Paul Bearer making a comeback?

The internet's been rife with speculation this week that Paul Bearer a.k.a. Percy Pringle is making a return to WWE television.

It was all kicked off when Kane made his anticipated heel-turn on Raw on monday night by killing everybody at ringside and repeatedly asking "Is he alive or is he dead?". Everybody on the internet seemed to know immediately that he was obviously asking about his storyline father, Paul Bearer, who was last seen being covered with cement by The Undertaker at 2004's Great American Bash (Click here to watch him die).

But because of the complaints that people made about WWE effectively showing a murder without repurcussions (The Undertaker remained a babyface!), the storyline was changed somewhat and on the following week's Smackdown the announcers had a coverup...

Cole: "We'd like to update you on the condition of Paul Bearer at this time. The Undertaker's once friend and confidant suffered severe internal injuries he also suffered injuries to the lungs, severe injuries to the lungs, and also to the trachea."

Tazz: "It is extremely doubtful that we'll ever see Paul Bearer on Smackdown ever again, due to the horrifiying injuries the man sustained. It's horrible."

So according to every wrestling fan on the internet, the ambiguity of Bearer's status is reflected with Kane's question.

PercyPringle.com, homepage of Paul Bearer, has had a HUGE amount of traffic this week. According to Pringle himself, 80,000 visitors in the four days since Raw aired and a further 1,000 emails asking him if he was coming back. Pringle posted a short blog under the title "Kayfabe is alive... But is Paul Bearer?". The guy's loving the attention. The payoff to this angle needs to be as good as Paul Bearer returning or it wouldn't be worth watching.

The fact that Paul Bearer's real name is Percy Pringle is hilarious. He looks so much like the Pringle guy that you could edit Wikipedia to say that the Pringles guy was based on Bearer and it wouldn't be deleted immediately as vandalism, it would just stay there awaiting a citation. It's also ironic that a guy named after the planet's most consumed potato product got to be more than 500lbs (almost 40st in UK currency) in his time off the road between 2002 and 2004. In fact, his return in 2004 for the angle which led to him dying was actually due to a clause in his contract with WWE that said they'd assist him in getting gastric bypass surgery. Click here to read my source.

Surely, this is the most outrageous example of Vince McMahon's willingness to exploit people for profit - preying on a fat guy's health issues.

So Paul Bearer looks to be coming back. Even if he's not, the interest drummed up by this angle is far higher than WWE have managed recently and could mean that Kane isn't jobbing to anyone for a while.

Either way, this post is littered with keywords on a relevant topic and is bound to get about a million hits from Google. Just to be sure though, Brooke Hogan does not appear nude or indeed clothed in this blog.

Let me know what you think of this Paul Bearer speculation.