to being an excellent athlete he had a commanding presence that helped him both with promos and in the locker room, where there was great respect for him everywhere he went.
Nixon Newell
By Alan Boon
My favorite wrestler this week is Nixon Newell, who bade farewell to one of her regular haunts — Fight Club: PRO — as part of a long, winding goodbye to the British wrestling scene. Her “nxt” destination hasn’t been officially announced yet, but it’s fair to say that you should expect to see her on that Network thing by mid-summer, if not sooner.
Her last show for Fight Club: PRO, at the Fixxion Warehouse in Wolverhampton, was named for her. Entitled First Female of Fight Club: PRO, it saw 200 people cram into a tiny space above a nightclub to say goodbye, with a last match against one of her mentors — Candice LeRae — a fitting way to bow out. LeRae was a perfect opponent, because she, too, has spent much of her career fighting as many men as women, one of Nixon’s core strengths.
Indeed, the night before, at All The Best 2017 in the same building, Nixon went toe-to-toe with her eternal nemesis (and sometime tag partner) Chris Brookes, in a crazy match which involved staples and thumb tacks amongst a display of super, modern wrestling.
Although the British scene is in a very healthy state, Nixon’s departure will leave a huge gap, and our loss is very much Orlando’s gain. Enjoy her while you can, and get ready for the next chapter in her story.
The Miz & Maryse
By Joseph Currier
The Miz and Maryse are my favorite wrestlers this week, and I’d expand that to include John Cena and Nikki Bella as well if I didn’t think that picking two wrestlers this week was already stretching things too much.
The “Total Bellas” videos that aired on last Tuesday’s SmackDown were about as funny as WWE comedy gets, largely due to the performances put on by Miz and Maryse. And even with their quality, they were almost overshadowed by Cena’s excellent promo on Talking Smack.
Everyone involved in the Cena & Nikki vs. Miz & Maryse mixed tag match at WrestleMania has played their parts so well since it started to build. We’ll see what the end result of it is on the show, but it’s become one of the matches I’m most looking forward to at WrestleMania.
Their storyline has been another reminder of how good Miz has become. I picked him as my choice for Most Improved in the 2016 Wrestling Observer Awards, though I understood the argument that he was just given more of a chance to showcase his abilities instead of actually becoming better.
But I think everything clicked for him in 2016, with Maryse returning and how well the couple works together on television helping out a lot, to the point where he’s now a worthy legitimate main event-level wrestler.
