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With today’s announcement from Kevin Nash that WWE Hall of Famer Scott Hall will be taken off life support once his family is in place to say farewell, it is only natural to look back on Hall’s career accomplishments and performances.
On camera, Hall had his Wrestlemania moment that will live on in immortality as part of the WWE time capsule forever with his Wrestlemania 10 ladder match against Shawn Michaels in Madison Square Garden. He’ll be forever remembered for changing the course of a raging river when he walked out on WCW Nitro, setting the stage for the New World Order and for the Monday Night Wars to become molten-red hot.
There were also multiple good to great matches - Hall and The 1-2-3 Kid vs. Shawn Michaels and Nash as Diesel for an early edition of WWF Action Zone, a bout that literally had the entire Westchester County Center jumping up and down in waves of insane reactions that venue has never seen since, his King of the Ring 1993 match against Bret Hart, WCW PPV bouts against Sting, Bill Goldberg and many others. When Hall was ON, he was in the top percentage of any talent from his era.
There were also instantly loved promos. We all know them:
“You know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here.”
“Survey time. Are you here for WCW? Are you here for the NWO? Chalk another one up for the good guys.”
“Hey, yo, Chico, Say Hello to the Bad Guy.”
“When you are NWO, you are NWO 4 Life.”
"Bad times don't last, but bad guys do."
Behind the scenes, for all the good and bad of their political maneuverings and attempts to place and keep themselves in power, Hall and Kevin Nash will be forever credited with getting talents (including, most importantly, themselves) paid more and more via guaranteed contracts, which were never a thing in WWE until that trio grabbed the WCW money brass ring, setting the stage for Vince McMahon to relent and start to offer guaranteed money for the first time in McMahon’s life, first with Marc Mero and Brian Pillman and then everyone thereafter. From 1996 to today, every talent who signed a guaranteed deal, owes a debt of gratitude to Hall and Nash.
Whether he was Razor Ramon in the WWF or under his own name in WCW, once Hall figured out what he needed to do to get and stay over, he was over, for life. He was intrigued and obsessed, in a good way, with always learning and knowing what younger male fans thought were hip and cool. What were the hot fashions? What were the brands? What music? Hall knew, if he played into those mindsets, he was likely to be seen as one of them, as representing them, as being cool and hip as they were or wanted to be. He knew when and how to play to the crowd, to maximize the dramatic effect of throwing out those arms to represent the Razor’s Edge, not only playing up his in-ring character but in many ways, the unspoken mantra of his life.
This week, a lot of people will celebrate and will mourn Scott Hall, as they should.
But, if there is one thing they should also try to do in the weeks and months and years ahead, it’s learn from Scott Hall’s life.
A big part of Hall’s career, especially the WCW era, was excess. He was suspended by the WWF in 1996 and removed from Wrestlemania 12, where he was to fight Dustin “Goldust” Rhodes in a Miami Street Fight. Instead, it was Roddy Piper vs. Goldust in Hollywood on that PPV. The timing of Hall and Nash giving notice to Vince McMahon that they would be leaving obviously comes into play here, but the longer Hall was in WCW, the more issues there were for him - and the stories of his behavior well after WCW before Diamond Dallas Page and others stepped in to try and help him are infinite.
I don’t write this to make light of the situation, but to point out a very serious issue that Hall dealt with his entire adult life - trauma.
Back in October 2011, ESPN’s E:60 broadcast a documentary on Hall’s life, a film that truth left viewers with an understanding and explanation of the trajectory of Hall’s life as well as the feeling that the clock on Hall’s life was ticking away for many years before he ever took one bump in the ring, revealing why Hall lived his life so hard and to such excess for so long. It's a piece that has long stuck to me that has come to mind repeatedly over the last decade, a haunting reminder of the day that would one day come and today, appears to have finally come - the day of Hall's passing.
The early portion of the documentary paints a hard-nosed, sad story of Hall’s life eons before he ever entered pro wrestling, being raised in a family of “hard drinking rednecks”, as Hall himself started, a situation that forced Hall to become the self-professed head of the household at the age of only 15.
