RIP Scott Hall

Scott Hall is a guy's impact on the wrestling world was left more by his personality and involvement in the nWo than what he did between the ropes, but he was no goof in the ring. A lot of his most well known and loved matches are widely established at this point - the ladder matches with Michaels, the Action Zone tag, the Rumble match with Bret, the Survivor Series tag with Flair, Savage and Perfect.

In tribute I decided to revisit a few lesser known matches from his prime years which I enjoyed a lot.

Razor Ramon vs Rick Martel, RAW 11/10/93

Hall’s first IC title win and man the crowd were red hot for him here. Both dudes just ooze charisma but Razor feels larger than life. To fair, Martel was really the workhorse of this match and I thought he was pretty great, probably his best singles match in the WWF too. He tried to clown Razor early on, and Razor slamming him about later was some amusing pay back. After the break we get Martel focusing on Razor’s lower back, with Razor doing a great sell of being whipped into the buckles over and over, a hard thing for a guy his size to put over without flying all over the place, and a pretty dramatic boston crab. This was a 10 minute-ish TV match so it doesn’t go too far into the nearfalls, but boy Martel got folded with that Razor’s Edge.

The Quebecers vs Razor Ramon/1-2-3 Kid, RAW 21/2/94

Could you think of 2 gimmicks on further ends of the cool spectrum than the Quebecers and Razor Ramon? Granted I am a sucker for how lame the Quebecers schtick was in hindsight. This is like 90% the babyfaces taking this all over the champs. Polo interferes early and takes a Razor’s Edge on the floor for his trouble. Again, the other 3 guys in this do the most of the heavy lifting, but Razor just reeks of star power and is by far the most over guy in the match. Him and Waltman had good chemistry together and Kid was just flying all over the place through his match. Waltman comes in with an injured knee which gets targeted a little but it never becomes that type of match. The Quebecers are a pretty un-fancy team but I always enjoy them using Pierre’s mass as a weapon and the future PCO taking the Edge was a pretty big bump for a guy nearly 300lb. We get a screwball finish to build to Razor vs Michaels at Wrestlemania but this was fun TV wrestling.

Razor Ramon vs Shawn Michaels, RAW 1/8/94

2 weeks before Razor challenges Nash for the IC belt at Summerslam he has a return match from Wrestlemania with Michaels, which was also HBK’s first match since that ladder match. This starts pretty hot and you can tell both guys are feeling really motivated, Michaels especially is racing all over the place like he just did a line before the match. These two without a ladder still make for a good match with Michaels being more athletic and Hall using his size and power. At one point Hall catapults Michaels over the top who flies into Nash, which was a very safe but cool and dangerous looking spot. Hall, the babyface, milking a bearhug was a choice move but the end of this was all pretty hot before the screwy finish. Mid '90s WWF isn’t a place for particularly creative or hard-hitting wrestling, but they do the formula well and get some hot nearfalls (in a 'this is a competitive match' way rather than 'trying to be epic' way). I’ve never been a lover of their Wrestlemania match but this was a worthy note in their rivalry.