20 Things You Didn't Know About Wrestling In 1996

5. Nash And Hall Were Working Without Contracts In WCW

Such was WCW€™s incompetence that Kevin Nash and Scott Hall spent the first five months of their run in Atlanta working without official contracts, but rather on deal memos. The confusion came because WCW were cutting it fine with Nash and Hall€™s WWF deadlines and had no time to finalise official contracts before the pair€™s WWF deals rolled over. So they gave them deal memos to secure them to the company, then forgot to change them. When the WWF announced that Diesel and Razor Ramon would be coming back to WWF programming in September 1996, WCW officials realised their mistake and began to panic. Worried that Nash and Hall were heading back to the WWF, killing their hot new nWo angle dead, they brought them into a private room at the next television taping and placed hard copies of their contracts on the table in front of them. Such was WCW€™s desperation to keep the pair that they offered them $400,000 per annum apiece more than their initial agreement. Nash and Hall signed immediately because they had no intention of going back to work for the WWF. They were as surprised as anyone about the WWF announcement of Diesel and Razor€™s returns. All became clear a few weeks later when Glenn Jacobs and Rick Bognar were wheeled out as the €œnew and improved€ Diesel and Razor Ramon, causing collective groans from WWF fans and Eric Bischoff to pull his hair out. He had just paid almost $1,000,000 to sign two of his wrestlers to contracts they were already under.