Okay, so let's unpack this today. If you were
watching television in 1996, specifically on
Monday nights, you might remember a moment that
just felt, well, it felt incredibly off. Oh yeah,
very off. Right. So a guy walks out, he's got
the slicked back hair, the vest, the little toothpick
flicked right at the camera, the music hits.
It is Razor Ramon. Yep. Except if you looked
closer or, you know, honestly, if you just had
working eyes, you realize pretty quickly that
is definitely not Scott Hall. The infamous fake
razor. I mean, it is one of those images that's
just permanently burned into the retinas of wrestling
fans everywhere. It really is. And it's usually
treated as a punchline, right? Just this moment
of corporate madness where the World Wrestling
Federation thought they could just swap a human
being out like a spare tire and nobody would
notice. Like recasting a sitcom character, but
in a live arena. Exactly. But here is where it
gets really interesting and why we're doing this
deep dive today. We're not just going to talk
about a bad casting decision. We're going to
talk about the man inside that vest. Right. Because
if you stop at the fake razor joke, you miss
the actual tragedy and honestly, the triumph
of Rick Bogner. Yeah. Because this is a guy who
went from fighting for literal beer money in
Calgary to being a legitimate superstar in Japan,
got chewed up by the American corporate machine,
broke his neck. And somehow came out the other
side as a spiritual guide. Yeah, guru might be
a strong word, but he literally wrote a book
called Wrestling with Consciousness. Which is
an incredible title. Honestly, best title for
a memoir I've heard in a long time. Yeah. So
our mission today is to figure out how you get
from point A, which is being this brash knuckles
champion in a ring surrounded by barbed wire,
to point B, teaching mindfulness and psychology.
It's quite the pivot. It is. So we've pulled
together the match records from FMW, WWF, New
Japan. His biography and various articles from
the time. We're going to distill all these sources
and really meet Rick Bogner because his story
definitely does not start in the WWF. No, much
more humbly than that. He was born in Vancouver
in 1970 and he breaks into the business in 1988.
So he's around 19 years old. It's a kid. It's
a kid. And the sources paint this really gritty
picture of the Western Canadian independent circuit
at that time. Yeah, I found this detail in the
notes. Completely wild. So he has his first match
in Calgary. He's 19. He is putting his body on
the line. And do you want to tell them what the
payout was? Well, it certainly wasn't a check.
Nope. $25 and a six pack of beer. Which is just
the quintessential paying your dues story in
professional wrestling. But wait, explain the
economics of that to me. Because you cannot live
on $25 and some beer a month. You absolutely
can't. And that's why the sources note he spent
two years working as a bouncer just to fund his
wrestling habit. Wow. Yeah, he was only getting
matches a couple of times a month using these
early names like Rick Titan or, I love this one,
Mega Mask. Mega Mask. That's fantastic. Right.
And he was big. He was 6 '7", 285 pounds. But
in Canada, he was just another big guy trying
to get booked. So he's stuck in this loop. Right.
Bouncing at clubs, wrestling for beer. How does
he actually break out? Because normally the path
is you go south, you go to the U .S. Normally,
yes. But Bobnar looked east. In 1991, he did
what every hungry wrestler did in the pre -internet
era. He mailed a physical videotape. A VHS tape.
A VHS tape. And he sent it to Atsushi Onida in
Japan, who is the head of FMW. OK, we need to
pause on Atsushi Onida and FMW for a second.
Because if you just say to the listener, hey,
he went to Japan, they might picture, you know,
a nice traditional sporting event. Oh, no. Right.
FMW stands for Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling.
And from what I'm reading in these sources, martial
arts is a very loose term. This sounds more like
a demolition derby. That is a very fair comparison.
FMW was not about technical arm bars and headlocks.
It was the direct precursor to the extreme hardcore
wrestling we saw later in the late 90s. The really
bloody stuff. Exactly. They replaced the ring
ropes with barbed wire. They used C4 explosive.
Literal explosives in the ring. Yes. It was violent.
It was incredibly bloody. And it was just pure
theater of the absurd. And so Onida, this mad
genius running the company, sees a tape of this
massive Canadian kid and just thinks, perfect.
Exactly. Bogner had the size. He had the look.
He was intimidating. So he flies over in 1991
and almost overnight, his entire narrative changes.
He isn't the struggling Rick Titan anymore. They
rename him Big Titan. And does it work? Like,
is the success instant? It is staggering how
fast he gets over. He debuts in July of 91. By
January 15, 1992, he is standing in the ring
across from Onida himself. The founder of the
company. The founder, the ace, the absolute biggest
star they have. And Bogner wins. He defeats Onida
to win the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship.
