Before we get started, let's get one thing clear: yes. Wrestling is fake. Yes, I know it's fake. Yes, I enjoy it anyway, And no, joining the chorus of cool guys on social media who point out ten million times a day that it's fake isn't going to change anything about how I feel.
Let's also get one other thing out of the way: the stuff you enjoy is fake, too. No one has ever looked at Tom Cruise during Mission: Impossible and asked others "how do you watch this? You know it's fake, right?" Your Bachelor and Bachelorette reality shows? Fake. Hell, half of what's broadcast on cable news is fake, too. We don't care that something is real or not, we care that it's entertaining. And if it's entertaining, we watch.
And that, friends, is why Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall is going to go down as one of the best entertainers of my lifetime.
I watched a little bit of wrestling with my dad when I was young. It was more during the territorial days, when wrestling wasn't readily available, but you actively had to search it out. Ric Flair, Cowboy Bob Orton, Dusty Rhodes - those were the names I watched then.
Then came the early 90's. I didn't watch wrestling as much anymore. I dabbled, sure, when my friends were getting together and I happened to be around. But I didn't really get into it all that much.
And then.. then a cat came across my screen named Razor Ramon. And man, was Razor cool. He talked with confidence. He had a unique look. And he wasn't just a heel. He was THE heel.
How could you tell?
Because he told you. So many heels considered themselves the good guy who was just misunderstood, or who was right while no one else could understand why.
Not Razor. Razor knew he was the bad guy. He liked being the bad guy. He told you he was the bad guy, and that being the bad guy was alright.
Then, one day, Razor Ramon showed up, completely unexpectedly, on WCW. But he wasn't Razor anymore. He was Scott Hall. And he wasn't alone. He stood next to a behemoth known as Kevin Nash. And together, the two of them started a wrestling movement that would reinvigorate the "sport" itself amongst old fans and new...
Young Rob Brown had it pretty good. My family was a great one, all very close to each other. I lived in nice houses, went on nice vacations, had great friends and a comfortable environment built around me. I wanted for very little, and had the ability to earn whatever that was.
But, there was always something about me that was different. I'm sure that's true of everyone, and everyone processes it in a different way.
I played all the sports, but I wasn't really a jock. I never quite fit into the culture of the guys who did. My friends all listened to country music. I wanted rock and roll. It's your basic teen "I don't fit in" drama, but it was real to me at the time.
So when Nash and Hall introduced themselves as "The Outsiders," I got it. I understood. Sure, it's not the most dramatic set of problems a kid could have, and as an adult I can now recognize that my life was actually really good - but who amongst us didn't feel like a bit of an outsider in their lives at one point or another?
The WCW was the establishment. The WCW was the authority, the "do what you're told to do, when you're told to do it" group. And no one likes that group, even when we take our orders from them.
Nash and Hall (along with Hulk Hogan, who couldn't let anything cool happen in wrestling without inserting himself into it, but that's a different column) started a movement that would shape wrestling to this very day: the New World Order. The NWO would become a movement that even the preppy kids, even the clean cut kids, even the valedictorians of the class, wanted to be in. NWO shirts popped up everywhere. NWO music played over stadium loudspeakers. It was a *thing,* and it was a thing because of the charisma of Scott Hall.
And there it was. Suddenly, there was a guy who got it. There was a guy who, in being the bad guy, became the good guy in a lot of people's individual stories.
There was the first guy who said, "I'm gonna be cool my way. You be cool your way. It's OK to be cool your way. So do it."
And young Rob Brown figured out that it doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks about you - the only thing that really matters is how YOU feel about you. You want to play D&D? Play it, and have fun doing it, no matter what anybody thinks about it. You want to listen to music no one is listening to, or watch TV no one else is watching? Do it. And anyone who doesn't like it can kick rocks.
And that's how Rob Brown got to be Rob Brown. The Rob Brown who listens to classical music one day and death metal the next. The Rob Brown who watches NBA games all night after playing a few hours of D&D with his friends. And the Rob Brown who doesn't give a damn if you judged him based on those last two sentences.
Scott Hall was a major influence on that young Rob Brown, the Rob Brown who puts himself out there every day on a large platform, in front of thousands of people, and talks about wrestling and gaming and his vulnerabilities and whatever else he wants to.
And he does it, in part, because Scott Hall wasn't just cool. He was the coolest. He didn't do it the way wrestling had always been done. He didn't do it the way it was supposed to be done. He did it the way he wanted to do it, and ended up becoming one of the most popular wrestlers of his day.
Scott Hall, away from the ring, had his demons like anybody else. His addiction issues plagued him for years after leaving the mainstream of professional wrestling. It took him years of struggle and help from others to get past them. But he did, and he found his way back. He was sought after for conventions, he was brought behind the scenes to teach young wrestlers how to play the game. He overcame all of it, which is worthy of an incredible amount of respect in and of itself.
But Scott Hall, Razor Ramon, at his peak, in his heyday... he taught young wrestling fans so, so much more. He taught them how to be themselves, how to be cool when everyone else tried to tell you that you weren't, and how to keep climbing ladders ... even if someone else tried to hit you with them.
No, wrestling isn't real. It's scripted. It's written. We know that.
But the impact it can have - especially when you have someone like Scott Hall serving up life lesson like that - that impact IS real.
Thank you, Scott. You shall ooze machismo into immortality. Rest easy, and we'll see you on the other side.