Amid all the legends fans talk about all the time like Randy Savage or Bret Hart, there are loads of wrestlers who remain terminally underrated thanks to lackluster WWE runs where they didn’t accomplish much as far as title reigns or major televised main events. One such performer is Allen Coage — a.k.a. Bad News Brown or Bad News Allen — who never held a belt in WWE, but made an impression wrestling all over the world, including Canada, Mexico, and Japan.
A solid in-ring worker with a legitimate background, Bad News Brown is one of those guys who’s fun to know about even if he never became a top guy. Let’s take a look at his career, covering his origins, his WWE run, and beyond.
10 Judo Background
Fans that only know Bad News Brown for his time in WWE may be surprised to find out that he actually started out as a judoka. Born Allen Coage in New York City in, the future Bad News Brown took notice of a judo dojo in his city as a teenager and began pursuing the martial art in his early 20s.
Coage proved to be a natural at the sport, winning a tournament surprisingly early and earning a black belt in less than three years.
9 Olympian
Allen Coage competed in several judo-specific competitions throughout the 1960s and 1970s, racking up an impressive number of wins, but he also competed in big-name competitions as well. In 1967 and 1975, he captured gold medals in the Pan American Games, as well as a bronze medal in the 1976 Summer Olympics.
However, that Olympic outing was almost not meant to be — Brown was a finalist in a qualifying tournament, but the selection process was changed at the last minute, resulting in a lawsuit that demanded a re-trial.
8 Trained By Antonio Inoki
Following the Olympics, Allen Coage would step away from judo, making the transition to pro wrestling. To prepare for entering the squared circle, Coage got an impressive start, training under New Japan Pro-Wrestling founder Antonio Inoki in the NJPW dojo.
Working as Buffalo Allen and later Bad News Allen, he made his in-ring debut in the fall of 1977, taking on Seiji Sakaguchi. He’d continue to wrestle for NJPW until 1992, sharing the ring with legends like Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Riki Choshu, the Great Muta, Jushin Thunder Liger, and even Inoki himself.
7 Wrestled For Stampede Wrestling
NJPW would be a frequent haunt for him, but Bad News Allen spent much of the 1980s making his home promotion Canada’s Stampede Wrestling. It was at Stampede that Allen achieved his most in-ring success in terms of titles, becoming a four-time Stampede North American Champion, defeating Bret Hart for the title on two occasions.
During this run, he clashed with various other future stars like Davey Boy Smith, Dynamite Kid, and Honky Tonk Man (back then known as Honky Tonk Wayne).
6 Challenged For The WWE World Title
While Bad News Allen had a brief WWE run in 1979, he’d make a much bigger return to the company in early 1988, where he’d achieve his greatest notoriety under the ring name Bad News Brown. By October of 1988 he’d begin challenging Randy Savage for the WWE Title at house shows, with their encounter on the 12/30/1988 episode of WWF on MSG Network being a standout performance.
He also had a high-profile singles match with Hulk Hogan on an early 1989 episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event, later challenging the Hulkster for the belt later in the year at house shows.
5 WrestleMania 6 Match With Roddy Piper
At the 1990 Royal Rumble, Roddy Piper eliminated Bad News Brown during the signature match, with Brown responding in kind. This led to a full-on feud between the two men going into WrestleMania 6, though the near-seven-minute effort is best remembered for Roddy Piper wearing what amounted to half-blackface and a weak double countout finish.
Reportedly, this was only meant to be a chapter in their feud, but WWE ultimately dropped the angle due to backstage conflicts between the two, as both men refused to lose their matches.
4 Incident With Andre The Giant
Bad News Brown also had a notable conflict with the legendary Andre the Giant, albeit one that had nothing to do with a storyline. While on a tour bus in Japan, Brown heard Andre making racist jokes, and told him to cut it out, which the Giant rebuffed. That’s when Bad News Brown made the driver stop the bus.
Brown exited the bus, challenging Andre the Giant to a real fight outside, reportedly knowing that he might not win a fight with such a huge man. Andre refused to get up from his seat on the bus, but did later apologize to Brown for his remarks.
3 OTHER Incident With Andre The Giant
Incredibly, Bad News Brown/Allen has a second notable incident with Andre the Giant that fans should know about. By 1992, Andre was in poor health, but was still wrestling multi-man tag team matches in Mexico for Universal Wrestling Federation with Bad News Brown, lucha libre legend El Canek, Great Kokina (a.k.a. Yokozuna), and others.
In one infamous bout, Andre was suffering from a virus and drunk off of tequila, and ended up losing control of his bowels, expelling diarrhea all over Bad News Brown.
2 Awful Survivor Series Teammate
In some ways, Bad News Brown in WWE was a bit like the Steve Austin of his day, as his persona was that of a disgruntled loner who hated everyone around him. This translated to Brown being a notoriously terrible tag team partner in kayfabe, as seen in several Survivor Series matches.
At the second Survivor Series event in 1988, Brown got into an argument with his partners and walked off, taking a purposeful countout elimination and giving the heroes the advantage. In 1989, he once again walked out on his team after getting into an argument with Big Boss Man. Brown seemed set for a hat trick in 1990, but ended up leaving WWE before it could happen.
1 Retired To Canada
After leaving WWE, Bad News Brown embarked on various tours of Japan and Mexico while living in Calgary, having made Canada his home back in his Stampede days. As the 1990s continued on, Brown spent more time wrestling indie shows in Canada and occasionally embarking on tours of Japan before officially retiring in 1999 due to a knee injury.
In the early 2000s, he operated a wrestling school alongside Rick Bognar (a.k.a. Big Titan or the fake Razor Ramon) for a couple of years, and sadly died in 2007 of a heart attack.