That's his first pro title. Hold on, let me stop
you there. Because from what I understand about
Japanese wrestling, how rare is that? for a gay
jian, a foreigner, to just walk in and beat the
owner for the top belt within six months. It
is incredibly rare. Usually the foreigner is
brought in just to be the big scary monster that
the local hero eventually vanquishes to make
the crowd happy. Right. The final boss that you
always beat. Exactly. So for Onida to actually
put the top belt on Bogner, even if the reign
only lasted 15 days, it signaled a massive amount
of trust. It meant Bogner could safely work the
crowd. He could handle the really grueling physical
style. And most importantly, the fans believed
he was a legitimate champion. So he is decidedly
not a joke at this point. He's a legitimate headliner
in a major market. Far from a joke. He's a massive
star. He joins the stable called Team Canada
with the Gladiator and Dr. Luther. Awesome names.
Right. And he and the Gladiator actually become
the first ever FMW Brass Knuckles Tag Team Champions
in 1994. Wow. Plus, he's hustling globally. He's
touring Germany with the CWA, feuding with a
guy named Rambo. He's working in Japan's war
promotion, feuding with Jinichiro Tenryu, who
is a living legend. So by 1995, if you're a scout
looking at talent anywhere in the world, Rick
Bogner is a blue chip prospect. Which brings
us to the turning point of his entire life. The
phone call that changes everything. 1996. The
WWF comes calling. Yep. Bret Hart reportedly
put in a really good word for him. So Bogner
gets a tryout match, beats a guy named Frank
Stiletto, and he gets hired. Now, if this were
a movie, this is the happy ending, right? The
bouncer from Vancouver who worked for Beer finally
makes it to the big leagues in America. But the
timing of this. It was a complete disaster. You
really have to understand the corporate landscape
of the WWF in 1996 to see why this failed. The
company was absolutely panicking. This is the
Monday Night Wars. Exactly. Two of their biggest
homegrown stars, Scott Hall, who played Reza
Ramon, and Kevin Nash, who played Diesel, had
just defected to WCW, their direct rival. And
WCW was just... crushing the WWF in the TV ratings.
So the WWF is bleeding top tier talent. And instead
of, I don't know, creating new characters for
their new hires, they decide to do what exactly?
They decided to play hardball with intellectual
property. Of course they did. The WWF lawyers
basically came out and said, look, Scott Hall
and Kevin Nash are gone. But they don't own those
characters. We do. We own the trademark for Razor
Ramon. We own the purple vest. We own the concept
of diesel. It just feels so petty. It's like
if a famous band broke up and the record label
just hired four random musicians off the street,
put them in the exact same wigs and outfits,
and told the fans, hey, look, it's still the
Beatles. That is exactly what it was. It was
intended to be this legal flex and also a storyline
heel turn for the announcer, Jim Ross. Right.
Ross introduced these new versions of the characters
to prove that the WWF machine created the stars,
not the men themselves, basically saying wrestlers
are just... interchangeable parts on an assembly
line but the audience isn't stupid you can't
just swap out a real human face and expect people
not to notice no and that is exactly where the
master plan collapsed when bognar walked out
as razor ramon and glenn jacobs walked out as
the fake diesel the fans didn't boo them because
they were bad guys in the story they booed because
they felt their intelligence was being insulted
yeah looking at the notes on the 1997 royal rumble
yeah this really seems like the moment the company
realized oh wow this is not working at all It
was the absolute death knell for the gimmick.
So, Bognar enters the Rumble match, which is
their second biggest show of the year. Right.
And he is the very first person eliminated. Ahmed
Johnson literally throws him out. almost immediately.
And in wrestling language, when you get dumped
first like that, that is the company publicly
washing its hands of you. It's just brutal. And
the critics destroyed it, too. The Wrestling
Observer Newsletter, which is basically the Wall
Street Journal of Wrestling, voted it the worst
gimmick of 1996. They also voted the whole recast
idea the most disgusting promotional tactic.
So Bognar, through no fault of his own, becomes
the face of arguably the worst idea in wrestling
history. And he is totally stuck. He's a highly
talented, well -traveled guy, but he's trapped
in a costume that everyone actively despises.
And here's the real sliding doors moment that
just kind of haunts this whole story. His partner,
the fake Diesel. Glenn Jacobs. Glenn Jacobs.
