Impetus: former wrestling legend Scott Hall passes away after complications from hip surgery, resulting in a blood clot getting loose, triggering numerous heart attacks, being and being put on life support before being let go by his family
I’m not going to pretend like Scott Hall was ever one of my favorite wrestlers. I’ve been a wrestling fan way too long, watched, read and listened to all sorts of shoot interviews, backstage stories and insider knowledge throughout the years to have a picture of Scott Hall in my own head, that is pretty jumbled up, but definitely not as quickly clear that he was among my favorite wrestlers.
As a performer, Scott Hall really was in a class of few; technically proficient, rock solid on the mic, and had charisma oozed machismo all over the place. I still remember most of the original Razor Ramon vignettes back in the day and then eventually seeing him debut on an episode of Superstars. He did moves like back suplexes off of the second turnbuckle, chokeslams, and seeing the Razor’s Edge for the very first time blew my mind.
He was as good a performer from my early memories of Razor, to when I picked wrestling back up in 1998 and watched now Scott Hall in WCW as a founding member of the nWo. He definitely wrestled a lot less, but was still often on television and still entertaining, leaning more on being more of a mouthpiece and agitator, and making it more special when he actually did wrestle.
But then by the end of this period, the personal demons that Hall became synonymous with the phrase were too much, and he was more or less unceremoniously removed from television before WCW eventually went under. In years following, Scott Hall kind of became a shell of himself, occasionally being mentioned on the internet, usually for something related to his rampant alcoholism.
Eventually, Hall cleaned himself up, and he and Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan were brought back to the WWE to reform the nWo for story purposes, and he had a fairly mediocre feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin leading up to that year’s Wrestlemania. Afterward, he would relapse and succumb to the personal demons again.
After this, Hall’s career was mostly over. He did some stuff for TNA, but by then, his physique was gone, he was doughy and overweight, performed in baggy t-shirts and sweats, and was generally a shell of the performer he once was. I’m pretty sure there were more relapses along the way, but eventually Scott Hall kind of disappeared into obscurity until the pieces of him were claimed by none other than Diamond Dallas Page, who had basically turned himself into a modern day life coach guru, and had decided to take it upon himself to help Hall clean up for good and restore order to his life.
To DDP’s credit, and thanks to a lot of support and yoga, Scott Hall did manage to clean up. Presumably for good, it’s hard for me to know definitively, because I didn’t necessarily go out of my way to keep up with his life. There were some rather good documentaries and accounts about his rehabilitation, mostly stemming to be about Jake the Snake Roberts, but still having a lot to do with Scott Hall as well.
The thing is, it was during his more tumultuous years, Hall was never really shy about recounting stories or revealing a whole lot of backstage dirt throughout his career. Almost honest to a fault, because although the honesty is commendable, he didn’t exactly protect his own reputation either, sharing or oversharing all sorts of stories and opinions, even at his own expense, but if there was one consistent thing about Hall was that he was never, ever afraid to look bad, so it stood to believe that he definitely wasn’t afraid of sharing stories that even made himself look bad.
Long story short, as a person, I thought Scott Hall was kind of a dick. All sorts of stories of how he griefed, trolled, bullied other wrestlers, especially in his Kliq days with Nash, Shawn Michaels, Triple H and Syxx/X-Pac. Whether it was using their political clout to fuck with other peoples’ careers, or even corroborating with others to kind of assist in indiscretions among peers, there was a lot of shit that Scott Hall was involved in that I didn’t personally jive with.
As many of the glowing positive stories have emerged about Scott Hall as he was on, and crossed through death’s door, I’ve heard or read about just as many that weren’t particularly glowing. Now I know the death of a person isn’t here nor there to drag any specifics out, but this is just to justify why I can’t really say that he was ever one of my personal favorites in history.
But this isn’t to say that I still don’t respect and have no admiration for the guy. As I said, he was still a solid performer throughout his entire active career, but I would have to say that if there’s any one place he made a bigger impact in the industry with, was with his business guile.
Frankly, Scott Hall was the model example of a guy that really didn’t give two shits about a personal legacy, or making art, or having a legendary body of work; he was the guy that cared basically solely about the money. He never won any world championships, in spite of how talented he was, and how often he tangled with world champions, but it’s hard to believe that he himself actually cared. As long as he was getting that main event money, he’d job out to just about anyone, and make them look good in the process.
Between he and Kevin Nash, they basically changed the game of wrestling pay structures, introducing concepts like Favored Nations and figuring out all sorts of ways to work the least dates possible but get paid as much money as possible. Throughout history, there are all sorts of wrestlers to this day who have stories about sleeping in their cars and living on peanut butter, but thanks to guys like Scott Hall, wrestlers in general have wizened up to the pay game in general, and are doing it a lot less than they once did.
I remember one interview in specific where Hall talked a lot about Bret Hart; mostly clowning on his shrine to himself, and how he had an uncomfortable number of photos of himself in his house, but the story that stuck with me the most was about how he compared himself to Bret, and how Bret cared about the wins and losses and the perception of his Hitman character. Meanwhile, Hall couldn’t have given two shits about wins, losses and what people thought about Razor Ramon, as long as he was getting paid. He talked about how him and his buddies called Bret the $400,000 champion, because as long as he was champion and looked strong, he was content to be making $400k, while guys like Hall and his buddies were hustling to try and hit that seventh zero, which they eventually did when they jumped to WCW.
Regardless of everything I’ve written, it’s still a sad day in the world of professional wrestling, that Scott Hall had passed. The man had succeeded in cleaning himself up, and really was on a general path to having a relaxing and fun post-career of doing appearances, conventions, cameos and other non-physical activities. But his prior life of personal demons and bad behavior seemed to have caught up to him at an inopportune time, and the world is denied any more entertaining storytelling or commentary from a guy like Scott Hall anymore.
In a way, there’s something very appropriate about the way Scott Hall went; after being taken off of life support, he did not expire immediately, and hung in there for several hours. It’s fairly metaphorical to his wrestling persona, or Kliq days, where there was absolutely no way anything was going to happen that wasn’t on his terms; even death itself. And only when he was ready, life support or no, did he leave. It’s almost as if he were waiting on his Tony Montana suit to arrive beforehand, so he could leave in style.
He wasn’t ever in my top favorites, but I definitely do have respect for his accomplishments, contributions and impact on the history of the business. And for that, I must respectfully bid adieu to, the bad guy.
