Chris Jericho Reveals JBL Made Fake Razor Ramon's Life A Living Hell

Chris Jericho discussed in-depth his friendship with the late Rick Bognar (Fake Razor Ramon in WWF) on the latest episode of his Talk Is Jericho Podcast. Check out the highlights below:

On his friendship with Rick:

“I grew up with Rick in the [professional wrestling] business. He was a Calgary guy, a good friend of mine and Don Callis, Paul Lazenby, Dr. Luther (Lenny Olson), Lance Storm. He was one of those guys who was with us right at the beginning, Brett Como, and we all came up together. And Rick was the first of our gang to make it in the business in Japan and the first to go to WWF.”

On JBL making Rick’s life a living hell:

“It’s hard to envision this now because JBL, John ‘Bradshaw’ Layfield, Johnny Hawk at the time, now he’s a philanthropist, he’s actually a really nice guy, but in the early 90s, he was a terror. He was a son of a b*tch, he’d be the first to tell you, and most importantly, he was a bully.

Basically, when Rick came back [from working CWA in Germany with JBL] he said that Bradshaw was the worst, and made his life a living hell, and really messed with his confidence because I think Bradshaw probably saw a guy like Rick, once again, who was probably very immature to the real workings of the [professional wrestling] business because he got such a push right out of the gate and also let’s not forget in Calgary he always got a big push because he was the biggest guy.”

On Rick’s friendship with Bret Hart and the Fake Razor Ramon gimmick:

“[Bognar] was really close with Bret. He was spending a lot of time with Bret. And Bret, of course, had a lot of power in WWE at the time as the champion or as a top guy, whichever one it was. And once again, you see Rick Titan and it’s a no-brainer.

For whatever reason, they had this idea of when [Scott] Hall and [Kevin] Nash left to replace them as their characters with new guys. And I remember when Rick told me about it because he wasn’t super thrilled about it, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was like, ‘if you look at Batman, okay, Adam West has played Batman; Michael Keaton has played Batman; George Clooney has played Batman, Val Kilmer.’ Sean Connery has been James Bond, Roger Moore, Daniel Craig.

 
It’s not something that doesn’t happen every day in Hollywood, so I thought it could probably work in [professional] wrestling as well.

[Bognar] spent a lot of time on [the fake Razor Ramon character] and like [Lazenby] said, he did great impressions of a lot of guys. I always remember he did a great impression of Shawn Michaels talking about being ‘balls deep in Sunny’.

I don’t know why he was talking about that, but I just remember – I can’t even do a Shawn Michaels [impression], ‘balls deep in Sunny’ or whatever.”

On Rick losing his confidence when the Fake Razor Ramon gimmick was rejected by the fans:

“[Bognar] spent a lot of time honing down this Razor Ramon [impression] and if you watch it – I’ve been watching some of the tapes of the last few days since he passed away – take out the concept that it’s a terrible gimmick; take out the concept of whatever you want to say. He did a great job with the mannerisms, the movement, the way that Scott Hall walked in the ring, so he really did put a lot into it and I think once he got to WWE and saw how it went so bad so fast, that’s probably where he lost the confidence.

I know too when the gimmick started going bad, he was spending a lot of time at Bret’s place and he was really, truly trying to come up with different characters and different ideas. And I think jury was already out on Rick in WWE. I think he had some heat.

We spoke a little while earlier about being a little immature, being a little clued out as to how the [professional] wrestling world actually works, and also too, his work probably wasn’t up to snuff because if you look at it too, his counterpart of course was Glenn Jacobs.

They took him out of the ‘fake’ Diesel character and became one of the greatest gimmicks and one of the greatest performers in WWE history as Kane. I don’t know why they never gave Rick another shot.”

On Rick trying to introduce other gimmicks:

“I know Bret and he were trying to think of other angles and other gimmicks and one of the gimmicks that Rick had that he wanted to do, do you remember the cartoon Johnny Bravo that was pretty popular at the time?

He wanted to do a Johnny Bravo gimmick and there there were a lot of catchphrases like, ‘I’m a one-man army’ and ‘yeah, whatever’, and that sort of stuff. He was really pitching the Johnny Bravo character.

And Bret had an idea and I’m paraphrasing here, but there was a masked character based around a manta ray, maybe even call him Manta Ray or something like that because I think Bret figured he would be better under a mask, so Bret was pulling for him from that standpoint and Rick was pulling for a Johnny Bravo standpoint.”

On what happened when Rick called Vince McMahon at home:

“And I just remember this. Rick was getting frustrated and flustered that he couldn’t actually talk to Vince, so he got Vince’s number and called Vince at home. And he said, ‘Hey Vince, this is Rick Bognar.’

And Vince said, ‘Hello, Rick Bognar. Please don’t ever call this number again.’ And then, hung up on him.

I guess all the signs that you need to hear that maybe future isn’t bright in WWF.”