Kane Reflects On Fake Diesel Character, What It Taught Him

Before Glenn Jacobs was Kane, he was the fake Diesel in WWE, a character that he recently reflected on portraying. Kane got his start in WWE as Isaac Yankem, DDS and then came back as Diesel, taking the character that Kevin Nash abandoned when he left to WCW. Rick Bogner played Razor Ramon, and the two were interested by a newly heel Jim Ross.

The whole storyline was widely derided and remains so to this day. Kane spoke about the matter on WWE Photo Shoot, saying that he thought the concept was good and that people just weren’t buying Jim Ross as a heel. He noted that he did learn a lot from the experience in terms of being on TV with WWE. You can see highlights below:

On Playing Fake Diesel:

“So this is right after Isaac Yankem, DDS. I was in South Africa. Jerry Brisco came to me and said, ‘When you get back to the States, you need to call Vince.’ And they had this idea. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had recently gone to WCW in Atlanta. Gist of it was that JR had found some replacements. It was me and Rick Bogner, he was in ECW, and he had a character which parodied Razor Ramon and did it really well. So they brought us in.”

On the Idea Behind the Characters:

“A lot of people thought that the faux Diesel and Razor Ramon was fatally flawed. I actually didn’t think so. I thought it was a good concept. But the thing was that Jim Ross is never gonna be a bad guy to our audience, especially at that time.

“But ultimately the positive aspect was the fact that it allowed me to get experience. I started in the wrestling business in 1991, and four years later I was in WWE. Frankly, I wasn’t prepared. My work wasn’t really good enough when I was Isaac Yankem. So I made a lot of adjustments and I felt that with the Diesel character my work was good enough. It’s just the character was just something that the audience didn’t gravitate to. But I knew then that I belonged in WWE. And I knew that I could be a top flight performer. I learned that working through this character.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit WWE with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.