Ask any non-wrestling fan to name a wrestler. They might say The Rock. They could say John Cena or Randy Savage. If they are particularly big fans of the cinematic classic Roadhouse, they might even say Terry Funk.
Odds are, though, the first name they utter will be the driving force behind moving wrestling from a niche hobby to a worldwide phenomenon. The name they say will be synonymous with vitamins, America, and later on in life, reality TV, racism, and easy to fact check lies.
That is because, when you ask people about wrestling, the most likely person they know is Hulk Hogan.
Before Hulk Hogan, wrestling stars were generally regional spectacles. Bruno Sammartino was the undisputed star of the WWWF, soon to be WWF, eventually to be WWE. Sammartino sold out Madison Square Garden every time he main evented there during his near decade run as champion. But Bruno was generally a northeast spectacle due to the territory system most wrestling promotions operated under during the era.
Andre the Giant was a huge star, but mostly treated like a sideshow, beating wrestlers in territories, then moving on.
Harley Race laid claim to being The Guy in the Midwest. Dusty Rhodes had Florida. Ric Flair was the king of the south at the turn of the 80s. Other mainstays at the time were Roddy Piper in the Northwest, the Von Erichs in Texas, Junkyard Dog in mid south, and numerous others who laid claim to being the top guy in their territory.
In the early 80s, Hulk Hogan was carving out his career in the AWA under legendary ex wrestler turned promoter Verne Gagne. Hogan had already had a run in WWF under Vince McMahon Sr. Hogan would be fired when he took the role of Thunderlips in Rocky III, and make his way up to Minnesota to have another run for Gagne. During that time, Hogan began to find the hallmark babyface persona that would come to define him for the next decade. In 1983, he would leave the company after repeatedly being denied the Heavyweight Championship, in spite of being the most “over” wrestler in the company.
Hogan leaving AWA was fortuitous for two reasons that would change wrestling history.
The first was that Vince McMahon Jr. had purchased the company from his father. His plan was to take his father’s regional wrestling promotion, and make it the biggest promotion in the company. To do so, he planned a national takeover. He bought out competing companies time slots. He signed away their top wrestlers. To make his plan work though, he needed a GUY. Someone who could carry the company.
The second was the advent of cable television. With the ability to put his shows on televisions across the country, McMahon had now found the conduit by which he could build his company into the power it has become to this day.
Hulk Hogan was the perfect person for the time and the place in the 80’s.
It’s easy to forget now how important Hulk Hogan was to professional wrestling. It’s easy to forget, largely because of the actions of Hogan himself over the past 20+ years. When you are one of the most recognizable stars in the world in any profession, it’s hard to let the fame go away. Hogan let it go kicking and screaming. He surrounded himself with the absolute worst sycophants he could find. He created one of the worst reality television shows to ever get a multi season run. He was racist, kind of a lot. He sexualized his daughter, kind of a lot. He lied, kind of a lot.
Hulk Hogan is by no means a sympathetic figure, even in death. He went from the highest levels of worldwide stardom to shooting himself in the foot over and over….and over and over and over and over. Just in the final couple years of his life, he hawked a crappy beer and got booed out of a live WWE wrestling event, only to blame the “woke mob” for it. If you are the company you keep, then keeping company with the Nasty Boys and Bubba the Love Sponge for most of your post wrestling life is a pretty terrible way to be.
In January of 1984, though, Hulk Hogan won his first WWF Heavyweight Championship, setting off Hulkamania, Rock’n Wrestling, Wrestlemania, and countless other people, places, and things that would float into the professional wrestling ecosystem. What would happen over the rest of the decade was nothing short of a cross cultural phenomenon. He sold out wherever he went. He was charismatic enough to send to host Saturday Night Live. He was likable enough to be the face of the company. He had the gravitas to have people listen to him and truly believe him. Growing up in the 80s, you said your prayers, you took your vitamins, and you idolized Hulk Hogan.
