Bognar (Fake Ramon)

After reading your excellent review (once again I love reading everything related to ’96 and ’97), I was surprised that Bischoff didn’t sing Bognar just to have Hall squash him on Nitro after he was released. What’s up wit that?

​You know, I’m not sure what happened exactly with him after he left. The story of his departure is that Vince gave a big speech to the locker room at the end of 96 and told everyone his home number, saying that they should call him with any concern, night or day. So after the Rumble, Bognar stops getting bookings and calls up Vince one day, and Vince tells him "Rick, don’t ever call me at home again." And that’s how Bognar found out he was fired.

That being said, he went to New Japan after that and probably would have had a path into WCW as a result (I think he was teaming with Fake Sting at the time, even) but he screwed up his neck and retired soon after. Given he only came into the WWF in September and was released by January, he likely had a 90 day no-compete anyway and couldn’t just pop up on WCW Nitro. Would have been a cool meta-moment, though.​