Break It Down
By Manny Tsigas
Hulkamania Runnin' Mild
I just bought my ticket for the upcoming Hulkamania: Let The Battle Begin tour. Sure, it may have been announced in September, but since then I’ve been trying to figure out if I should shell out close to $100 to see something...
A) ...I’m half-expecting to be a total letdown.
B) ...led by a man I have a chequered past with as a fan.
Like pretty much everyone else who grew up watching wrestling, I was a Hulkamaniac. That very statement is one of wrestling’s biggest clichés, but then again what isn’t a cliché in wrestling these days?
When Vince McMahon decided to claim the entire wrestling industry as his own, he relied very heavily on one man. That same man used his solid physique and unyielding charisma to launch the World Wrestling Federation to such dizzying heights that even those who didn’t watch wrestling knew his name. His star power was so intense he played a key role in helping WCW grow from a Disney Studios sideshow, into the WWF’s first major rival.
Today, after nearly 30 years, you can ask anyone on the street: “What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘wrestling’?”
Most would answer with that very same name – Hulk Hogan.
But while I still have a lot of respect for Hogan, it’s waned significantly over the years. In my lifetime wrestling has seen a lot of changes – its demographic has shifted from kids to adults back to kids again, the internet is playing a bigger role than ever, and the wrestlers themselves are faster, stronger, and better than ever.
I find it odd that while the industry itself has moved on, Hogan – one of the key driving forces behind its success – hasn’t.
It all started to unravel for me when Hogan returned to the World Wrestling Federation in February 2002. Up to this point I’d heard horror story after horror story about how Hogan was a major player behind WCW’s demise. Years later I read the same thing in RD Reynolds’ brilliant book The Rise and Fall of WCW (forget WWE’s revisionist history DVD of the same name). It was alleged Hogan was one of an elite few who basically called the shots backstage, effectively stopping young talent from reaching their full potential in order to keep himself and his cronies at the top of the food chain.
Hogan was desperate to hang on to the status quo. He was the biggest name in wrestling despite his routine (the leg drop, the poses, the constant use of the word “brother”) having aged terribly by the time he refused to job to Jeff Jarrett at the 2000 Bash at the Beach, leading to his departure from the company.
Years later, the WWF came knocking. The storyline was that Vince had been forced to share the reigns of his company with Ric Flair, who’d bought a stake in the WWF from Shane and Stephanie McMahon following the WCW/ECW “InVasion”. In a fit of rage Vince hired the nWo (Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall) to “kill” his own company from within.
That in itself was underwhelming. After eight long years away from the company he helped build, Hogan returned to the WWF alongside two wrestlers I’ve grown to hate with a passion, in a stable that everyone was sick to death of. Of course Hogan eventually broke away from them and reintroduced his whole Hulkamania persona to the WWF. But I was over it before it’d even happened.
At Wrestlemania X8 Hogan faced the WWF’s biggest star at the time, The Rock. The build-up was phenomenal and the crowd was white hot. But for me that’s where the appeal ended. The Rock, aged 29, was the embodiment of everything the WWF had become up to that point. But here he was competing against a man pushing 50, who represented everything the WWF was.
The match itself was anything but Wrestlemania-worthy. It was shoddy and unimaginative, full of botched spots and a ridiculous number of rest-holds. Hogan (both the man and the gimmick) was old, but the name had enough credence to remain alongside the company’s best for the sake of buy-rates.
I still say most of Hogan’s matches around that time (including sloppy appearances against Triple H and Shawn Michaels) only looked good on paper rather than in the ring, but the WWF crowds who were starved of Hogan for close to a decade loved them. So much so that The Rock became a pseudo-heel for having won at Wrestlemania. No-one seemed to care that Hogan’s resurrection was powered by his name alone. By now it was painfully clear it wasn’t because of his in-ring ability, and it sure as hell wasn’t his body. In an appearance on a US morning show, Hogan described how he blew out his (good) knee trying to get up off a couch.
No, I’m not kidding.
By 2007 Hogan had once again left WWE, but this is where the real damage to his credibility began. By then he’d launched his own “reality” TV show Hogan Know Best, which to me seemed more rigged than his entire in-ring career. It was only when some actual reality came about that the show was cancelled.
By 2008 his wife had filed for divorce (after finding out Hogan had had an affair), and his son Nick was indicted on criminal charges following a car accident that left his passenger severely disabled. From here Hogan had become a human punch-line, and he didn’t help himself by spurting out all kinds of crap throughout several interviews...
- ...how he was originally offered to be the name behind the George Foreman Grill.
- ...how he was originally offered the role of Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler.
- ...how he sympathised with OJ Simpson after his wife left him.
Suddenly the Hulkster had become the King of “coulda woulda shoulda”, and as his credibility suffered, so did that of wrestling. Hogan wasn’t even competing anymore, but once again, such is the name “Hulk Hogan” that his antics alone added another ring to wrestling’s ever-growing media circus.
That brings us to 2009, and Hogan’s announcement that he’s coming to Australia. But what got me was the news that Ric Flair would be returning to the ring. That’s a little over a year after the Nature Boy had competed in what we thought was his last match ever at Wrestlemania XXIV.
I can’t say I was surprised, but I was disappointed.
Flair had the chance to do what Hogan and many others like him couldn’t. Ric could’ve gone out on top, resting assured his illustrious career came to an end after a phenomenal display on the grandest stage of them all against one of wrestling’s biggest stars. But he’s decided to throw all that away just to wrestle against a past-his-prime Hulkster in a series of matches that I already know will be less than memorable (assuming they even wrestle at all).
And now to top it all off, Hogan has signed on as a full-time staffer at TNA. The news came as if on cue. The past few episodes of Impact have truly been some of the best the company has ever put on. The talent has really been stepping up, particularly its female and tag-team divisions. And AJ Styles holding the strap after Mick Foley’s ridiculously pointless reign has been a breath of fresh air.
But the experienced wrestling fan can be forgiven for wondering if it’s all been for nothing.
I know that Hogan is capable of accomplishing great things, which is why I’m adopting a “wait and see” approach to his role at TNA. More than 15 years after it helped light a fire under WCW, Hulkamania is still capable of making or breaking a wrestling franchise.
The question is will Hogan prevent its aforementioned side-effects from running wild?
Manny Tsigas is a journalist for SBS World News Australia, and a lifelong wrestling fan. When he’s not watching, reviewing and obsessing over films, he also enjoys music, writing, anime, videogames, stand up comedy and anything to do with the 1980s. You can email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
