[1996-08-10-WCW-Hog Wild] Hulk Hogan vs The Giant

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The last few minutes of this are decent basic wrestling, with Giant working from underneath and Hogan dominating. Giant does Hogan's Hulk up, which was actually kind of cool, and again, it's a case of WCW not running in an arena in front of wrestling fans that would pop for it. In fact, they cheer Hogan, making it obvious they have no idea what's going on, despite him working overtime as heel. Booty Man brings out a birthday cake for Hogan, who has a birthday the next day, then gets beat up for his trouble. This goes on too long, as most post-main event NWO stuff did, but it has the historic moment of Hogan doing a great interview and spraypainting NWO on the WCW World title, which was HUGE at the time.

[Strummer]

Bobby Heenan is so drunk at this point in the broadcast that he is slurring his words and is basically unintelligible

 

Tony, bless his soul, is basically working by himself here trying to get this over

[El-P]

My recollection of this is that it was a terrible match. The post-match is good, but Hogan vs Giant never worked for me inside the ring, they had no chemistry. The shitty crowd didn't help either.

[Matt D]

I haven't seen this for a while now but I remember that Hogan was having the time of his life doing the stalling heel thing at the beginning. He seemed to be just having a blast.

[El-P]

The stalling at the beginning was fun, but the match wasn't good. Hogan was still experimenting with the Hollywood character, and the Giant simply wasn't a good worker yet. Ed Leslie comes off like a total suck up douchebag and gladly he wasn't included in the nWo (yet). I guess Hall & Nash had to fight against it, it would have been a pretty big stain on the angle. The spraypainting was Hall & Nash's idea too. Brillant.

[Guest stanley]

Which match is this? Road wild?

[El-P]

Yep. The dates and references have sadly vanished with the new board layout.

[Loss]

Have you looked at the 1990-1994 folders lately? Check out what I'm doing. I'm almost here.

[El-P]

I had not. I was gone. Amazing job.

[cowboy hats]

Unwatchable

[PeteF3]

Okay from what we see, but yeah--the Giant's Hulk-Up would have had about 900% more impact in front of a more in-tune audience. Here the bikers have no idea that Hogan's supposed to be a heel, and the reaction to the post-match ranges from celebratory to pure confusion when he beats up the Booty Man. Hogan is terrific here, but the huge flaws in the Hog/Road Wild concept are apparent.

[DMJ]

Pros -

* The novelty of watching Hogan's first major heel match post-BATB 96'.

 

* The number of small details, from Michael Buffer's introduction to the finish, that WCW threw in to try to cement Hogan's heel status. Even The Giant's "finisher stealing" is kind of clever.

 

* Hogan's stalling in the beginning is fun.

 

* Beefcake gets beaten down.

 

Cons -

* I'm glad someone else mentioned Bobby Heenan being in "no condition to perform." Earlier in the show, he cheered the Outsiders by accident in their match against Sting and Luger (and then stumbled his way through an apology after a rather long, notable silence) and you can tell Dusty and Tony are peeved. His commentary in this match is a touch less awkward (at least he doesn't cheer Hogan), but his unprofessionalism is still pretty noticeable.

 

* Its not only bikers that cheer Hogan - its a very loud, seemingly large number of kids! Tony and Dusty wisely ignore the crowd on commentary, but it doesn't help because there is such a huge disconnect between the story Hogan and Giant are trying to tell and the one that the fans in attendance think they're watching.

 

* While Hogan's stalling is kinda cool at the beginning, unfortunately, those initial moments are probably the high point of the match. There's a hammerlock exchange that is particularly tedious. I'd have to dig through my reviews, but I believe this is my least favorite match of theirs in terms of in-ring efforts. Someone wrote that the Giant wasn't very good yet and I'd agree, but to play devil's advocate, his matches with Sting and Luger from the previous PPVs that year were significantly better, meaning that it took two to stink up this one as Giant had proved to be "workable" by this point.

 

* Hogan's post-match interview is reminiscent of some of his more recent WWE work, where he just kinda jumps around between different bullet points. The spray painting and beatdown of Ed Leslie is cool (I'll never tire of seeing the Booty Man get punched), but Hogan is noticeably scattered in his actual speech - mentioning his 22-year friendship with Beefcake, then referencing Ric Flair and Arn Anderson, then bringing it back to Beefcake in a kind of roundabout way, then finishing up with more about Flair...its not great.