Before Vince McMahon took over the WWF, the biggest wrestling stars existed, at least in McMahon Sr’s version of the company, to satisfy cultural groups. Bruno Sammartino was for the italian community. Pedro Morales was for the latino community. That’s how it worked. All of the biggest wrestlers actually looked liked they had day jobs, too. Most looked like plumbers who were wrestling in the evening. Hulk Hogan created what a professional wrestler would come to look like….or at least, that’s what he would tell you. The truth is, he ripped off aspects of numerous wrestlers, notably Superstar Billy Graham, and appropriate them for himself. But sometimes it doesn’t matter who did it first. It was about who did it best. And for a long time, brother, Hulk Hogan was the best.
There is actually a pretty clear dovetailing of the loss of popularity of Hulkamania with the loss of popularity of Hair Metal. In a lot of ways, both are absolute hallmarks of 80’s culture, along with day glo clothing, the Delorean, and mountains of cocaine. At the turn of the 90’s, wrestling fans began looking for something different. And just as grunge rock proved hair metal to be irrelevant, new stars would make Hogan and all his Hulkamaniacs seem antiquated.
The loss of popularity also coincided with his rise in power and direction of his own character. In no particular order, there was him kicking out at 3.1 against Ultimate Warrior at Wrestlemania VI so he could undermine how strong Ultimate Warrior was meant to look. There was the suspicious circumstances around his black eye going into Wrestlemania IX. Then there was one of the most notably terrible finishes at the same event, when Hogan used his political power backstage to screw over Bret Hart so he could win the title for himself, then told Vince that he didn’t think Bret was good enough for Hogan to lose the title to him, followed by him losing the title to Yokozuna so someone else could lose to Bret. There was Hogan claiming that Undertaker broke his neck, even though Undertaker was so afraid of hurting Hogan that Hulk’s head came nowhere close to touching the mat. Oh, and there was the Wrestlemania VII debacle where Hogan vs. Sgt Slaughter was supposed to headline the LA Coliseum, but had to be moved to a smaller venue, with WWF claiming the reason being that Slaughter, an Iraqi sympathizer during Desert Storm, was getting death threats. The truth was, they didn’t sell enough tickets for the venue and had to move it.
Oh, and there was the steroid trial and Hulk dribbling lies out of his mouth on Arsenio Hall. I can probably go on, but i’m trying to keep this somewhat concise.
After dropping the title to Yokozuna and leaving the company, Hogan would set his sights on Hollywood, and Hollywood would set it’s sights on straight to video movie releases starring him. Thunder In Paradise was also a thing he did.
World Championship Wrestling, the little-noticed younger sibling of WWF, came calling, or more specifically, a Brinks truck came honking. Hogan was given the richest contract in wrestling history and was given creative control to do what he wanted. As a wrestling fan, this was exciting. After a couple years in the wilderness, Hulkamania was back, and in a new promotion with new opponents.
He won the championship almost immediately off of Ric Flair and then…..well I guess the best way to put it is, WCW brought in all of Hogan’s old friends and foes from WWF, gave them horrible new gimmicks, and had Hogan vanquish them again. To say it wasn’t working would be a bit of an understatement.
Another of Hogan’s great lies he would start telling after his career was over was how integral he was to the formation of the NWO, the group who, along with WWF defectors Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, would reinvigorate wrestling and bring a whole new generation of wrestling fans into the world. In later years, he would claim his fingerprint all over the formation. The truth is, according to literally everyone else involved, was that Hogan didn’t want to be a part of it, because he didn’t want to be a bad guy because he didn’t think it would be good for his career and it wouldn’t sell merch. The NWO forming would actually go on to be one of the most important moments in wrestling history and be the harbinger for a seismic shift of the entire wrestling landscape.
