Hulkamania is dead

[gmoney]

1 minute ago, garynysmon said:

Yes but the stance starts to come across as rather hollow once you wheel out Ric Flair on your TV and have Darby Allin on payroll.

Hollow or not, Khan clearly had issues with Hogan that he doesn't with Flair or anyone else, so to have expected a 10 bell salute is a bit ridiculous. 

[Gus Mears]

Eulogising a bellend because you employ other bellends isn't a very compelling rationale.

[RedTwoster]

28 minutes ago, Daddymagic said:

AEW not acknowledging Hogans death is one of the most petty, stupid things I've seen in a while. 
 

TK truly is a right gimp. 

I don’t see what’s ‘petty’ about it?

AEW had been very critical of Hogan and his racism, so what to do in the event of his death was always going to be a difficult choice. Do you ignore his flaws and eulogise him, or overlook his previous actions and put up a graphic?

Maybe they’ll do the latter on Collision, maybe they won’t. If they decide not to, it’s certainly not the equivalent to saying they’re glad he’s dead (I know you’re not suggesting this); it’s a refusal to overlook his rather significant flaws. 

While I’m on the subject, I seriously object to people referring to ‘cancel culture’ in connection with Hogan. He used the n-word multiple times, explicitly said he was racist, prevented unionisation, his own daughter suggested he was mentally abusive towards her, he endorsed a rapist in Trump and continued to make racist remarks right until the end. He didn’t learn from, or even condemn his own comments. The lesson he took was ‘don’t get caught’. If all of the above doesn’t merit being shunned by large sections of the wrestling community, I don’t know what does.

[FUM]

This place would be much better if there was some sort of auto-ban in place every time a thread descended into AEW/WWE tribalism.

It’s like a football crowd these days - hunting every thread for something to get offended about from the other company.

Who cares who paid tribute to a dead guy and who didn’t? He won’t, he’s dead.

My own thoughts on his death are he ruined his legacy somewhat but the guy transcended wrestling. He is the reason we’re all here posting on this forum whether he was your favourite or not. He brought joy to many lives and I’m certain would be regarded as a huge inspiration in some childhoods and particularly to the wrestlers of today. It doesn’t excuse the type of person he is but there is a strange feeling to think Hulk Hogan is no longer part of this world.

[air_raid]

It’s come crashing down, and it hurts inside.

I never dreamed that when I was writing what I did a couple of days ago about The Ultimate Challenge that The Hulkster would no longer be with us come Thursday night. It’s somewhat befitting his legacy that his last few weeks were shrouded by mystery, half-truths and out and out bullshit - when it put it to Mrs raid that long time friend and manager Jimmy Hart would put out there that he was doing “phenomenal” just 2 days before he’d die, and I couldn’t get my head around why he’d lie, Mrs raid suggested maybe that’s what he (Hogan) wanted, and suddenly it made sense; I could imagine the Hulk struggling to sit up in his bed, telling The Mouth “Tell everyone I’m doing great, brah… Hulkamania lives forever and as soon as I beat this thing I’ll be straight up to Hunter’s office to show the world it’s still the strongest force in the WWE Universe, brother!” … half convinced that a heart attack wouldn’t stop him, and he’d be good to go in time for the Rumble, despite not entering one since 1992, not having a match since 2013 and not taking a bump over the top rope since… well, you tell me.

