Scott Hall, the two-time WWE Hall of Famer who famously ignited pro wrestling’s “Monday Night Wars” in the 1990s by walking in unannounced during a rival organization’s marquee TV show, has died. He was 63.
Hall was taken off life support Monday in a hospital in Marietta, Georgia, after he broke his hip in a fall in March and suffered several complications while in surgery on Saturday. The WWE announced his death.
“My heart is broken and I’m so very fucking sad,” his longtime tag team partner Kevin Nash wrote on Instagram. “I love Scott with all my heart, but now I have to prepare my life without him in the present. I’ve been blessed to have a friend that took me at face value and I him.”
Very good at being very evil in the ring, Hall won the WWE Intercontinental title four times and WCW Tag Team championships seven times (as “The Outsiders” with Nash), and in 1994 at WrestleMania X at Madison Square Garden, he competed in an iconic ladder match against Shawn Michaels. However, he never won the world title.
During his 26 years as a wrestler, he also feuded with the likes of Sting, Lex Luger, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Ric Flair and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
After his retirement in 2010, Hall was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, first in 2014 as bad guy Razor Ramon (resplendent with gold chains, slicked-back hair and toothpick in mouth in an homage to Al Pacino’s Scarface character) and then in 2020 as a member of the villainous stable the New World Order (nWo).
During Memorial Day weekend on the May 27, 1996, episode of WCW Monday Nitro on TNT (owned by Ted Turner), the 6-foot-7 Hall suddenly appeared striding through the crowd, entering the ring unannounced to interrupt a match.
The fans immediately recognized him from Vince McMahon’s WWE, and Hall told them, “You people know who I am, but you don’t know why I’m here.”
In reality, Hall had left his WWE contract two weeks earlier and signed on with World Championship Wrestling, but WCW executive vp Eric Bischoff came up with the idea to have Hall “invade” the WCW. Nash would soon join him, followed by Hulk Hogan, who turned baddie as the trio became the nWo.
Hall would wrestle in more than 1,500 matches across multiple organizations that also included the American Wrestling Alliance (1985-89), New Japan Wrestling (1990) and Total Nonstop Action (2002-08, 2010).
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Hall was born on Oct. 20, 1958, in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. In the 2011 ESPN documentary The Wrestler, he noted his parents and grandparents were alcoholics.
At age 25, while bartending at a strip club, he was involved in an altercation and charged with second-degree murder. “A guy pulled a gun on me, and I took it away from him and shot him, point-blank with a .45 caliber,” he said. The case was dismissed because of insufficient evidence.
Hall would also battle alcohol and drug problems throughout his life — that was even incorporated into a controversial wrestling storyline at one point.
“Once you’re part of the WWE family, you’re part of us forever,” chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon said in the documentary. “Without giving too many particulars, it’s in the six figures of how much money we’ve spent sending Scott to rehab. It’s the most amount of money we’ve spent on anybody.”
In 2010, he had a defibrillator and pacemaker installed.
Hall also suffered from congestive heart failure, seizures and pneumonia and was arrested four times in Florida and charged with disorderly conduct, criminal mischief and DUI. Yet he was beloved by the wrestling community, who hoped he could rebuild his life and win over his demons.
Hogan described Hall as a “physical phenom, and then to add the cool factor on top of it and the charisma, he had it all. He really, really had it all.”
In his WWE Hall of Fame speech in 2014, Hall concluded by telling the cheering crowd that “hard work pays off, dreams come true, bad times don’t last, but bad guys do.”
Hall was married three times (twice to Dana Burgio) and had two children, Cody and Cassidy.
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