Right. Glenn Jacobs somehow survives this absolute
train wreck of a storyline. He does. Jacobs was
eventually repackaged. They put him in a full
face mask, called him Kane, made him the evil
brother of the Undertaker. And he goes on to
have an absolute Hall of Fame legendary career.
But they didn't do anything like that for Bognar.
They didn't repackage him. Not at all. Once the
fake razor experiment was deemed a failure, Bogner
was just let go. Jacobs got a magical second
chance, and Bogner got a pink slip. Man, that
has to completely mess with your head. You do
exactly what the billionaire boss tells you to
do. You play the role, you take all the public
humiliation from the fans, and then you're the
one who just gets discarded. It's a massive psychological
blow. Just devastating. But this is where Bogner's
resilience really kicks in. He doesn't quit the
business. He takes the razor gimmick down to
Mexico to work for AAA and then to the USWA in
Memphis. Oh, wait. I see a note here about a
Loser Leaves Town match in the USWA. Please tell
me it was against Fake Diesel. It actually was.
That is amazing. It's almost poetic, really.
He wrestles his former partner, Fake Diesel.
Bogner wins the match. Fake Diesel leaves town,
basically, so Glenn Jacobs can go off to become
Kane. And Brognar finally gets to shed the Razor
Ramon skin. He goes back to being Rick Titan.
He reclaims his actual identity. He does. And
in 1998, he returns to the one place that actually
respected his talent, Japan. But this time, he
doesn't go to FMW. He goes to New Japan Pro Wrestling,
which is the biggest, most prestigious promotion
in the country. He joins the NWO Japan faction.
He's performing in the massive Tokyo Dome. He
is officially back. But just as he's rebuilding
his career, we hit the physical wall. And this
part of the story, honestly, it makes me cringe
just looking at the notes. February 15, 1998.
Yeah. So he's in a match against Shinya Hashimoto.
Now, for listeners who might not know, Hashimoto
was notorious in Japan. He hit incredibly hard.
He was stiff. It wasn't a choreographed dance
with him. It was basically a real fight. And
something goes wrong with a move called a DDT,
right? Correct. A DDT is a move where you grab
your opponent in a front face lock and drop backward,
driving their head into the mat. In this case,
the timing was just slightly off. Bognar landed
directly on the crown of his head. The impact
was so severe, it caused a hairline fracture
of his C5 and C6 vertebrae. Okay, let's just
be very clear for everyone listening. That is
a broken neck. That is absolute... Don't move
an inch. Call the paramedics. Stretcher out territory.
Medically and structurally, yes, absolutely.
But Bognar, he gets up and finishes the match.
How is that even? physiologically possible is
it just pure adrenaline adrenaline shock and
honestly the toxic tough guy culture of the wrestling
business at that time you just did not stop a
match but what's even more terrifying is what
happened after he went to the back because he
didn't take six months off to heal no way you're
kidding he kept wrestling he participated in
the iwgp tag team tournament in june of that
same year and then and this is the part that
is truly hard to fathom he entered the g1 climax
tournament in august you need to explain the
g1 climax Because that's not just showing up
for one match on a Sunday, right? Not at all.
It is widely considered the most grueling tournament
in professional wrestling. It's a massive round
-robin tournament. You are wrestling high -intensity
singles matches, often going 20 or 30 minutes
long, night after night for weeks on end. It
routinely destroys completely healthy bodies.
Rick Bognar did the entire tournament with a
healing broken neck. That crosses the line from
being tough to being deeply self -destructive,
doesn't it? It does. And I think it speaks directly
to the immense pressure he felt. He had lost
his big spot in America. He was desperately trying
to prove he was still elite in Japan. And he
just pushed his body way past the breaking point.
Eventually, the bill has to come due on that
kind of physical debt. It always does. He wrestled
his last major match for New Japan in March of
1999. He did a very brief run back home in Calgary
for Stampede Wrestling. But by 2000, he officially
had to retire. He was only 30 years old. 30.
I mean, 30 is usually when a professional wrestler
is just hitting their absolute prime. Exactly.
They're just figuring out the psychology of the
crowd. So now you have this 30 -year -old man.
His body is completely wrecked. His biggest fame
in America is being a widely mocked fake version
of someone else. And his entire career is over.
This is exactly the moment where so many wrestling
stories turn into deep tragedies. The addiction,
the deep depression. But Rick Bognar, he pivoted.
And not just a small career pivot. He completely
reinvented his entire operating system. He really
did. He went straight to school. He enrolled
at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and dedicated
himself to studying business and psychology.
