Paul Heyman Came Up With Idea For Fake Diesel & Razor Ramon

Scott Hall and Kevin Nash famously left WWE for WCW in 1996. Their arrival to WCW and forming of the NWO was a major success that is still paying off to this day. WWE’s immediate reaction provided a very negative reaction from fans.

Following the defection of Hall and Nash WWE brought in Glen Jacobs and former ECW star Rick Bognar to portray the characters of Ramon and Diesel. WWE believed that with Hall and Nash gone, they still owned the characters of Ramon and Diesel and they could simply recast them.

Bruce Prichard talked about the fake Razor Ramon and Diesel on the Something to Wrestle podcast. On the podcast, Prichard revealed that the original idea came from ECW owner Paul Hayman. Heyman said that Rick Bognar could portray the Razor Ramon character better than even Scott Hall did.

“This was actually a Paul Heyman idea, Paul Heyman says, ‘I’ve got a guy sitting in the ECW locker room who does a better Razor Ramon than Scott Hall could ever do!’ That’s a quote, I said ‘Really? Well sh**.’ We were just talking one day and he told me about this guy Rick Bognar, and how he would always come in and do a Razor imitation. We were talking and I’m like, well, by God, that’s a coincidence. Paul told me about it before we were going to do the Razor – Diesel gimmick, and I recalled that and it was very recent in those conversations. And said, son of a b—h, we may have a guy. I said ‘Hey, get me Rick Bognar.’ I think Rick was in Calgary at the time.”

Advertising

Advertising

With the recasting of Ramon and Diesel proving to be a colossal failure, many attributed it to the poor WWE creative writing of the time. While WWE carried out the idea, without Heyman’s endorsement of Bognar as fake Razor Ramon, the idea may have never come to fruition.

What’s your take on this story? Sound off in the comments!

Thanks to Wrestling Inc for the quote