Growing up, Hulk Hogan was wrestling to me, long before I started watching it. He was “name a wrestler” in my world like Ian Botham or Nigel Mansell were “that name” to their sport. Along with “Jake The Snake” and “Million Dollar Man” and “British Bulldog” he was a name I heard on the playground and late to the party though I was, getting into the WWF after the peak of its popularity had passed even over here, The Hulk was instrumental to my conversion. What impact the WrestleMania VI tape lent to me by my mate Simon (sub-lent from Wendy’s video shop) I’ve shared so many times, and gone in depth on Hogan vs Warrior in my Mania review thread so recently that it doesn’t bear repeating, and even though I’d figured out Bret Hart was going to be my hero before the end of my second tape from Wendy (4th Annual Survivor Series) The Hulkster was a prominent feature in most of the earliest Silver Vision tapes I saw, and he was omnipresent in my burgeoning fandom. He was on the cover of the first wrestling magazine I asked to be bought for me in my local newsagent, the Superstars Of Wrestling covering Mania IX - where even though Hogan was a high level goodie to me, still, I couldn’t understand, already, why they’d cut the legs off Bret as the new TOP hero in favour of going back in time to Hulk - I was 10. Regardless, he was still great.

When I was allowed to start collecting figures from Hasbro, the “Hulkster Hug” figure was my joint-3rd figure, packed with the ring, and for a few days I had endless repeats of every singles and every possible tag match between Hogan, Papa Shango, The Model and Anvil, until I took my 11th birthday money to John Menzies to look for more, and came home with a Y2J & Radicals-level injection of fresh talent for my territory; The Nasty Boys, The Bushwhackers, Sid Justice, Macho Man, Big Boss Man, The Warlord, The Mountie and Virgil (Simon had him, so I needed to have him too - my fed was looking big now compared to his which only had Virg, the Nastys and admittedly massive draws, LOD and Undertaker). That same trip to Menzies I also was going to bring home the first brand-new Silver Vision tape of my own (as opposed to scart-to-scart copies from Wendy) and because there was so much wrestling, I told myself I’d restrict myself to nothing older than Mania VI then only work my way backwards once I was caught up to the present - as if I’d manage to work any of that out with no internet, no Sky, limited reading and many tapes having a release date on the box but no clues as to age of the matches, unless it was “SummerSlam 89” I only had “who had what belt” juxtaposed to tapes I’d already watched as any kind of guide. I was 11, remember. Either way, I failed at the first hurdle when I saw the cover for The 3rd Annual Survivor Series even though I knew 4th had been after Mania VI so 3rd must precede it. But can you blame me?

The allure of the superhero combination of Hulk, Snake and fucking Demolition was too much for my small child’s resolve. Even though there were tapes with my hero on the front (and indeed Rumble 93 would end up being my second purchase) I knew this was the one I needed to see - the bright yellow superhero on the bright yellow box virtually guaranteed a top show, and I loved every minute. It’s probably a safe bet that Hogan was my second favourite in those early years given the amount of merch that piled up in my house, my mum thought nothing of coming home from Bookers Cash n Carry with a Hulk “Bop Buddy” which I loved, even if I ruined it within a couple of weeks by puncturing the sandbag at the base by giving Uncle Terry a suplex - not the last time today I’ll talk about sandbagging (Hiyo!). By this point I’d read about the horror that befell Hulk at King of the Ring but spent months assuming he’d obviously be back to topple the latest bad guy, only guessing by Mania X that “if Hulk didn’t come back for WrestleMania, he probably isn’t coming back.”

Fast forward a couple of years and though I’d read about Hulks exploits in WCW in a couple of Apter mags, I wasn’t that interested since I didn’t care much about WCW and reading in the 95 PWI 500 that one of Hogan’s challengers had been buddy Brutus Beefcake only served to reinforce the stereotype that WCW was for guys who either weren’t good enough for the big time yet or were on their way down and closer to retirement than the top of their game. Even when I read the “who is the third man?” Issue of IIRC World Of Wrestling (“Stop The Presses!! It’s The Hulkster!!”) it even managed to pass me by what being in The Outsiders really meant in terms of the landscape of wrestling, but that was all about to change.

