Posted in: Ripped to Shreds Ripped To Shreds #63: Is He A Hall Of Famer? Part 2- Scott Hall, Ultimate Warrior, Motorhead
By Ripper
Jan 30, 2012 - 1:34:55 PM
Ripped To Shreds #63: Is He A Hall of Famer? Part 2
Welcome to Ripped To Shreds for the sixty-third time.
A few months ago I did a column discussing potential candidates for WWE’s Hall of Fame and decided if they deserved to get in some day. This time around I’ll be doing the same thing, but with some new wrestling personalities.
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Whether as Razor Ramon or under his real name, Scott Hall was a big fixture of the nineties in professional wrestling. As Razor Ramon he managed to win the Intercontinental Title an unprecedented four times. That’s not such a huge deal today, but back then it was an outstanding accomplishment. He and Shawn Michaels competed in what many consider two of the greatest encounters of all time in their ladder matches at Wrestlemania 10 and SummerSlam ’95. “The Bad Guy” never attained a World Title in WWE, but he certainly made a name for himself.
But his biggest accomplishment came in WCW. In fact, it happened during his very first appearance with the company. During an unrelated match on Nitro, Scott Hall made his way through the crowd and into the ring. As he cut a promo, wrestling fans were shocked. As far as they knew, Razor Ramon from WWE was on WCW programming. Maybe you don’t want to use the word “accomplishment” for this, but I’m sure you agree it was a very big deal. This started the infamous n.W.o. storyline, which was so successful that Nitro beat Raw in the ratings for about a year and a half straight.
Today Scott Hall is a recovering drug addict and is trying better himself, but back then he was well known for dealing with some demons. This may have been part of the reason why he never attained a World Title either in WWE or WCW. Despite all of that, Scott Hall made an impact in the industry. Whether he was climbing a ladder to reach the Intercontinental Title or making wrestling fans think he had invaded WCW, he has done enough to earn himself a spot in WWE’s Hall of Fame.
Ultimate Warrior
Ultimate Warrior is someone you can say a lot of positive things about, but also a lot of negatives things as well. Let’s start with the positives.
Warrior had a few classic matches during his WWE career. He had memorable matches against Rick Rude, Hulk Hogan, and Randy Savage. He was extremely charismatic and his ring entrance was one of a kind. He regularly sprinted to the ring and just brought such a huge amount of energy every time he made his way to the squared circle. You could see him huffing and puffing under his face paint, his tassels would fly in the air as he ran, his veins were popping as he shook the ring ropes up and down… Not to mention he gave some very, very unique interviews. He was a two time Intercontinental Champ and cleanly defeated Hulk Hogan at WM 6 to win the WWE World Title. He also had a great look (most likely took steroids).
But he also has some flaws to his career. I said his interviews were unique, but at the same time not everyone could get into them. Not to mention he did ramble a little bit. He had his share of great, high profile matches, but those were only occasional. He lacked a great deal of in ring talent. As Jim Ross said “his matches are not what people would call classic wrestling”.
But his biggest flaw is probably his unprofessional behavior backstage. He didn’t get along well with a lot of his fellow wrestlers. He was very disliked backstage. In Bret Hart’s book, it is said that Warrior was once arranged to meet with a very, very sick child outside the locker room. Warrior made the poor kid wait for a while as he just sat in the locker room doing nothing.
And of course, there was the infamous incident where he held up Vince McMahon for more money at SummerSlam ’91. Very unprofessional behavior.
I won’t deny that Warrior was a star in professional wrestling. In fact, the crowd at Wrestlemania 6 was divided about 40/60 in favor of Hogan. To simply have 4o percent of the live audience cheering for you over Hogan, the biggest star ever in pro wrestling in his prime, is simply huge. His World Title reign wasn’t better than Hogan’s from a financial standpoint, but it was extremely hard to fill Hogan’s shoes. If Yokozuna is getting in, then Warrior definitely deserves to get in. I know people will argue that, but I’m OK with that.
Motorhead
As far as a wrestler’s theme music goes, there is no greater honor than to have an established band, one that you’d hear on the radio, compose a song specifically for him. Simply using a big hit like Rollin’ by Limp Bizkit, as The Undertaker did , is a big deal. It shows WWE is willing to spend some extra cash on him or her. It’s like they rolled out the red carpet just for them. And it is great whenever an artist composes a song specifically for a wrestler, as they can capture their character’s persona in the song.
“Time To Play The Game” by Motorhead, as well as “King of Kings”, are both of those things. Those songs were obviously made by an established band, and do a great job of capturing Triple H’s persona. You know he’s a bad ass, extremely full of himself, and is a “Cerebral Assasin”. He thinks he’s the absolute best in the business and those songs exemplify what he thinks of himself.
In addition to writing theme music for Triple H, Lemmy and his band mates have made notable appearances at Wrestlemania. They did live performances of Triple H’s music and really helped to add a big time feel to the event. Motorhead definitely is deserving of a spot in the celebrity wing of WWE’s Hall of Fame.
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Thanks for reading. I’d like to know what you think of these choices.
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