As if that wasn’t enough for someone hardly an adult to mentally process, Hall was charged with second degree murder after getting into a fight with someone over a woman he was dating. The other person pulled a gun. Only one man walked away. It was Hall. While criminal charges were later dropped in the wake of the incident, the mental scars of the incident and Hall’s decision at the time to not to seek help in coping with the fallout of the experience really set the stage for the mental issues he began compensating for, by turning to self-abuse.
There are numerous stories of Hall discussing this moment privately with those he knew in the pro wrestling world, breaking down, upset and haunted.
Before there were Wrestlemania moments and immortal promos, before there were championships with Curt Hennig and Diamond Studds in WCW and American Starship Coyotes alongside Danny Spivey, before there were kliqs and untold riches and untold life experiences and sold out arenas and tiny independent wrestling shows, before the spotlights and the chaos, there was Scott Hall, the man, reeling and trying to compensate and overcome his own personal trauma.
That’s the person who everyone can learn from - from his mistakes, his traumas, his successes. Hall overcame sadness and horror, but at the same time, was haunted with problems managing himself once he found success.
Everyone is around for that success, but so few remain for the crash at the end.
Fewer still remain when it’s time to try and crawl out of the crater that is left behind.
That ESPN documentary is about Hall's many failed attempts to crawl out of the hole.
In the 1990s, professional wrestling was the hottest it has ever been. No matter what anyone tells you about today, the 1990s were a billion times hotter and more insane and more beloved. But, like every bubble, the wrestling one crashed and at the same time came the crash of Scott Hall. The fantasy life began to wane away with the disappearance of the Monday Night Wars.
In that ESPN doc a decade ago, the future was laid bare for all to see when it came to Hall. He had gone from someone who lived a life so few in professional wrestling had ever experienced to a tired man who now had to take and maintain close to a dozen medications daily due to congenital heart failure brought on by so many of his self-abusive traits, all spurned by trauma he likely never came to terms with.
At the time of the E:30 release in 2011, Hall was close to a dozen rehab stays at a cost of six figures to WWE. His once trademark physique and chiseled good looks had become more and more weathered, wearing away. Even back then, Hall's friends, including Kevin Nash, admitted that they’d been preparing themselves for the worst for over a year. Instead, they had a little bit closer to another decade with someone they loved.
Today, in the moment, whether you have anger or sympathy towards Scott Hall, we should all be united in a hope that something can be learned from his personal experiences - and that the professional wrestling world, and the world at large, should work more to recognize the long-standing, grueling and grinding effects of severe trauma - mental and physical - and push those suffering to pursue and accept help, not just for the good of the talents taking bumps, but for the good of the next generation of their families.
The lone beacon of hope towards the end of that 2011 ESPN E:60 documentary was Scott Hall’s son Cody. Long estranged, Cody had tried to reconcile with his father, moving in with him. In that piece, Cody admitted that at this point, he was more concerned with helping his father stay alive than whether Hall can finally get himself clean. Cody soon decided to pursue a career as a professional wrestler but in thinking about where he started and what he, like his father before him, has endured in life, one can only hope for Cody’s well being above and beyond hoping he finds any measure of stardom.
In watching that ESPN piece on Scott Hall this morning, one can only hope that over the ten years since it was filmed and released that Scott Hall finally found some peace for himself and his family before it was too late. Given the pattern of history in his life, Hall was been born into his life's trajectory without choice and found that journey compounded and ever more frustrated and complicated by his life experiences and personal choices.
At the end of the day, Scott Hall deserved everything we would want for ourselves - peace and solace and perhaps, depending on your perspective, even forgiveness.
Scott Hall did a lot to entertain the masses, but what he really needed to do was take care of himself.
Here’s to hoping that for all that can be weaned from what Scott Hall accomplished on camera, the true lessons can be learned from what he most suffered from, in hopes that others can avoid those same harsh, heart-breaking experiences. If that life on the razor's edge can be prevented for even one person, it's a small victory in the wake of today's sad reality.
To Scott Hall - and more importantly, to his family and friends.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com
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