On this week’s “Insight with Chris Van Vliet,” Cody Hall spoke about living up to his father’s legacy, trying to find his own wrestling identity, and how DDP helped Scott Hall.
Cody Hall talking about trying to live up to his father’s legacy
“I used to think that it was my burden to bear, but now I’ve been trying to see it as my torch to carry. I am so proud,” Hall said.
“My father was a great man who lived a great life who did a lot of great things in his life. He lived a full life, so I’m very happy for him and very proud of him. But it’s hard. Every show that I go to, people want to say such and such about my father, ‘Oh, he was the coolest. He was the best’, and it’s hard to live down. It’s hard to over shine him or step out of that shadow, so I always had an inferiority complex about it. No matter what I did, it would never be good enough and no matter what I did, people would never acknowledge it. It would always be about my father. So that was definitely a struggle for me, and kind of still is.”
On trying to find himself as a wrestler:
“I would say that I’m still searching for it. In my first couple of matches, I wore my father’s old gear. I would go out there and hit The Razor’s Edge. It was fun. I loved doing my father’s moves and doing an old Razor Ramon match.”
“But it definitely became hard. Every time people looked at me, they would think of my father. So accentuating that is only going to make it worse. Being an imitation is always like a losing effort from the start. Who I am trying to be is still up for debate.”
On DDP saving his dad’s life:
“My father was kind of gone when he first decided to go and Dallas convinced him. But he had definitely been knocking on death’s door for a while there. That’s what brought me back in to push through his tough times because I thought that I should spend this time with my father before he’s gone. We even did like an ESPN special around that time. You can look back and see the kind of condition that he was in. I thought that would be our goodbye.”
“Dallas stepped in and gave him a whole other decade of his life, gave him the chance to go on and earn these Hall of Fame rings, and leave the world a better place and create so much more goodwill and memories for my sister and I. Dallas is an angel.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
