Kane knows WWE fans have spent years roasting the fake Diesel and Razor Ramon angle, but he is not joining the pile-on.
While speaking on WWE’s Photo Shoot YouTube series, Kane looked back at the strange chapter in WWE history when he played Diesel after Kevin Nash left for WCW. Rick Bogner was brought in as Razor Ramon after Scott Hall also jumped ship, and WWE tried to run with the idea that Jim Ross had found replacements. Kane said the whole thing came together after his Isaac Yankem DDS run. He was in South Africa when Jerry Brisco told him Vince McMahon wanted to talk.
“So this is right after Isaac Yankem DDS. I was in South Africa. Jerry Brisco came to me and said, ‘When you get back to the States you need to call Vince.’ And they had this idea. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had recently gone to WCW in Atlanta. Gist of it was that JR had found some replacements.”
Kane explained that Bogner already had experience doing a Razor Ramon-style character in ECW, so WWE paired them up and brought them in as the new versions of Diesel and Razor.
“It was me and Rick Bogner, he was in ECW, and he had a character which parodied Razor Ramon and did it really well. Hey yo. Chico. Dudleys. I got no problem with you, man. So they brought us in.”
A lot of fans hated the idea from the start. Kane knows that. Still, he pushed back on the claim that the entire concept was dead on arrival. In his mind, the bigger problem was that Jim Ross was never going to work as the villain WWE needed him to be in that spot.
“I never mentioned Scott Hall’s name. Or Kevin Nash. You recall me ever mentioning their names? No, you don’t. A lot of people thought that the faux Diesel and Razor Ramon was fatally flawed. I actually didn’t think so. I thought it was a good concept, but the thing was that Jim Ross is never gonna be a bad guy to our audience, especially at that time.”
Kane did not pretend the audience loved it. He admitted fans never latched onto the characters, but he still got something important out of the run. After struggling as Isaac Yankem, he said playing Diesel helped him improve in the ring and figure out that he actually belonged in WWE.
“But ultimately the positive aspect was the fact that it allowed me to get experience. I started in the wrestling business in 1991. And four years later I was in WWE. Frankly, I wasn’t prepared. My work wasn’t really good enough when I was Isaac Yankem.”
Kane said he made the needed changes during that period, even if the character itself never got over.
“So I made a lot of adjustments and I felt that with the Diesel character my work was good enough. It’s just the character was just something that the audience didn’t gravitate to. But I knew then that I belonged in WWE. And I knew that I could be a top flight performer. I learned that working through this character.”
The fake Diesel and Razor Ramon angle will probably always be remembered as one of WWE’s weirdest decisions from that era. Kane is not saying it worked. He is saying it helped him work. That is a big difference, because without that awkward stop in his career, fans may not have gotten the Kane that later became one of WWE’s most iconic monsters.
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