The Friday after the transformation into Raw Is War had happened over on Sky, I got home from swimming and turned the telly on with Papa raid still down the pub, and having left Cartoon Network on earlier, I learned that WCW was on after cartoons but before old movies on TNT by virtue of seeing Razor Ramon & Diesel beating up “two nobodies” (Bunkhouse Buck & Dick Slater) so for curiosity as to what “the enemy” were doing, I left it on. At show climax my world changed completely - why are Hulk and Macho Man dressed in black and beating up the Steiners? Oh right, they’re baddies now, I forgot. Then Sting turned up looking nothing like I remembered from ITV and “Hollywood” shit himself. Just like that, Nitro had a regular appointment with the VideoPlus and when I jacked in swimming so often to concentrate on my A Levels, I made WCW the highlight of my Friday. Even before Bret’s defection it’s possible it became my favourite show off the back of Sting vs the nWo and even though it was Sting, DDP and later Goldberg I was tuning in for, it cant be overstated how important Hogan as the “big bad” was in creating the struggle for those heroes. When my best mate made his first visit to Fort Lauderdale in 1998 he said he’d bring me back some WCW stuff for me and I landed a red n black nWo shirt and some figures - smaller ones with mechanised action of DDP and Raven, and big chunky ones of Hollywood and Stinger with little red buttons under their armpits that when pressed, umm, made the wrestler vibrate. Sting came with a bat, Hogan with the Big Gold Belt, and you don’t need me to tell you I bloody loved them. Later that summer when Hollywood dropped the title to Bald Bill, I must’ve watched it back a dozen times. It was such an impressive piece of wrestling. Goldberg stood in the aisle with the belt, his music switched off so we could just hear the deafening chant of “GOLDBERG, GOLDBERG” over and over from the Georgia Dome showing no signs of tiring.. it was a rare piece of fantastic production from WCW but honestly I don’t think they could have crafted as good a “passing the torch” moment had Hogan not been such a fantastic bastard over the previous two years screwing over Lex, Sting and others. A shame it didn’t stick, but whatever.

As an aside, Hogans presence followed me everywhere even during The Attitude Era and WCW waning both creatively and commercially. In my college town, tucked away in a little precinct, was a wrestling shop filled with figures. We called it “Dodgy Scott’s shop” because the owner couldn’t be satisfied with his loads of Bend Ems and the latest Jakks figures - and lord knows why I had to get that Dr Death one on the Mania XV card with the red shorts and white vest that made him look like a Hooters waitress - Scott always insisted he had a “boat coming over” that would have loads of unopened green card Hasbros that he’d be able to sell us. Now, I’d been a naive sort, a friend from swimming came back from the US in 95 and insisted that he’d seen Hasbros of Hakushi, Waylon Mercy (packed with a picnic basket) and Henry Godwinn (with slop bucket) and I’d believed him even though he’d neglected to buy any. But even I saw through Scott’s bullshit. What wasn’t bullshit, getting back (fittingly) to The Hulkster, was up on his shelf in a baggie, he had the red leotard mail away Hogan Hasbro. You know the one ;

I didn’t end up taking it home, Scott wanted £50 to part with it. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have saved up and paid it.

Fast forward again and despite a couple of years of “can Hogan even still wrestle?” I lost my mind at the buzz that him and The Outsiders might show up at the Rumble 2002, wasn’t sure if I believed it when Vince said “the nWo” was coming at No Way Out, and couldn’t believe what I was watching when the old goat and The Rock actually delivered a great story in front of a molten crowd in the same spot that he’d won me over in The Ultimate Challenge all those years later. The renaissance was real - he worked matches with Kurt Angle and Shawn over the next couple of years that were better than he had a right to be having, as broken down as he was. And so began a pattern that went on for more than another decade, every time we counted him out he found a way to rise back up. Though I’d stopped watching TNA on telly I still went to the shows over here and when Jazzy, others and I had tickets to Maximum Impact 2013, I wondered what role The Hulkster would play, confirmed for all dates and not just the TV tapings in London. Imagine my shock the morning of the show at the MEN reading what happened the night before… “Hogan WRESTLED in Nottingham” I will have excitedly texted, and it probably goes without saying by now what I meant to me to actually see, finally, Hulk Hogan actually wrestle, coming out to Eye Of The Tiger (!) just as he had during the original rise of Hulkamania, for what turned out to be his last match.

