Posted on by bdamage1
In the scripted world of professional wrestling, some will tell you that wins and losses don’t mean a great deal. As long as your check doesn’t bounce, what difference does a win or a loss in pro wrestling really mean? While ultimately, that may or may not be true, a well crafted victory can certainly help advance a wrestler’s career. Case in point, the night a kid beat a bad guy on Monday Night Raw.
The WWF’s Monday Night Raw program was still in its infancy and Vince McMahon wanted new and different ways for viewers to continue to tune in each and every week. Vince and his right hand man Pat Patterson thought of an idea to shock the fans in attendance at the Manhattan Center (Raw’s home base) and all the people watching at home. The idea was a pretty simple one, have a wrestler nobody expects to win a match…not only win, but beat one of the promotion’s top stars.
The unsuspecting wrestler that was chosen was a young man named Sean Waltman. Waltman was trained by the likes of Boris Malenko and Karl Gotch and was already a veteran of sorts, having wrestled on the independents for roughly 4 years. Waltman earned a WWF contract by impressing McMahon during a tryout match. With Waltman now under contract, he began doing “jobs” on Monday Night Raw under different aliases like The Kamikaze Kid and The Cannonball Kid…to finally just being called The Kid. Each week, Waltman was being beat by the likes of Mr. Hughes and Doink the Clown.
On May 17, 1993…The Kid was about to face Razor Ramon on an episode of Monday Night Raw in what appeared to be another random squash match. It certainly started out that way, with the Kid getting tossed around the ring by the star Razor Ramon. The Kid has little to no offense in the match, until the very end when the Kid got out of the way leading Razor to hit the corner turnbuckle. A dazed Razor Ramon led the Kid to perform a maneuver not often used in the WWF at the time….a top rope moonsault. The referee hit the mat three times and just like that…the Kid was victorious in a shocking upset!
The end result of that match fired up the crowd at the Manhattan Center with many chanting 1-2-3, 1-2-3 to mock the fallen Razor Ramon. During the commercial break, commentator Bobby Heenan suggested to Vince McMahon that Waltman should be renamed the 1-2-3 Kid. McMahon immediately loved the new name and the 1-2-3 Kid was born.
As for the the upset result of the match itself, Sean Waltman said he knew about the idea a month in advance. He was called by Vince and Pat Patterson and had the entire concept mapped out for him. The losing matches for a couple of weeks to make fans think he was a nobody and then the surprise pinfall win over Razor Ramon to shock everybody. Sean Waltman said he was honored and amazed that McMahon and Patterson chose him in that role. Waltman said, “It’s the best way I can imagine being brought in and being introduced to people. It was great. I knew it was going to be big too.” Waltman cited that match as “The most important moment of my career.”
As for Scott Hall aka Razor Ramon…Scott was all onboard with being the one to lose to Waltman. Scott knew the value of losing a match, if it made sense and had purpose. Hall was given the lay out of the storyline with Waltman and thought that this could be huge for both wrestlers. It was indeed. The upset victory launched the career of Waltman and helped in turning Razor Ramon into a babyface and becoming an even bigger star with the company. It also inspired many future wrestlers who witnessed the match on TV. Wrestlers like Johnny Gargano, who watched the match as a kid and inspired him to one day pursue a wrestling career of his own.
While wins and losses might not mean much in the grand scheme of things in a scripted business, the Kid beating Razor Ramon proves otherwise if done right.