You know, psychology seems like the absolute
perfect field for someone who has just been through
the carnival funhouse mirror of pro wrestling.
It makes total sense. He started to process his
own wild experiences, the massive highs of main
eventing the Tokyo Dome, the intense public humiliation
of the fake razor gimmick, the chronic pain of
the broken. neck. And he decided to use all of
that trauma to help others. He became a speaker.
But the sources are clear that he was very specific
about his title. He did not want to be called
a motivational speaker. No, he preferred the
term transformational speaker. And he wrote that
book we mentioned earlier, Wrestling with Consciousness,
which came out in 2010. I really want to dig
into that concept for a second. Wrestling with
Consciousness. What was he actually teaching
people? Was it just kind of standard? Think positive
self -help stuff. It was significantly deeper
than that. He drew from his education to teach
specific techniques. breathing exercises, deep
meditation, cognitive reframing to deal with
deep -seated anger and regret. He talked a lot
about how the wrestling business is entirely
predicated on creating conflict. The whole model
is about fighting. But a healthy, happy life
is about resolving conflict. So he literally
had to unlearn the very instincts that made him
a millionaire star in Japan. Wow. That is such
a profound shift in mindset. To go from a world
where you are financially rewarded for aggression,
to a world where you are rewarded for inner peace.
And by all accounts, he really seemed to find
that peace. He even managed to keep a great solid
humor about his past. He actually did some acting
later on. Yes. I saw the IMDB credits in the
notes. He played the meanest barbarian on the
TV show. Honey, I shrunk the kids. And he played
a literal Sasquatch in a movie called Painkillers.
He wasn't hiding from his massive physical size
or his past. He was just finally having fun with
it. He even reconnected with the wrestling world
in a really healthy, giving way. He helped train
Jinder Mahal, who eventually went on to become
a WWE champion. So he didn't run away from wrestling
in the end. He just made peace with his place
in it. Exactly. He integrated it. He wasn't Fake
Razor anymore. He wasn't even Big Titan anymore.
He was just Rick. Which really makes the end
of this story. so heartbreaking to read. It definitely
catches you off guard. On September 20, 2019,
Rick Bognar passed away suddenly. It was a heart
attack. He was only 49 years old. It just feels
deeply unfair. Like he'd done all the hard work.
He had fixed his mind. He had fixed his life.
He was helping people. And then he's just gone
before he even hits 50. It is incredibly tragic.
But, you know, if we look at the actual philosophy
he was teaching in his later years, he talked
a lot about the impermanence of things. He wrote
heavily about living in the now because the character
you play in life, whether that's a professional
wrestler or CEO or a podcast host, is ultimately
just a costume. So if we zoom out and look at
this whole deep dive, what is the ultimate legacy
here? Because for most casual fans, his name
is still just a trivia question from 1996. I
think his true legacy is incredible adaptability.
Just think about the sheer range of this man's
life. He was a struggling bouncer, a Japanese
cultural icon, a corporate pariah in the WWF,
a legitimate tough guy wrestling a tournament
with a broken neck, and finally, a peaceful scholar
of the human mind. It really challenges that
whole idea of being defined by your worst public
failure. That's the key takeaway for me. The
entire world tried to define him by the fake
razor gimmick. They tried to make his whole existence
a joke, but he simply refused to accept that
as the end of his story. It reminds me of that
saying, you know, you are not your job and you
definitely aren't the worst costume your boss
ever made you wear on national television. Precisely.
And I actually want to leave you with a thought
today, a bit of a provocative question to chew
on. We spend so much time in wrestling circles
analyzing why the fake razor thing was a disaster.
But ask yourself this. If that disaster hadn't
happened, if he had just stayed in Japan and
had a nice, steady, successful career as Big
Titan, would he have ever written? wrestling
with consciousness. Oh, that's interesting. Did
the absolute failure force the spiritual growth?
Sometimes you have to be completely stripped
of your identity, humiliated even, to start asking
the really big questions about who you actually
are. Bogner was forced to be a literal fake version
of someone else in front of millions of people.
Maybe that trauma was the ultimate crash course
in figuring out how to be the real version of
himself. Failure as the literal fuel for enlightenment.
I mean, that is a hell of a legacy for the bad
guy in the vest. It certainly is. Well, that
is going to do it for our deep dive today into
the many, many lives of Rick Bognar. A truly
fascinating story of grit, terrible corporate
gimmicks, and ultimately finding peace. Thank
you so much for joining us, and we will catch
you on the next deep dive.