Kane Knew He Belonged In WWE When He Was Playing Fake Diesel

Kane talks being Fake Diesel.

In 1996, Diesel (Kevin Nash) and Razor Ramon (Scott Hall) left WWE for WCW. With WWE still having the rights to the Diesel and Razor Ramon characters, the company decided to fill the void by using Kane (Diesel) and Rick Bognar (Ramon) as the characters. The fake versions of the popular characters didn’t work, and the idea fell apart within a few months. But Kane found value in playing the character.

“I was in South Africa. Jerry Brisco came to me and said, ‘When you get back to the States, you need to call Vince. They had this idea,” recalled Kane on WWE Photo Shoot. “Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had recently gone to WCW. As it was, Jim Ross had found some replacements. It was me and Rick Bognar, he was in ECW and had a character that parodied Razor Ramon and did it really well. They brought us in. A lot of people thought Faux Diesel and Razor Ramon was fatally flawed. I didn’t think so. I thought it was a good concept. The thing was, Jim Ross was never going to be a bad guy to our audience, especially at that time. Ultimately, the positive aspect was it allowed me to get experience. I started in 1991 and four years later, I was in WWE. I wasn’t prepared. My work wasn’t good enough when I was Isaac Yankem. So, I made adjustments and with the Diesel character, my work was good enough but the character was something the audience didn’t gravitate to. But I knew then that I belonged in WWE and I knew I could be a top-flight performer. I learned that working through the [Fake Diesel] character.”

After his run as Fake Diesel, Kane sat on the sidelines before making his debut as Kane, the brother of The Undertaker, at WWE Hell in a Cell 1997. And the rest, as they say, is history.

If you use any of the quotes above, please credit WWE Photo Shoot with a h/t to Fightful for the transcription.