Hard work pays off, dreams come true; bad times don't last, bad guys do.
March 14, 2022 5:53 PM Subscribe
He was the man who kicked off the biggest boom period in the history of professional wrestling. Along with Shawn Michaels, he innovated the ladder match, now a staple of the sport. He wrestled a desperate battle with alcoholism for almost twenty years, and in his twilight appeared to have finally beaten it into submission, and was known throughout the business for a keen mind and for being generous towards his fellow wrestlers to a fault. Whether you knew him best as the Diamond Studd, as Razor Ramon, or simply as himself, "Da Bad Guy" was always one of the coolest wrestlers to ever set foot in the ring. Scott Hall passed away today after being taken off life support following complications from hip surgery. He was 63.
Dammit. I had been following his recovery, and his work with Diamond Dallas Page in terms of getting clean, and then trying to fix the damage wrestling had done to his body. Kevin Nash wrote a pretty heartbreaking note about how he's spent more time with Hall than anyone else in his life, and now needs to figure out how to move forward without him there.
Wrestlers dying has become something that just always keeps happening, but Hall's passing hits hard in a different way. So many wrestlers that have died in the last ten years were wrestlers I had watched and built attachments to as a child, watching seeing them on cartoons as much as seeing them wrestle at first.
Hall was there when I found wrestling again in college. And by there, he was literally as much of the face of wrestling in the mid to late 90s as anyone was. And now he's the first biggest name of my grown up wrestling fandom to pass away. Like the title of the post says, bad times don't last, but bad guys do.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:17 PM on March 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
Wrestlers dying has become something that just always keeps happening, but Hall's passing hits hard in a different way. So many wrestlers that have died in the last ten years were wrestlers I had watched and built attachments to as a child, watching seeing them on cartoons as much as seeing them wrestle at first.
Hall was there when I found wrestling again in college. And by there, he was literally as much of the face of wrestling in the mid to late 90s as anyone was. And now he's the first biggest name of my grown up wrestling fandom to pass away. Like the title of the post says, bad times don't last, but bad guys do.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:17 PM on March 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'd enjoyed Scott Hall's interviews in his two Dark Side of the Ring episodes, the one about the Montreal Screw Job and the one about Ms. Elizabeth. He was still charming and irreverent, but he was always one of the more believable interviews and had great lines. "If I was a chick I would have banged Randy, too."
63 is old for a wrestler, but far too young.
posted by Alison at 6:31 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
63 is old for a wrestler, but far too young.
posted by Alison at 6:31 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
63 is old for a wrestler, but far too young.
It’s also mind boggling how Sting, only one year younger than Hall, is not only clean and sober, but possibly in the best shape of his life, and not only still wrestling, but is jumping off of stadium exits and diving through tables. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, but I guess all we can do is hold them close to our heart as long as we’re lucky enough to have them.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:47 PM on March 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
It’s also mind boggling how Sting, only one year younger than Hall, is not only clean and sober, but possibly in the best shape of his life, and not only still wrestling, but is jumping off of stadium exits and diving through tables. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, but I guess all we can do is hold them close to our heart as long as we’re lucky enough to have them.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:47 PM on March 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
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I always hated him, which is just what his character was supposed to do. Born to play a heel, I'll mourn him now.
posted by vrakatar at 7:51 PM on March 14, 2022
I always hated him, which is just what his character was supposed to do. Born to play a heel, I'll mourn him now.
posted by vrakatar at 7:51 PM on March 14, 2022
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I remember that even to a ten-year old me, it was clear that Razor Ramon wasn't fitting neatly into the clearly, cartoonishly defined face/heel dynamic of early 90s WWF, and so his character work stood out distinctly. Plus the Razor's Edge is a dope finisher even now.
Now we're saying goodbyes to the people from my era of wrestling fandom, and it sucks.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:02 PM on March 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
I remember that even to a ten-year old me, it was clear that Razor Ramon wasn't fitting neatly into the clearly, cartoonishly defined face/heel dynamic of early 90s WWF, and so his character work stood out distinctly. Plus the Razor's Edge is a dope finisher even now.
Now we're saying goodbyes to the people from my era of wrestling fandom, and it sucks.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:02 PM on March 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it
Sting at least supposedly quit steroids in 1990.
posted by praemunire at 8:05 PM on March 14, 2022
Sting at least supposedly quit steroids in 1990.
posted by praemunire at 8:05 PM on March 14, 2022
A couple things:
1. Hall's death was the result of a blood clot following his hip replacement surgery: the clot caused a series of rapid heart attacks and it became clear he wasn't going to recover. It's awful, and the necessity for the surgery was absolutely the result of his wrestling career - but as wrestler deaths go this is one of the more prosaic ones, and I specifically say this because Scott Hall worked extremely hard over the last ten years to really turn a corner on his demons and rehabilitate his health. Which just makes his passing all the sadder; this was a death that could have happened to any retired professional athlete with some bad luck.