It gave me chills like I can’t explain. It almost made me feel like I was 10 years old watching with my dad again. His influence remained ; my best mate even bought me a giant sized Hogan - the same one our Ian sold on here not long ago - as a joke present a few years back when they were reduced to clear in The Works.

Of course, thereafter that was it in terms of Hulk Hogan the wrestler and meaningful contribution to wrestling as a character. But in remembering Hogan, I also must remember his flair for self preservation and promotion as a skilled player of the game. Bret Hart thought he was beating Yokozuna right up until the afternoon of Mania IX but depending on if you believe Terry or Bruce Prichard, either Vince was going to run with Yoko and Hogan persuaded Vince to let him, ultimately, be the one to put Yoko on the spot as champion and milk the last value they could out of Hulkamania before (LOL) they said goodbye for good (which meant he’d first have to win back the WWF title), or they decided as a braintrust that the nostalgia waves meant they’d do monster business on the summer tour of Europe if Hogan tagged along, and they’d sell more tickets if The Hulkster won the belt and people thought they might be seeing him come over as WWF Champion. Whether Vince ever actually expressed to Hulk that he’d like him to lose to Bret at SummerSlam and that Tez reneged, as Vince explained to Bret, or that Hogan only ever had an agreement with Jr to lose the title to Yoko, as Hulk always claimed, we’re never likely to truly find out. But it wasn’t the end of the politics, far from it. Starrcade 97 ended up botched because three different people told Nick Patrick different cadence how to count Sting down for the fake finish and Hogan told him to count normal, so he did, making Sting look a loser and Bret look a whiny little bitch when he should have been the biggest sympathetic babyface in the company.

The Fingerpoke of Doom went down with a longterm view to Goldberg going through the new “elite” nWo one by one until eventually winning the belt from Hollywood a second time in the summer of 99… but the Hulk lobbied to turn babyface again in the spring long before Bill neared completion of his mission, while he was feuding with Ric Flair - who wanted to turn heel himself anyway. His much-criticised exit from WCW in 2000 was probably an easy sell to Terry as he’d have known that the worked shoot bullshit ensured that rather than the new champion, Booker T, everybody would be talking about him after the show. It was always about him. He did the XWF tapings surrounded by his mates with a view to creating an alternative product where he was positioned as the top star on the first few episodes, only to bail out when the WWF knocked. He agreed only to put Brock Lesnar over so strongly because of his (depending who you ask) assumption/insistence that he’d be winning the belt from Lesnar in his big return at Survivor Series - when he found out he’d be expected to lose to Brock again, he balked at it and his return was put back. After he and Jr fell out over money yet again, Jeff Jarrett flew over to Tokyo to bonk him on the head with a guitar to set up a match for the first Bound For Glory in the Asylum days of the fledgling TNA, only for Hogan to back out. Most famously, despite McMahons insistence that “Terry’s business” with the HBK match already announced for SummerSlam 2005, Shawn wanted to do a best of 3 to make maximum bank with The Hulkster going over in the decisive match, but the wise old stoat thought about losing even once and said “doesn’t work for me, brother” and the best he offered was a rematch inside a cage at Unforgiven… which he would also win. Ha. Even his final WWE match against Randy Orton, which nearly didn’t materialise due to his knee op, was intended to be a big win for Randy at the peak of his “Legend Killer” story… (checks screen) Hulkster says no.

“And now we move on to liars.”

