Former WWF/E artist details designing the concept for the Razor Ramon character

Former WWF/E artist and designer Tom Fleming tells the story of putting together the 'Razor Ramon' concept for Scott Hall

Photo Courtesy: WWE

Background about the creation of the Razor Ramon character.

In 1992, Scott Hall returned to the WWE/F as ‘Razor Ramon’. He would become a 4-time Intercontinental Champion as this character and is the sixth longest reigning Intercontinental Champion in the company’s history.

The concept of the Razor Ramon character was broken down by former WWF/E artist and designer Tom Fleming. Fleming guest appeared on the ‘New Generation Declassified’ show and detailed how the idea of the character and its concept was presented to him.

He recalled having a conversation with Hall in a gym and initially, Hall was supposed to sport pants but he said he worked too hard on his legs and needed to wear trunks.

So okay, so here’s the low-down on Razor [Scott Hall]. This was one of the early costume assignments that I got. My boss Adrianna and my buddy Jay were also — and I think another one or two designers — we were all working on this concept and those purple pants you referred to, those were actually designed by Jay. He came up with those purple pants. I didn’t like the purple pants look. I wanted to go all black, yellow and red. So, I came up with the pants that are in that concept sketch. It’s basically the black pants with the razors all over them and then the logo on the trunk part and what happened was-was when Vince [McMahon] approved, they didn’t have — there was kind of — there’s always a ‘feel out’ stage of the costumes and they do revisions and things like that. So, my basic concept got chosen with Jay’s pants and Razor — actually, I saw Razor down at the gym and he said — he came over to me and he said, ‘Man,’ he goes, ‘I love the concept except two things. One, I’ve been working way too hard on my legs and I need trunks, not pants’ and I was like, ‘All right’ and he definitely said he preferred the black and yellow. I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll turn the pants into trunks and put the razor blades on the knee pads’ and he was like, ‘That’s awesome’ and he’s like, ‘And no hat’ and I was like, ‘That — yeah, yeah, yeah’ and everybody understood that, you know? So yeah, basically what it came down to — a lot of people don’t understand, that drawing, I had to work from templates that my boss would give us so it was kind of a strange thing that a lot of the characters have this kind of, almost an effeminate look to them because she was a fashion… she was like a fashion designer and she would put that kind of flare to it whereas the drawings that I actually drew like the Adam Bomb concept and things like that were much more comic book, you know, kind of looking so yeah, you know, they weren’t meant to be great pieces of art. They were meant to display the concepts, illustrate the concepts so that Vince can just choose what concept he liked best. So yeah, the Razor wound up turning out excellent when we kind of streamlined it and adjusted it towards his preferences.

Scott Hall passed away on March 14th. The tributes from those in the wrestling industry and those who knew him personally were shared for multiple days. Kevin Nash wrote about Hall and their friendship on his Instagram page.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit New Generation Declassified with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription. 

About Andrew Thompson 9820 Articles
A Washington D.C. native and graduate of Norfolk State University, Andrew Thompson has been covering wrestling since 2017.