Bruce Prichard (born March 7, 1963) is a Professional Wrestling booker, manager, and producer. He is best known for his time as a manager for WWF, where he performed under the name of Brother Love, a managing televangelist (albeit one who claimed to preach the "word of love" rather than the "word of God"), who had his own segment, The Brother Love Show, where he would usually support the Heel wrestlers, and served as the original manager of The Undertaker. After leaving WWE in 2008, Prichard served as the Senior Vice President of Programming and Talent Relations for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA, now Impact Wrestling), appearing as a judge during their Gut Check segments, and as an onscreen authority role during the time in 2017 where the company went through several renames.
Since 2016, Prichard has co-hosted the Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard podcast with Conrad Thompson. In 2019 he rejoined the WWE as a member of their creative team, and in October was made the executive producer of SmackDown.
"I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE THESE TROPES!!!":
- Ambiguously Christian: Despite looking for all the world like a televangelist, Brother Love actually never stated that what he preached was Christianity, but rather the "word of love" instead of the "word of God".
- Catchphrase: "I love you!"
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: When Prichard took a leave from absence from the WWF in the spring of 1991, his character Brother Love was written off as having been the victim of a brutal attack by the Ultimate Warrior. When Warrior began destroying the Brother Love set and Love began panicking, commentators Vince McMahon and Roddy Piper overtly noted that the segment was "coming to an end" ... confirmed when Love was chased to the ring and then beaten to a pulp.
- Large Ham: He wouldn't just say "I love you", no, he would say, "I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE YEEEEEEEEEEEEW!!!"
- Light Is Not Good: He always dressed in white suits and was always a heel manager. In his words, "Just because I love you, doesn't mean I like you."
- Non-Action Guy: He was a manager, not a wrestler. However, this did not stop several faces from physically beating Love, with the Ultimate Warrior (on Love's final segment during his original run) beating him to the brink of unconsciousness. He did make it to the final four of the Gimmick Battle Royal at WrestleMania X-Seven, though.
- Put on a Bus: That dropped him off in the WWE office in 1991. His show was replaced by Paul Bearer's "The Funeral Parlor."
- Sinister Minister: A televangelist who was also a heel wrestling manager.
- Take That!:
- It cannot be a coincidence that Brother Love, a smarmy, disingenuous televangelist, was introduced around the time of the late 1980s scandals involving televangelists such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. In fact, it was rumored for a time that the reason for the character being retired was a segment where he actually induced an actor, pretending to be blind and crippled, to "see" and "walk" on command (proclaiming, "I can see!" and "I can walk!"), although Prichard would later state that the character was retired so that he could deal with personal issues and not because of the segment.
- For a very short time in 1993, he was repackaged as Reo Rogers, which was the third gimmick WWE had created as a shot at Dusty Rhodes, the others being Virgil and Akeem the African Dream.
- Talk Show with Fists: "The Brother Love Show". Reo Rogers briefly had "Reo's Roundup," which only lasted two segments before the character was dropped.
- Too Dumb to Live: In early 2003, The Big Show had been setting up crates in the ring week after week on SmackDown! for The Undertaker. On the February 6th episode, Taker opened the crate and out came Brother Love. BL tried to get Taker to "remember the lessons of love" and to get him to see Big Show's side of things. Taker, complete with a "thumbs down" of disgust, Tombstoned BL instead.
- Wrestling Doesn't Pay: He's a managing televangelist.
- Wrestling Family: Brother of wrestler "Doctor" Tom Prichard.
