Reeling from the commanding lead WCW has taken in the Monday Night War, Vince McMahon has overhauled the WWF in hopes of the “New
Fall Season” getting back some lost momentum. Although it’s not entirely clear, there are indications he will have to move forward without Bret Hart returning any time soon.
Most of the television hype of the past weekend focused on the continuing storyline of “the imminent return of Diesel and Razor Ramon.” The
WWF, after getting themselves into a messy situation a week earlier, managed to get past mere damage control and even build toward a payoff
which has potential to be an intriguing angle.
In a bold innovation in promoting philosophy, within the next month the WWF will be debuting a new Diesel, a new Razor Ramon, and even a new Double J, with the idea being to seriously promote them, not use them as mere parodies of the departed original wrestlers. When all is said and done, the WWF may end up with their own version of a New World Order type group which consists of wrestlers taking on the likeness of
“discarded” or “departed” characters.
In order to cover themselves, the WWF is having Gorilla Monsoon “officially dispute” Ross’s claims that Diesel and Ramon are returning. On Raw he outright said that “Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are under contract with another wrestling organization” and aren’t returning. The storyline is now set up for Ross to get credit for breaking the story, but get blamed for not getting “the whole story,” that being that Diesel and Ramon would not be the originals.
Besides attempting to spark TV ratings, McMahon is attempting to show, once and for all, it’s not necessarily the wrestler who makes a star, but the promoter’s concept and promoting that makes a star. That theory was damaged several years ago when McMahon was unable to get Luger over as a replacement for Hulk Hogan despite giving Luger the most well-orchestrated and biggest concentrated push in WWF history.
In the first court hearing two months ago for the WWF’s lawsuit against WCW regarding WCW’s use of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, WWF
attorney Jerry McDevitt compared the use of the likeness of Diesel and Ramon to a comic book company or movie studio using the Batman
likeness without permission. Now, maybe in part as an attempt to strengthen their still pending case, they are going to try to show that the Diesel and Ramon characters can live on separately from Hall and Nash, and therefore allege that WCW did them monetary damage when they didn’t create their own likeness for Hall and Nash, but instead had them feed off of their former trademarked personas when they first arrived.
Rick Bogner (a/k/a Big Titan), who in ECW did a one time only take off on Razor Ramon called “Slice & Dice Ramirez” to rave reviews, will be the new Razor Ramon. He has already cancelled his scheduled tour in Japan for the WAR promotion. The Japanese press is reporting he said he
cancelled in order to join the WWF as the new Razor Ramon. Isaac Yankem (real name Glen Jacobs) will likely be the new Diesel.
