Hulk Hogan Dies At 71

[El McKell]

50 minutes ago, NotJayTabb said:

The thing I find odd is that the final two career matches of one of, if not THE biggest stars in American wrestling history took place on TNA house shows in the UK, one of which I was at. It was a 6 man tag, but Hogan did way more than you'd have expected.

I really thought Hogan's last match was the  embarrassing TNA PPV blood bath with Sting where Hogan wore kneepads over jeans. So thanks for letting know it was a house show 6 man tag.

[sek69]

Kneepads over jeans is proper hardcore battle attire for any 80s wrestler. 

[El-P]

6 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

You all know full fucking well what he did for this thing we love

What did he do ? Pro-wrestling existed and was big way before Hulk Hogan. So what did he do ? He was the piece of the puzzled that turned Vince McMahon's company into the big bad wolf of pro-wrestling, with a vision of what it's supposed to be that sucks. Thanks for fucking nothing. Did I discover pro-wrestling because WWF was on French TV ? Yes. Do I *owe* them the fact I'm a lifelong fan ? Fuck no. The thing is, I would have stumbled onto NJPW on Eurosport just a few years later, like I actually did. And considering how I was into Japanese shit at the time, because in France we had anime long before the US and especially since the late 80's, it's a given I would have been hooked by this version anyway. 

I also *never* was a fan of Hogan. Meaning, when I was 14 years old and was a WWF fan watching Superstars, would barely see him anyway (we're talking 1990, that's when I began watching). And when I finally did, although I loved to finally see the "big star", because at that age that's what you do, I'm sorry to say I thought he kinda sucked. I hated the whole jingoist shit already. I remember watching him beating Taker (which I was a HUGE fan of back then) in three minutes and hating it. Then I had to watch him have a shitty match with Sid at my first Mania after watching fucking Bret vs Roddy and Flair v Savage. Then I had to watch him come back in 93 and ya know what he did at Mania 9. That's my memories of the great Hulk Hogan as a teenager. So, he did jackshit, mostly, in term of personal enjoyment, during my formative years as a fan. I thought he was corny and kinda embarrassing, and his match sucked. That was my teenage take on Hulk Hogan.

Wait until the day Vince croaks. Watch for the reactions *then*.

[Jetlag]

Let him be a lesson to us all that we work on ourselves to be good people, so we don't have to leave this world as hated men.

[strobogo]

Hogan's legacy in the WWE version of wrestling history doesn't even make much sense. How could he be the one to take wrestling out of the smokey bingo halls while they also talk about Bruno selling out MSG for a decade, and the McMahon family promoting at MSG since the 1950s? 

[David Mantell]

(Not that Warrior was an angel either.)

[El-P]

This is one hell of an obit :

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/hulk-hogan-racist-liar-scab-obit/

[C.S.]

11 hours ago, El-P said:

This is one hell of an obit :

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/hulk-hogan-racist-liar-scab-obit/

I initially thought you had linked to this embarrassing article by Ringmaster author Josephine Riesman, and I was ready to rant on it.

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/hulk-hogan-dead-anti-eulogy-josephine-riesman

Full disclosure: I stopped reading Riesman's article almost immediately. Why? Because it describes Hogan as a "pot-bellied non-athlete with a handlebar mustache."

There's a ton you can say about Hogan - all pretty well covered in this thread already - but "pot-bellied non-athlete" isn't one of them, lol.

If you're going to get something so basic so wrong, I assume everything else is wrong too, and I'm not going to waste a single second of my time reading another word of something I assume is lazy and poorly researched. This now has me questioning what Riesman might have gotten wrong in Ringmaster.

But I'm posting it the article here in case anyone else wants to waste their time.

[Dav'oh]

Some of you quite rightly have a problem with Terry Jean Bollea, sexagenarian racist. So do I. And Terry Jean Bollea, scab of a mythical, fantastical, beautiful wrestler's union (rainbows and unicorns sold separately).

But I'm here to mourn the passing of Hulk Hogan, larger-than-life cartoon superhero who positively impacted all of our lives, like it or not. 

I'm not asking anyone to observe a day of steroid abuse and bigotry in his honour. I am hoping his embalmer or funeral director buries him with one shoulder raised; I don't think a clean job to the Grim Reaper would work for him, brother.

Something someting artist from the art.

[C.S.]

Not sure if Brother @Dav'oh is responding to my post specifically or in general.

I get where you're coming from.

But the issue is that Hulk Hogan and Terry Bollea were not separate entities at the end. For example, which one humped for Trump? Was it Hogan, Bollea, or both? So, how exactly do you separate the art from the artist in this case, when the artist stopped doing that himself long ago?

P.S. Not important, but Gene, not Jean.

[sek69]

I'm not disagreeing with anyone who is not a fan of Hogan, but to try to dismiss his role in the history of pro wrestling is just insane to me. Yes, Bruno sold out the Garden every month for like 15 years, but Hogan took it nationwide, worldwide even. The national expansion of the WWF doesn't get to the heights it did with anyone else at the helm, he was the absolute perfect guy to embody Vince's vision. I get it if you weren't a fan of that vision, but it absolutely changed the game. Wrestling went from a territorial business to a national one worth millions.  