Hulk Hogan was also the finest bullshitter of all time. His book was one of the finest works of fiction I ever read. His finest lies included that he shot on Riki Choshu (a former Olympic wrestler) and pinned him for real when a match in Japan went sideways, that Andre The Giant died just a few weeks after their match at WrestleMania 3, that he persuaded Mark Calloway to give wrestling a crack when “discovering” him on the set of Suburban Commando, and that it meant so much to him to see a terminally ill child who idolised him in the crowd at Wembley at SummerSlam 92 - a show, dear reader, which you’ll be acutely aware that the Hulk didn’t wrestle on. It never ends - he once claimed he’d received a death threat a couple of months before Bruiser Brodys death after a match with Savage in Puerto Rico, despite the WWF not running Puerto Rico in 88 (or 87 for that matter). Most famously he lied to the world on Arsenio about never used steroids only to go back on it during Jr’s trial. He let The Undertaker think he’d injured him for real and he’d had to go to hospital after Survivors 91, which was a fabrication. He claimed he was with Kerry Von Erich on a plane to Japan a few days before Kerry took his own life, despite Tornado being in Texas for several months prior and definitely not going to Nip around the time.

He used to say he was the first choice for the George Foreman grill, that Elvis was a huge fan of his when he wrestled in Memphis despite the King dying two years before Hulk debuted there, that Metallica offered him a spot playing bass with them, that he’d been propositioned by Madonna in his prime, that he used to wrestle 400 times a year. Many of these yarns are out there in audio so you can hear the bollocks falling out of Terrys mouth for yourselves, and plenty have of course been refuted or plain laughed off by those involved - the inventor of the lean mean grilling machine, messers Hetfield & Ulrich etc. And this is excluding the ones you could write off as confused or misremembering, like his account of The Montreal Screwjob, where Bret got told he was losing the belt to HBK at WrestleMania 17 but didn’t want to, so Shawn had to shoot pin him for real. Or that he was hand picked as Lesnar’s first opponent when he came back to WWE from the UFC.

It’s all true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies, but they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is no.

But the truth is… we all loved his lies, didn’t we? It was, at times, hilarious. It was part of the old carnys charm. He’d become that used to promotion and crucially self-promotion that it all became a work to him, and he never figured out when to actually tell the truth. He was permanently in character, endlessly spinning the narrative to get the masses invested in the show, be it a wrestling match or just the carnival that was his life, especially if there was a chunk of change to be made, and so it remained, right up until his final days.

And so ends the ballad of Hulkamania. For fairly obvious reasons, even in writing all of this, his passing hasn’t hit me quite as hard as it might have (I’ve already warned Mrs raid I’m going be in pieces when Bret goes). Or to paraphrase a text I had from a mate… it’s a shame he was a racist, so we can’t mourn him properly. But for anyone who’s able to separate the fiction from reality (unlike Hulkster himself) - train, say your prayers, take your vitamins and believe in yourself, and Hulkamania will live forever.

p.s. I forgot to include, the BBC put this photo up I’d never seen - Hulk after winning the belt, with his parents.

Edited July 25, 2025 by air_raid
Amerrrrrrrrican…… Maaaaaaaaade

[d-d-d-dAz]

I think it can both be a huge, culturally important moment without one that inspires too much sadness.

I feel sad for those people who were close to him, but that's about it. 

It's a huge moment though, generally. My mum text me first thing with a load of pictures of me as a kid in Hogan clobber, telling me how much I idolised him which is a sign of the size of the story if my mum even cares.

Side note, this is a real blow for me as i've been saying since I was about 15 that I never really 'got' Hogan and was always a Savage or Hart guy. This was clearly untrue for pre-10 year old me.

His life was so full of bullshit and bluster though that when I read the article on the bbc, and looked through the old photos they had of him looking 50 when he was 25, my last thought was... probably was lying about his age, too, the old goat. Which felt like a fitting final thought.

[garynysmon]

4 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Though I’d stopped watching TNA on telly I still went to the shows over here and when Jazzy, others and I had tickets to Maximum Impact 2013, I wondered what role The Hulkster would play, confirmed for all dates and not just the TV tapings in London. Imagine my shock the morning of the show at the MEN reading what happened the night before… “Hogan WRESTLED in Nottingham” I will have excitedly texted, and it probably goes without saying by now what I meant to me to actually see, finally, Hulk Hogan actually wrestle, coming out to Eye Of The Tiger (!) just as he had during the original rise of Hulkamania, for what turned out to be his last match.

