WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan joined Barstool Rasslin’ to promote his new beer. During the interview, Hogan was asked if he could go back and relive the 1980s or 1990s period of his wrestling career, which one he would choose.
Hogan said, “I would go back to the red and yellow because it was the first time that everything was aligned. All the stars, the moon and the sun were aligned because when I went back to New York in Madison Square Garden, I had been fired three years before for doing the Rocky movie. Vince senior fired me. I was in Fall River, MA. I was supposed to drive all night long, 12 hours to Charlotte to make Charlotte TV for Crockett. He told me to get in my car and drive. I said, ‘Well, I told you Vince’, Vince senior, of course, the old man, ‘That I was going to LA to make this movie.’ So he goes, ‘If you go do the Rocky movie, you’re fired.’ I said, ‘Okay, cool.’ So I went and did the Rocky movie.”
“I was single at the time. I had this beautiful Japanese girlfriend in Japan, and I was spending like 20 weeks a year, every year in Japan. So after about four years, I had this crew in Minnesota and we were coming into New York to take over. We had time on Channel 9 and we were going up and down the East Coast. Vince Jr called me, and Vince, who you know is Vince McMahon now, and said, ‘I want to talk.’ So he flew to Minnesota. We talked, made the deal, and I went back and the timing was perfect because when I went to wrestle the Iron Sheik, he was the actual Shaw of Iran’s bodyguard. At the time, they were holding 444 American hostages for two years, Iran was, so I came back as this All American. I actually had hair on my head back then, bleach blonde from California, even though I’m from Tampa. The political thing was perfect. They played no music in the Garden, and when I hit that Eye of the Tiger, the place blew. When that Hulkamania thing took off, we had everybody from Blondie to Andy Warhol to, I mean, everybody was in the Garden, you know, Liberace, and the whole thing took off. In that first Hulkamania run, when I’d go to Detroit, I had Edsel Ford and Lee Iacocca fighting for seats. I’d go to LA and I had Gene Hackman, Farrah Fawcett, Lee Majors. So that first run laid the groundwork for wrestling to become a big marketing juggernaut.”
On Bobby Heenan as a wrestler:
“He was better than Bret Hart, Macho Man and Rick Steamboat combined. He was better in the ring than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
On why wrestlers today haven’t reached the height he was at as a star:
“Well, you got to realize nowadays, the star of the wrestling business is the production where back in the day, you had to actually draw money to be the main event guy. It’s all about a run. How long have you been married? How long are you going to live? How long are your kids going to behave? It’s a run. So in the wrestling business, I had a run as a main event guy for 40 years. From the moment I stepped in this business, I had a look. Even though I couldn’t wrestle, I was clumsy as heck when I first started, they kept me as the main event guy for 40 years. Certain people have had different runs. I don’t even know how long Bret Hart was in the business. Well, he started with me, so he was in the business forty years like I was. I don’t know if he’s the main guy for three years or five years. He’s a tag team guy. Same with Stone Cold. He was in the business 25 or 30 years and I don’t know how long his run was on top, but the main thing is, you can be a main event guy, but people like Stone Cold and Andre and whoever this whole Hulk Hogan clown is, there’s a difference between being a main event guy and being an attraction. Then the difference between being an attraction and being an international phenom that has an awareness internationally, there are very few guys. Andre was one. Where they might not know Tom Brady in Malaysia, Zambia and Mozambique, but they know Andre the Giant, and hopefully the same as with me. So it’s all about a run and main event guys, but right now, the difference is, if someone gets hurt right now in the WWE, the machine is so big and the production is so slick and so sharp that they can make anybody their main event star because they’ve got this thing down to science, and thank God they do because the numbers, the way they’re doing business, WWE is on fire, and they’re doing better now than they ever have.”
On wanting to turn heel at WrestleMania VI:
“When I did the job for the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI and I walked away, one of the things I said to Vince McMahon, I said, ‘Let me turn heel. Let me give him both belts. Give him the big hug, you know, and I love you, brother, and let me go down the aisle’, because if you watch the tape, when I gave him the belt, he was still the Intercontinental Champion. When I left the ring in Toronto, all of a sudden, you could see the whole audience watching me. Everybody in the crowd was watching me leave. I just want to stop and do the Three Stooges, slowly I turned and come back and just ground him and just kill him. Then I wanted to be Triple H, Hollywood Hulk Hogan. Vince goes, ‘You could never be a heel.’ I said, ‘Vince, when I came to your company, I worked for your dad and I was a heel.’ So that didn’t happen at that time and I thought I could really kill it then.”
“When I worked for Turner and Eric Bischoff and that opportunity came up, the Hulkamania thing was just getting started again after the whole steroid debacle and all that crazy stuff. I felt a little weird turning heel, but once I saw what they were doing, and I saw Scott Hall come on the show, I said, ‘Oh my God, this looks like a shoot. It looks like he’s really working for the other company.’ Then when Big Kev showed up, and Eric asked me about it, I said, ‘Nah, I’m gonna wait for a while.’ I was shooting some low budget movie out in California. Then when I saw those two guys show up, I called Eric up. I said, ‘Man, I’m your guy.’ He goes, ‘Well, if you really want to do it because we were going to put Sting in it. I said, ‘Sting’s a great guy, but he’s not WWF head to toe.’ The one thing I did where I really screwed up. I talked about it that night. When I walked down, nobody knew I was coming, Kevin or Scott, nobody knew I was coming. As I’m walking, I’m going down to wrestle. Nobody knows which team I’m really on, and why do I have cowboy boots on? Angle alert. I didn’t change my boots. I should have had wrestling boots on, but then it didn’t matter because then Bobby Heenan screwed it up. He goes, ‘Well, whose side is he on? ‘Why would you say that? I’m the good guy.”
On knowing Paul Orndorff before they entered the wrestling business:
“Him and I had a problem ever since high school because I went to Robinson in Tampa. He went to high school in Brandon, and he looked like that in high school. He was a year ahead of me so we were always taunting each other, you know, because we had our own stomping grounds that we controlled. I kept baiting him and baiting him, and I said, ‘Why don’t you come on over to Tampa? I’ll beat your ass’, so here he comes. I called the cops, a couple friends of mine, parents were police. I said, ‘This guy’s coming to start trouble.’ He actually picked a policeman up and body slammed him. We were in high school. They handcuffed him and took him to jail. I was so happy, but he would have killed me back then.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