[strobogo]

1 hour ago, C.S. said:

Not sure if Brother @Dav'oh is responding to my post specifically or in general.

I get where you're coming from.

But the issue is that Hulk Hogan and Terry Bollea were not separate entities at the end. For example, which one humped for Trump? Was it Hogan, Bollea, or both? So, how exactly do you separate the art from the artist in this case, when the artist stopped doing that himself long ago?

P.S. Not important, but Gene, not Jean.

Seems like we've come to a tacit agreement that this is the fuck Terry thread, the other one is the let's talk about Hulk thread. 

[El-P]

4 hours ago, C.S. said:

But the issue is that Hulk Hogan and Terry Bollea were not separate entities at the end. For example, which one humped for Trump? Was it Hogan, Bollea, or both?

This, a 100 times.

The whole "separate the art from the man" doesn't fly. It's the art that provides the man his economical and symbolic capital, his status in society, it's Hulk Hogan that makes Terry Bollea rich and influential to people. Plus, in the carny business of pro-wrestling based on the mix of fiction and reality, where people can't shake their character from their real life, the distinction is as wrong as ever. Like someone really famous said : that doesn't work for me, brutha.

[El-P]

5 hours ago, sek69 said:

I'm not disagreeing with anyone who is not a fan of Hogan, but to try to dismiss his role in the history of pro wrestling is just insane to me. Yes, Bruno sold out the Garden every month for like 15 years, but Hogan took it nationwide, worldwide even. The national expansion of the WWF doesn't get to the heights it did with anyone else at the helm, he was the absolute perfect guy to embody Vince's vision. I get it if you weren't a fan of that vision, but it absolutely changed the game. Wrestling went from a territorial business to a national one worth millions.  

No one is dismissing Hogan's importance. it would be beyond stupid. But you can already hear the whole "Vince & Hogan turned smoke filled rooms into huge arenas and stadiums business" myth rearing its ugly head again. Hell, in the small article two days ago in (very respectable) French newspaper Liberation, you could read "Turned a carnival show into a worlwide business", because people who don't know anything about wrestling will just gobble the WWE narrative.

As far as "the biggest pro-wrestling star ever", as a cultural figure, he was not. Santo, Rikidozan and Inoki where much more important to the actual culture of their countries. Is he the most important as far as North America and globalization ? Without a doubt. Did Vince's vision executed with Hogan changed pro-wrestling globally ? Without a doubt. But it's not like there weren't any huge stars before him. Gorgeous George says hello.

[PeteF3]

It was a national business worth millions for Vince. It didn't do a lot for others. It's a bit like praising what Sam Walton did for the retail industry as a whole.

The hard truth is that more people were watching, attending, and making a living from wrestling in the territorial days than at any point afterward, including the peak of the expansion era and the peak of the Monday Night Wars. 

[David Mantell]

On 7/25/2025 at 9:29 AM, El-P said:

in France we had anime long before the US

True. Olive Et Tom Championats De Foot. And one about a girl with magical powers who defeated the male baddies by inflicting girly magical humiliation spells on them and could transform herself into every feminine stereotype in history.

I went to French language summer schools in Rambouillet in 1988 age 14 and Cap D'Ailles in 1990 age 16 and remember these weird cartoons with the overly expressive eyes on in the TV room both times.

But does Gatchaman count as anime? If so, the US and the UK both had the sanitised version Battle Of The Planets.

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

It was a national business worth millions for Vince. It didn't do a lot for others. It's a bit like praising what Sam Walton did for the retail industry as a whole.

The hard truth is that more people were watching, attending, and making a living from wrestling in the territorial days than at any point afterward, including the peak of the expansion era and the peak of the Monday Night Wars. 

And a comparable and possibly higher number were doing the same on this side of the Atlantic.

In the case of some European nation considerably higher as a proportion of overall population size rather than raw numbers.  (statistic: 33 million viewers for The Main Event=> 10% of the US Population. In the UK 10% works out to 7 million, at the top end of average viewing figures for World Of Sport every Saturday at 4pm until about 1985. Another statistic, I gather AEW Dynamite averages about 0.6M viewers per week = about 0.2% of the US population. 0.2% of Greece's population of 10 million = 20K about as many people as turned up every year in the 1970s to watch the International Kats Festival in Athens in person.)

[JRH]

While Hogan was undeniably popular with children, wasnt the WWF already starting to market to them as early as Backlund? We've all seen the Championship Wrestling intro with those kids storming the ring after a Backlund win (something they didnt do during the reigns of Hogan or any other champ since to be honest).

[David Mantell]

8 hours ago, El-P said:

Gorgeous George says hello.

A certain amount of Gorgeous George's mainstream popularity was because non fans liked him because serious marks found him embarrassing. The Andy Kaufman In Memphis Factor.

[David Mantell]

Just now, JRH said:

something they didnt do during the reigns of Hogan or any other champ since to be honest).

There's ITV footage of kids doing that for Big Daddy.

[NintendoLogic]

When Hulk Hogan died, it made the front page of the New York Times. When Gorgeous George died, it received so little attention that people were able to successfully impersonate him for years afterward. There's no comparison.

[El-P]

Yet another great column :

https://www.patreon.com/posts/134993051

(don't mind the patreon thingy, it's actually free to read)