[Jingus]

Did Hogan and Giant ever have a good match together? They main evented at least four different PPVs with singles matches, and iirc every single one of those sucked pretty hard. Especially that godawful Superbrawl 96 cage match, where Hogan just KEPT ramming Giant into the cage over and over and over and over and OVER until it started feeling like an endless Mike Myers joke.

 

Really puts all those Hogan/Andre matches (which were far superior to Hogan/Wight even all the way into Andre's sad 1988-era performances) into their proper perspective; and also makes me think that Andre must've been the one calling those matches, whenever Patterson wasn't scripting them anyway.

[Loss]

I liked the Nitro match all right where Hogan worked over Giant's injured hand.

[soup23]

Action at the end looked fun although the crowd sucks with this too. The Booty Man stuff I had forgotten about and was a good bit of continuity and I like how things are building to the Clash.

[drew wardlaw]

LOVE Hogan's stalling for 5+ minutes at the beginning. Falls into the angle-more-than-a-match for me, but this is a pretty classic one and it made me furious as a child.

[tim]

Pretty bad match. Giant hulking up could have been cool in front of a responsive audience but it came off lame here. Overall great post-match, though turning on Booty Man was sort of wasted on this crowd. In front of a more traditional crowd it should have gotten over more as a really terrible heel move, here it just seemed irrelevant because the crowd couldn't care less. Spray painting the title was super cool.

[Superstar Sleeze]

WCW World Heavyweight Champion The Giant vs Hollywood Hogan - WCW Hog Wild 1996

Another match that had no chance of living up to the hype. The Giant was on a roll on Nitro building this match up wicked hot. The promo after the Valentine match was red hot. I enjoyed the Pittman match mostly for Pittman's headlong flying battering ram headbutts to the Giant. Those Nitros were the hottest and biggest The Giant ever felt in his career. This was clearly a lot worse than Luger/Sting vs Outsiders. 

Hollywood was clearly trying to figure out how to work heel. He powdered after every big Giant spot which was fine. I liked the beginning where Hogan threw a bunch of punches and Giant No-Sold It. More No-Selling Please! You gotta admire Hollywood leaning as hard as he could into the heel character. I liked the Greco-Roman Knucklelock and how Hogan had to use kicks to get Giant down. I liked how Hogan celebrated his cheap win. They lingered too long. Giant should have popped right back off to pay off that Hogan was a chump now. The top wristlock stuff was pointless and very boring. Liked Giant's headbutts. Hogan powder was fine. The outside the ring stuff was fine. Giant needed more fire and energy. We finally get it at the end when Giant does the Hulk Up on Hogan which POPPED ME HUGE! I agree with Charles this would have been way better in front of a paid wrestling crowd. Giant doesnt punch, but chops...booo! Big Boot, Chokeslam, no here comes the Calvary. They should have ref bumped. This looked bad with the ref still active. Giant gets the Chokeslam on each Outsider but succumbs to the World Title. Hogan does not drop the leg and wins. Give credit where credit is due Hogan wrestled this match 100% Rudo. Giant just wasnt the face to give him a great match. This was a pretty bad match. 

Now Booty Man angle was absolute gold! In the Disney Backlot attack, the Outsider injured Arn Anderson's arm and sent him to the hospital. Woman was so good with her howls. Somber Flair especially in 1996 is very jarring. Then we get a fucking molten hot, ***** angle where Flair and Horsemen beat the shit out of the Booty Man because he is Hogan's friend. AA says they are the original gang, you said one of ours to the hospital, we send one of yours to the morgue. Flair is a psychopath saying he injured Hogan's best friend in retaliation and he is coming for him. Flair's sitdown interview preceding this is so good because of one line, I thought we could co-exist. He thought this was another heel faction. They would just get along and fight the babyfaces. Then he realized this is a totally different beast. This is an all-out assault on WCW. He was going to defend WCW Horsemen-style. It all leads to Beefcake coming out in an NWO shirt with a birthday cake since Hogan's birthday tomorrow. He plays kiss ass. Hogan says he does not mix business with pleasure/friendship. Flair showed his down card. He has a soft spot for Double A. Hogan has no soft spots. This is brilliant. He punks out the Booty Man. The only thing is I wish it just a bit more violent or he at least dropped the Leg on the Beefer. That would have put this over the top. The obvious line, but great line here is if I would do this to my best friend what will I do to you? There's nothing better in my opinion to establish a super mega heel than have him beat up his loyal crony. That is just ultimate heel shit. This fucking ruled! They spraypaint the Big Goldy NWO! NWO 4 LIFE! THIS SHIT IS JUST 2 SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!