It gave me chills like I can’t explain. It almost made me feel like I was 10 years old watching with my dad again.

Its mad isn’t it? I keep forgetting I was present for Hulk Hogan’s last ever match.

I was about 28 at the time but totally marked out.

To think that he should really have got the biggest ever retirement match, for it to happen at a TNA house show in Manchester of all places is pretty surreal.

I also had my photo taken with Hulk at the meet and greet. Looking back he never did the UK convention scene either so was pretty significant I suppose.

[BomberPat]

3 minutes ago, gmoney said:

Not really sure why TK would be expected to acknowledge his death? Didn't they once say he was banned from ever being at a show?

Yes, Hogan was apparently "banned" from AEW. You can question how performative something like that is, given some of the people they have put on TV, but I would have far less respect for Tony Khan if he gave the man a gushing eulogy now, after clearly having no time for him during his life. 

I can only give, at best, a Lance Storm obituary. Hogan was already largely out of the door when I first got into wrestling, and by the time I got back into it, he was an old anachronism in the other company, that the WWF occasionally made fun of. I enjoyed some of the 2002 nostalgia run, and there are matches of his that I can look back on fondly, but I've never had an emotional connection to him, he was never a childhood hero or anything like that. 

I don't think his "legacy" is a particularly complex question, largely because he spent the last twenty years degrading it in and out of the ring. After the racist comments leaked - and it's really worth revisiting that story and reminding yourself what he actually said, because seeing it handwaved away and forgiven as "everybody makes mistakes" or just an unfortunate choice of words doesn't do justice to how virulently, hideously racist he was - we already saw how easily WWE could chop him out of their version of history and it barely make a dent. I don't think that speaks to a particularly meaningful legacy.

Sure, he was a huge star. The biggest in our lifetimes. And it's impossible to say how much of that was "right place, right time", combined with the kind of selfish ruthlessness that allowed him to step on other people's backs and end up with the kind of contracts he got in WCW, rather than him being particularly the right man for the job, though I'd be tempted to say an awful lot of it. When considering the broad strokes of history, I tend to be far more interested in those wrestlers who make a demonstrable change to how wrestling works, to such an extent that wrestling would be unimaginable without their contributions to it. When Antonio Inoki died, I was in the middle of writing a book in which he is effectively the centrepiece of the longest chapter, and that was a complex legacy, but without him, and without Hisashi Shinma, who passed away earlier this year, the shape of wrestling history from the late 1970s to today would be utterly unimaginable - there will be plenty of people saying that there would be no Wrestlemania without Hulk Hogan, but in a much more real nuts and bolts way, you don't get Wrestlemania without NJPW's money keeping the WWF afloat in the early 1980s, you don't get Hogan as a viable top star without NJPW, you arguably don't get the rise of modern MMA without the butterfly effects from Inoki's career, and so and so forth. That is a complex legacy worth unpicking. 

I don't see the same thing with Hulk Hogan. Right place, right time. Right place, right time to play Thunderlips. Right place, right time, sufficiently built up as a star elsewhere, to headline Wrestlemania. Right place, right time, for decades of a wrestling cartel to have allowed the McMahon family exclusive access to one of the biggest media markets in the country. Right place, right time, for a writers' strike to mess with TV schedules and force Saturday Night's Main Event to find new guest hosts and turn to Hogan and Mr. T, giving them a couple of hours of free publicity the day before Wrestlemania 1. He had the luck of the devil. But is wrestling different without him in it? Does any part of modern wrestling still bear his fingerprints? 

We're all a bit guilty of buying into the WWF history propaganda. Hogan as the biggest star ever, as a transformative star, as the man on top when the WWF took wrestling out of small smoky venues and into major arenas and stadiums. But none of that's really true; he was part of the machine that made the WWF bigger, but made wrestling smaller. Maybe that was inevitable with the advent of nationwide cable TV, maybe there was a way to keep other territories sustainable, rather than the WWF cannibalising their audience. Right place, right time. Or, if you were a wrestler making a decent living in Dallas, or Montreal, maybe it was wrong place, wrong time. 

