Scott Hall enjoying a resurrection of his own

Scott Hall rarely crossed paths with Jake Roberts during his wrestling career.

By the time Hall was beginning his career in 1984, Roberts was already a decade into his and was getting ready to take the national stage of the World Wrestling Federation.

When Hall finally arrived in the World Wrestling Federation in 1992, Roberts was on his way to World Championship Wrestling.

When Roberts returned in 1996, Hall was on his way to a lucrative contract with World Championship Wrestling.

Although they always seemed to just miss each other throughout their careers, they are now forever linked due to their Hollywood-like story from addiction to redemption.

"I think if you had written the story, people would have went, 'No way, man. Nobody will believe that. That's too hokey,' but that's the way it happened," Hall said during an interview.

The respect each man has for the other may have grown exponentially throughout the past couple of years, but for Hall, the respect for Roberts was always there.

Hall was so much of a fan of Roberts that on one of the rare occasions that they actually got to wrestle each other, Hall volunteered to lose to Roberts, just so he could take Roberts' patented DDT finishing maneuver and have his trusty snake thrown upon him.

As much as Roberts inspired Hall during his wrestling career, he did so again during a much more important time Hall's life.

At one point in Hall's life, he had fallen very ill with heart problems and had an extended stay in a hospital. It just so happened that one of the workers in the hospital was a fan of Hall's work as a wrestler and talked to Hall about his favorite memories.

Eventually, the conversation shifted to Roberts when the worker showed Hall a photo of Roberts before he moved in with Diamond Dallas Page and a photo of him about six months later. The visual was jarring for Hall.

"I go, 'Whoa!'" Hall said. "Just the physical transformation, not even knowing what was going on in his head, but just looking at his body I knew he must have been doing the right thing. That really inspired me."

The photo of Roberts inspired Hall enough that when he received a call from Roberts and Page about moving into Page's home outside of Atlanta, it didn't take much convincing for Hall to agree.

A year earlier, pride may have prevented Hall from grabbing onto the olive branch that Page was extending to him, but the photo of Roberts helped Hall swallow his pride and finally accept the help of a dear friend.

"[People would go], 'How are you doing?' and I'd go, 'Better than you,'" Hall said. "I was real defensive about it because in my mind I had convinced myself that I had everybody fooled. That I was doing just fine."

"My message is that if you need help and you can summon the courage to ask for it, do it," he added. "If people are offering you help, swallow your pride and accept it because people who care about you want to help you."

Page had cared about Hall going back to their days in the American Wrestling Association in the late 1980s. The normally laid-back Hall was always seemed to have a soft spot for the hyperactive Page.

"We've always been good friends and I'm really looking forward to going on the road with him because he's just so freaking positive," Hall said of Page.

"Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's like nails on a chalk board because he's like, 'Bro, bro, bro, what story are you telling yourself, bro. Own it, brother. Own it.' [Laughter] I don't know. He just tickles me," he added.

"We've always communicated really effectively with each other. Dallas shoots [it straight] with me and I shoot with him. I value his opinion and he values mine."

As much as Hall thinks Page is sometimes "annoyingly positive," the results of his recovery cannot be argued.

In three years, Hall has gone from an addict that was a pariah of sorts in the wrestling business, to healthy, sober and a proud member of the WWE Hall of Fame.

Along the way, Hall has reconnected with his two children, Cody and Cassidy, and is helping Cody make his own way into the wrestling business.

"I feel like I couldn't have screwed up that bad as a dad because I have a pretty good relationship with both of my kids," Hall said.

With his father's guidance, Cody is now training in the New Japan Pro Wrestling dojo.

Among the lessons Hall hopes his son learns is to avoid the pitfalls his father fell into during his time in the business.