10 Genius Wrestling Characters That Happened At The Wrong Time

4. Bad News Brown

It may seem wholly controversial to say, but long before Steve Austin was tearing it up as 'Stone Cold', a character by the name of Bad News Brown pioneered many of the personality traits which would become Austin's bread and butter during the 'Attitude Era'. The cold, calculating Brown very much believed in the whole 'don't trust anybody' shtick, and he stood out as a result. On the surface, Brown was a heel, that much is for certain, but digging a little deeper reveals that he was simply a lone wolf who liked to keep himself to himself. Constantly let down by others, Bad News elected to only trust in himself, something which is also true of the 'Stone Cold' mindset, one which proved to be wildly successful for Steve Austin years later. Nobody can claim that Bad News Brown would have been as big a star as Austin would become had he been a character in the late-90's, but he wasn't a great fit for the WWF of the late-80's and early-90's, standing out like a sore thumb at the time. A complex persona in amongst a sea of very much black and white heels and babyfaces, Brown was tailor-made for an era where he could simply exist on his own merits, rather than being shoe-horned into being 'good' or 'bad'.