Side Tangent: While we are on lies, someone needs to stop WWE and the propaganda arm of their company from minimizing how big of a deal the NWO was. The way WWE tells it in “documentaries” they make, the group was a blip on their radar while it was actually Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Rock, and DX that made wrestling a big deal again. Here are some facts. Hogan, Hall, and Nash officially launched the NWO at Bash at the Beach on July 7, 1996. That same weekend, at TV taping, HHH, a long way from starting DX, was busy losing to Marc Mero. Steve Austin had cut his “Austin 3:16” which WWE would lead you to believe today started the revolution. Austin was busy beating Savio Vega on the mid card. He didn’t get over for nearly 8 more months. The Rock was wrestling in the USWA, a WWF minor league system, under the name Flex Kavana. Meanwhile, here are some people who they were actually trying to get over at this time: TL Hopper, a wrestling plumber, Duke Drose, a wrestling garbage man, The Goon, a wrestling hockey enforcer, The Godwins, wrestling pig farmers, and whatever Aldo Montoya was. WWF was a dumpster fire at the exact point they were supposedly changing wrestling. They say that history is written by the victors, but this is pretty egregious.
/end rant
Wrestling fans know exactly what happened next: The NWO was huge, they got too much power, they abused their power, they started losing in the ratings, the contracts they signed became absolute anchors around the necks of the company, and they would eventually go under, being bought by WWF in 2001.
Hogan would return to WWF, now WWE, and have another run fueled by terrible matches and burying up and coming talent. He would then go on to TNA, where he would bury even more talent.
It’s at this point that the Hogan everyone would grow to hate was born. He was outted as a racist. He sued and won against Gawker after they released his sex tape, essentially winning with the case with the argument “Hulk Hogan and Terry Bollea are two different people.”
He went on to do the reality show Hogan Knows Best. The show directly lead to the lowering of IQs and infertility if you sat too close to the television. It was mostly benign, outside of Hogan pretending he was some legendary father, while also making oddly sexual references about his daughter and enabling his dickhead son, who spent time in jail for nearly killing the passenger in his car when he crashed while drunk driving.
In 2015, along with the sex tape, it was revealed that Hogan, by his own admission was a racist, and said the N word in reference to people he didn’t want dating his daughter. People he had wrestled with in the past came to his side, but by this point, society was pretty well done with Hogan and made that fact known.
That’s the problem with people who reached the levels of stardom that Hogan did, though. It’s not easy to fade into the limelight, and Hogan sure as hell didn’t know how to. Hogan would go on television to say that being racist was just the way he was raised. He was raised in Florida by the way, which actually makes what he says make more sense, but definitely doesn’t excuse it.
He would go on to sell pills that didn’t work. Make appearances to lessening effect at wrestling events, and generally just slowly let his star fade down to a flicker in the final years of his life.
It might seem like i’ve spent most of this ragging on Hogan, but i’m leaving out a bunch of lies he has made over his career, like when he claimed that he was asked to be the star of the movie The Wrestler (he wasn’t), sponsor the George Foreman grill before Foreman (he wasn’t), and numerous other things too absurd to list.
Ok, now i’m done ragging on Hogan.
The fact of the matter is, for an extended period of time, Hulk Hogan was one of the most recognizable people in the world. He sold out arenas coast to coast. He mattered on a level that few have ever reached. Millions of people believed in him as a hero. He was larger than life. He was the prototype for where wrestling was going. I can say pretty confidently that professional wrestling is not around in it’s current form without Hogan. Without Hogan, the WWF would have never grown to the level it got. It would have never been on MTV. They would have never gotten Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC and drawn massive ratings. WrestleMania doesn’t take off to become a part of the cultural zeitgeist like it is today.
Hulk Hogan was a legend to many, many people. More importantly, he was a legend to many people who grew up and are now watching their idols die. Having someone that matters to your youth like Hogan (or co-deceased celebrity this week, Ozzy Osbourne) die is like losing a small part of yourself because the truth is, most people dream of their youth. As your joints start to ache. As you lose your hair. As you stress over your job. You crave the feeling of innocence. You crave that feeling that the entire world is in front of you and you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Hulk Hogan taught us that.
The Hulkster may have done many things over his later years to undo his goodwill, but that doesn’t change the memories people have for him. It doesn’t change how watching his matches during his prime make you feel. It doesn’t change how cool it felt to see him on your television.
In a world where the the matches are predetermined and everything is fake or embellished, Hulk Hogan made it feel real to many people. And nobody will ever be able to take that from him.
Fancy Boys Club 