2. Sting's longevity is the result of a lot of factors, but a large part of it is that he spent basically all of 1997 not wrestling due to the nWo angle where he was just hanging out in the rafters waiting for revenge, and then from 2001 through 2006 wrestled only a handful of times until he started working for TNA/Impact on a regular basis, and even then he was only wrestling about twenty times a year, which is a pretty light schedule for a wrestler., and then he went to WWE for only four matches (thanks to an injury suffered while wrestling Seth Rollins which looked like it might end his career), which meant he had six years to rest and rehabilitate before beginning to wrestle in AEW. There is, in pro wrestling, the concept of the "bump card," which is the idea that there is simply a finite limit to how much impact damage a human body can take over its lifetime, and Sting can still wrestle because, simply enough, he spent a lot of his career not wrestling much.
posted by mightygodking at 10:10 PM on March 14, 2022 [9 favorites]
1. Hall's death was the result of a blood clot following his hip replacement surgery: the clot caused a series of rapid heart attacks and it became clear he wasn't going to recover. It's awful, and the necessity for the surgery was absolutely the result of his wrestling career - but as wrestler deaths go this is one of the more prosaic ones, and I specifically say this because Scott Hall worked extremely hard over the last ten years to really turn a corner on his demons and rehabilitate his health. Which just makes his passing all the sadder; this was a death that could have happened to any retired professional athlete with some bad luck.
2. Sting's longevity is the result of a lot of factors, but a large part of it is that he spent basically all of 1997 not wrestling due to the nWo angle where he was just hanging out in the rafters waiting for revenge, and then from 2001 through 2006 wrestled only a handful of times until he started working for TNA/Impact on a regular basis, and even then he was only wrestling about twenty times a year, which is a pretty light schedule for a wrestler., and then he went to WWE for only four matches (thanks to an injury suffered while wrestling Seth Rollins which looked like it might end his career), which meant he had six years to rest and rehabilitate before beginning to wrestle in AEW. There is, in pro wrestling, the concept of the "bump card," which is the idea that there is simply a finite limit to how much impact damage a human body can take over its lifetime, and Sting can still wrestle because, simply enough, he spent a lot of his career not wrestling much.
posted by mightygodking at 10:10 PM on March 14, 2022 [9 favorites]
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posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 5:29 AM on March 15, 2022
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 5:29 AM on March 15, 2022
This one hurts so badly because he overcame so much and ... hip replacement surgery does it? What a gut punch.
I'd like to add another video to the pantheon of matches that made Razor Ramon SO good. His upset loss to the 1-2-3 Kid (Sean Waltman, eventually known as X-Pac and Syxx) was electric. His bravado on the way in, his disbelief afterward, perfect.
My mother and I took my younger brother to meet him at a department store event and he was very kind and gracious.
I know it's the post title, but it bears repeating: "Hard work pays off, dreams come true; bad times don't last, bad guys do."
posted by kimberussell at 6:09 AM on March 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'd like to add another video to the pantheon of matches that made Razor Ramon SO good. His upset loss to the 1-2-3 Kid (Sean Waltman, eventually known as X-Pac and Syxx) was electric. His bravado on the way in, his disbelief afterward, perfect.
My mother and I took my younger brother to meet him at a department store event and he was very kind and gracious.
I know it's the post title, but it bears repeating: "Hard work pays off, dreams come true; bad times don't last, bad guys do."
posted by kimberussell at 6:09 AM on March 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've become a bigger fan of pro wrestling as a middle-aged (and now outright old) adult than I ever was as kid. My wife has listened to me gush about wrestling enough that when she saw a headline about his life support being turned off, she asked me if I knew "Scott Hall", and I said no.
It was later that day I learned that they were talking about Razor Ramon, and that was when a quite "Aw man, no" escaped me.
Most great pro wrestlers end up standing on the tipping point between cool and ridiculous. But Razor Ramon was just outright cool full stop. It's a damn shame to lose him this soon.
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posted by Ipsifendus at 6:57 AM on March 15, 2022
It was later that day I learned that they were talking about Razor Ramon, and that was when a quite "Aw man, no" escaped me.
Most great pro wrestlers end up standing on the tipping point between cool and ridiculous. But Razor Ramon was just outright cool full stop. It's a damn shame to lose him this soon.
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posted by Ipsifendus at 6:57 AM on March 15, 2022
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Not to derail, but Sting has been sober since August 1998 (article is from the player's tribune, published last week) which also really helps his longevity.
I had a long thing written out and then it got lost/deleted; but Scott had conquered his long drug and alcohol addictions (for at least 15+ years) in 2013ish, which is admirable. Great entertainer who left his mark on the scene and seemed to care about his fellow coworkers and the fans.
posted by fizzix at 5:53 PM on March 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Not to derail, but Sting has been sober since August 1998 (article is from the player's tribune, published last week) which also really helps his longevity.
I had a long thing written out and then it got lost/deleted; but Scott had conquered his long drug and alcohol addictions (for at least 15+ years) in 2013ish, which is admirable. Great entertainer who left his mark on the scene and seemed to care about his fellow coworkers and the fans.
posted by fizzix at 5:53 PM on March 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
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