Real Reason Scott Hall Was Uncomfortable Wrestling Goldust

A year or so before the vaunted Attitude Era kicked off in WWE, Goldust started turning heads with his risqué content helping steer WWE down the path of Attitude before it was even a thing.

During his initial run, the ‘Bizarre One’ feuded with Razor Ramon, with the two originally set to clash at WrestleMania XII in 1996. Ramon was replaced in the match with Roddy Piper, with Ramon subsequently suspended by WWE pending his exit from the company and emergence in WCW as Scott Hall.

Hall was reportedly uncomfortable working with the Goldust character at the time, with Hall’s Kliq buddy Kevin Nash revealing more about the situation on the Kliq This podcast:

"He was very uncomfortable," Nash said. "They did the Goldust angle. He unzips his singlet, Goldust the character does, and there's a heart, and on the heart, it says Razor. Scott's son, Cody, was like five years old when that angle played. He came home and Cody said, 'Dad, why does that mean?'" 

Nash continued: "Scott, who wasn’t a homophobe, told Vince, he goes, ‘If I have to go home and explain this to my kid’, because you can't just say, 'Oh, well, you know, some men.’ I mean, you have to go into that whole, you know, and so Scott just said, 'I don't feel comfortable doing it.' That's all it was. It wasn't that Scott was a homophobe. Scott just didn't want to teach his five year old kid about homosexuality where now it’s a different world.”

The introduction of the Goldust character was highly controversial at the time, with WWE accused of fabricating gay panic, and playing into real-world prejudices and issues for entertainment purposes.

H/T: WrestlingNews.co