By: Travis Wakeman

I can't tell you why, but I felt like I needed to write this. WWE wrestlers and personalities pass away all the time, unfortunately, but few of them have hit me the way this one has.

You see, when you've watched wrestling as long as I have, when a certain wrestler passes away, a piece of you goes with it. When Bobby Heenan passed away on Sunday September 17, 2017, a piece of the wrestling fan I have always been went too. I think a lot of fans would feel the same way.

Though I am still a hardcore wrestling fan to this day, the further away we get from the time I got into wrestling, the less of a connection I feel to it. When I got into wrestling (and when I say that, I mean watching it on a regular basis), Heenan was one of the personalities you saw the most. If not the most. As a young kid, he came across as annoying and irritating, but that's what he was supposed to do. As an older fan, all you can do is sit back and marvel at how good the man was at what he did. And I mean everything he did. Whether it be as a color commentator, a manager, a co-host of a TV show, he was spectacular.

For me, Gorilla Monsoon and Heenan are wrestling. They always will be. No announcing combination has been, or ever will, touch them. PrimeTime Wrestling was the television show that got me into wrestling. Not Raw, not WrestleMania, not any other wrestling show. It was that one. It had the perfect format. To this day, it's better than any wrestling show I've ever watched. It's the reason one of the brands of the TWF adopted that name.

Heenan had a certain wit. He had an undeniable sense of humor. Just go around YouTube sometime and hear what other wrestlers have said about him. YouTube can often be a cesspool for negativity, especially with wrestling's trend of the "shoot" interviews. There's very few people who you won't hear at least one person speak badly of, but Heenan is one that I haven't.

I was there in 2005 when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Still funny as ever, he probably had the best speech that night. Though his health had greatly deteriorated and he had been out of the business for years, he left an indelible mark on wrestling. One that will never be forgotten.

I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I have to be honest. Over the years, there's been tens of thousands of wrestlers, managers, valets, announcers, stagehands, production people, etc. that have come and gone in the world of wrestling. Of those, 99 percent could be easily replaced and/or duplicated. Bobby Heenan is one who can't.

Rest in Peace, Bobby, and thank you for everything you meant to the wrestling industry and to this young fan's life.