Remembering Hulk Hogan, at least some of it good
Here’s hoping Ricky Steamboat or Rob Halford, Michael Hayes or Don Dokken, are not next. And yes, kudos to you if you know who those four gentleman are.
Two are terrific heavy metal vocalists and two once commanded the ring, all thankfully still with us, though Ozzy Osbourne, and now Hulk Hogan, are not.
Here’s what I remember fondly of Hogan, even if it led to me having almost no fond thoughts of Hogan.
Also, just for fun, let’s see if I can capture the facts of the case without looking any of them up.
Here we go.
One day, Hogan showed up in the World Wrestling Federation.
He’d been in the American Wrestling Association working for promoter and frequent champion Verne Gagne, but Gagne didn’t know what to do with him and was clearly holding him back.
Hogan had even made a brief run in WWF a few years earlier, as a bad-guy heel, where he’d met Andre the Giant long before their Wrestlemania III main event. But, whatever, Hogan, wearing yellow rather than black, showed up in the WWF and something was clearly afoot.
Now he was a fan favorite.
Now, he’d found all of his charisma and the fans, every one of them, couldn’t get enough.
Hulkamania was born and Vince McMahon, WWF head and National Wrestling Alliance territory killer who eventually, and fairly recently, fell from grace, hadn’t yet had time to put the belt on him.
A plan, though, you could feel it, was already in play.
Before Hogan arrived, the Iron Sheik and his finishing hold, the camel clutch, arrived, and just like so many previous challengers to Bob Backlund’s WWF title, the Sheik and his famous hold could not be stopped.
So Sheik got a title match inside Madison Square Garden, live on USA Network, in cable homes throughout Oklahoma City (!!!) and story had it Backlund’s back was already weakened entering the match. I can’t remember who was given credit for weakening it — Ken Patera? Sgt. Slaughter? — but somebody’d hurt him.
So Sheik got Backlund in the clutch and Backlund could not escape. Yet, because Backlund was the poster boy of intestinal fortitude, nor would he submit.
What to do?
As luck would have it, Backlund was the rare good-guy babyface to have a manager, Arnold Skaaland, who threw in the towel.
By submission by proxy, Backlund lost the belt he’d carried for 2,155 days, Sheik won the belt, and now Hogan had a bad guy he could beat for the belt.
It practically wrote itself.
So, on Jan. 23, 1984, though Sheik put the clutch on Hogan, Hogan powered out, threw a couple punches, maybe bodyslammed him, I can’t remember, came off the ropes, dropped the leg and won the title.
Confession, I looked up the length of Backlund’s reign and the actual date Hogan beat Sheik. The rest came from my 56-year-old noggin.
That’s how it happened.
That’s how Hulk Hogan really became Hulk Hogan.
It’s also how Vince McMahon took over the world, how Wrestlemania was born, how wrestling mostly quit being a mostly territorial enterprise and became a national one, putting many promotions and wrestlers out of business.
It’s how every single thing changed about what I still then called a sport.
Not that it wasn’t exciting.
I remember so well the cameras catching Hogan as he ran down hallways into MSG’s main arena, the music playing, the fans humming like an engine, Hogan pausing to cross himself — come on, how could this not be real? — as he began his run to the ring.
Wrestling had never been so big in the national consciousness, which I loved, not yet realizing it would eventually kill everything that made me love wrestling in the first place.
For one, it dawned on me, Hogan wasn’t that believable.
He’d be down in a match, the fans would give him energy, he’d begin the no-sell routine, impervious to the pain of opponent punches, chops and kicks, point a finger at the opponent, begin throwing punches himself, then come off the ropes, drop the leg and prevail again (and again and again and again).
A leg drop?
That’s enough to pin a great athlete?
We’re supposed to believe that, really?
Even with Hogan’s rump thudding the mat, clearly killing all momentum of his leg dropping, really?
Ever wonder why Hogan’s matches frequently failed to reach 10 minutes, much less the hour NWA title matches often went?
It’s because he was never a skilled enough wrestler to go much longer. He ran out of moves fast.
It’s true, nobody drew money like him.
Nobody else transformed themselves into something bigger than the sport; or as WWE will only call it, “sports entertainment,” just another example of how what Hogan fueled killed the wrestling so many of us 50-somethings grew up on.
Nobody else got more out of ripping his T-shirt off, posing and cupping an ear to the crowd, and presumably that’s something even if it’s not wrestling.
On the other hand, he got me.
He made me that anticipating fan.
He made it feel entirely real and made me excited where the sport might go now that everybody was watching.
Apparently, I still call it a sport.
Old habits
It hit me in the feels when he crossed that threshold, from the hallway to the arena.
I bought in.
I wish I hadn’t.
Perhaps it’s all right.
I marveled at Barry Bonds’ home runs, too.
Great article! Thunder Lips will never die!!!
Chris K
Mid South Wresting was the best ever. Rick Flair!