I’ve been trying to find the words all day to talk about what Scott Hall meant to my wrestling fandom. Most people remember him first as Razor Ramon on the big stage of the World Wrestling Federation, but I remember eighteen months before that, when the not-yet-wrestling Diamond Dallas Page introduced us to the slick, ripped, unstoppable looking Diamond Studd. That was the genesis of the look, the sound, the attitude of “the Bad Guy.”
Within a year, he entered the WWF and immediately went after Randy Savage, ultimately costing him his WWF championship when he interfered on Ric Flair’s behalf. This was foreshadowing of a sort. Scott Hall would be the guy who helped someone else win their world championship, while never being the one to hoist the belt himself. It was also a time where wrestling was starting to get stale for me, and many others. I stopped watching weekly by fall 1993, and the last thing I watched at all was a VHS rental of WrestleMania X. That was, of course, the night that Shawn Michaels and Hall tore the house down in what WWE loves to call “the first ladder match in WWE history.” That erases a rather good ladder match between Bret Hart and Michaels for the same title in 1992, however, it doesn’t change the fact that Michaels and his Kliq buddy Hall had themselves a spectacular match for the ages, one where Razor Ramon stood tall on the ladder at the end. After that, during that time I stopped watching, the onscreen Kliq was formed, and Hall was part of an 18-month feud with Shawn Michaels over that Intercontinental title, including a second ladder match at Summerslam ‘95, but I would not see any of that until the WWE Network came around twenty years afterwards.
During the 1996 Summer Olympics, I was up late Friday or Saturday night watching some of the taped competitions, and afterwards I flipped channels and came across WCW Worldwide. It was the first wrestling I’d watched in almost 3 years and they replayed the ending of Bash at the Beach. I was stunned to see the men I knew as Razor Ramon and Diesel in the ring with Hulk Hogan. That post-match interview with trash flying, Gene Okerlund’s indignation at the Hulkster’s turn to the dark side, and Hall’s mugging for the cameras was a seismic pro wrestling moment. Suddenly, I wanted to keep up again with wrestling, and even though I lacked cable at this time, I used the Internet’s early wrestling sites and episodes of Worldwide to keep up. By that winter, I noticed my football teammates were talking about Nitro where none of us talked about wrestling before, all because of three letters: nWo. All of the wonderful (and yes, not so wonderful) memories wrestling has given me over the past 25 years all flowed from Scott Hall coming down the stairs through the crowd on Nitro in May 1996 and threatening to take over WCW, and culminated with the Bad Guy and Big Sexy convincing Hulk Hogan to become a bad guy himself two months later.
During that monumental run of the New World Order in WCW, Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash got the glory of being world champions, but Hall was the one doing the killer promos and popping the crowd the hardest—the glue of the group. A mere “Hey yo” did more to pop the fans than a fiery babyface promo by Lex Luger or the Steiners would. Hall’s “surveys” would get the arena roaring “N-W-O!” He did such masterful work getting fans involved with the promo, and in the ring he put over others unselfishly. Sean Waltman/1-2-3 Kid/Syxx/X-Pac had his career take off after Hall lost to him by roll-up on WWF Monday Night RAW in 1993. The aforementioned Diamond Dallas Page, who’d been a midcarder at best after becoming a wrestler in early 1992, was made by Hall and Nash in 1997. They had pushed for DDP to get a bigger spotlight, and then after building momentum for him, they each ate a Diamond Cutter brilliantly to put him over. This moment was the first time someone pulled one over on the nWo, and the fans loved it.
It was in this same year that Hall gave Sting the fully fleshed-out idea to become WCW’s version of Brandon Lee’s Crow character. As Sting said more than once, he wasn’t part of the WCW Kliq and he didn’t know Hall closely. Despite that, Hall gave Sting a character that has defined him for 25 years now, who revolutionized wrestling with his aerial descents to the ring, his silent brooding, and that baseball bat. Without question, Scott Hall was the beating heart of the nWo, and when the substance abuse he’d struggled with overtook him, it aligned with the decline of WCW and the New World Order. I rooted for Scott so hard and hated how every return was cut short by his personal struggles. When DDP stepped in a decade ago and helped Scott conquer his alcoholism, I was thrilled he’d have a chance to enjoy life and have the time with his son that he didn’t before.
The past 24 hours have been heartbreaking. I wish I had the opportunity to meet Scott personally, the way I did Kevin Nash 20 years ago during an hour+ long interview where I learned so much about the two of them. I wish I’d been given more publishing space at that time in the newspaper I’d conducted the interview for, as I would’ve printed every second of that interview. The closeness the two had and the protectiveness of Nash towards Hall was palpable. It was a bond forged through their years together and it’s why there will never be another Outsiders.
Moreover, when you’ve read the stories told all around the Internet over the past two days of his generosity and kindness to others, when you hear all the reminisces about meeting him as a fan, another thing becomes clear: we’ll never have another Scott Hall.
Rest in power, chico.