 

For me, Hogan's wrestling legacy is one of sticking around long past his sell-by date - to quote Stewart Lee, "gradually decreasing the quality of his own obituary" - and of repeatedly demonstrating that while he may have been exceptional at knowing how to sell the Hulk Hogan brand, he was lost when attempting to play to the changing world of wrestling. Whether that's the "FUNB" era and Bash At The Beach 2000, or marking his TNA debut by immediately belittling and binning off everything that made TNA different, and failing to meaningfully turn business around in the process. It was showing up dressed as a pirate to "host" Wrestlemania, an old man trotted out to do ad reads because he was incapable of using his star power to reflect on other people, to put anyone over by association, or to lend credibility to another wrestler, or another programme, the way that, at their best, Piper, Foley, or Flair, were able to. I'd argue that Steve Austin has the same failing. His final appearance, booed while trying to flog a beer nobody drinks, is as indicative to his place in wrestling history as bodyslamming Andre The Giant.

Outside of the ring, his legacy is as a racist and a scab. It's as a man who fretted about his son being sent to a reform school that was "all blizz-acks", and whose biggest fear after his son's drink driving arrest that left someone with permanent brain damage was that it might mean that they were reincarnated as black men, who used racial slurs and worried about his daughter dating black men, and plainly spoke the words "I am a racist", and who felt that the lesson to be learned from that scandal was "don't get caught". But more than that, more than the lazy, idiotic racism, and the support for Trump that could just as easily have been a cynical grab for cultural relevance as it was a full-throated endorsement of his politics, Hogan's legacy was as the frontman for a multi-million dollar legal case that shut down Gawker, put hundreds of people out of work, and created the legal precedent that a billionaire prepared to game the legal system and throw money at their problems could win out over press freedom, because Peter Thiel had been waiting for the right celebrity scandal to weaponise. Right place, right time.

[SuperBacon]

I can't fathom people being annoyed because someone didn't acknowledge someone's death. Who cares?

Eastenders never acknowledged the death of Richard Hillman (RIP killer)

[herbie747]

49 minutes ago, gmoney said:

You've missed a joke there. 

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/12/linda-mcmahon-a1-instead-of-ai/83059797007/

haha, oh yeah

[RedTwoster]

36 minutes ago, FUM said:

This place would be much better if there was some sort of auto-ban in place every time a thread descended into AEW/WWE tribalism.

It’s like a football crowd these days - hunting every thread for something to get offended about from the other company.

Who cares who paid tribute to a dead guy and who didn’t? He won’t, he’s dead.

My own thoughts on his death are he ruined his legacy somewhat but the guy transcended wrestling. He is the reason we’re all here posting on this forum whether he was your favourite or not. He brought joy to many lives and I’m certain would be regarded as a huge inspiration in some childhoods and particularly to the wrestlers of today. It doesn’t excuse the type of person he is but there is a strange feeling to think Hulk Hogan is no longer part of this world.

I’m not sure it has descended into tribalism, I think whether or not a company pays tribute to him is a legitimate point of discussion. People who are upset at AEW not paying tribute? I kind of get that. A significant part of their childhood is gone, so I can completely understand hitting out through emotion alone. I’m almost certain I’ll have done that in the past.

It’s also just generally an interesting topic - should a company pay tribute to someone they’ve been highly critical of, when that person hasn’t committed a crime and is indisputably one of the biggest ever names in wrestling? And the point about Flair is relevant in that wider conversation.

Ultimately though, if he hadn’t been the person he was, there would be no need for this discussion. But I think it’s a perfectly fair discussion to have. 

Edited July 25, 2025 by RedTwoster

[Chili]

Still think the maddest lie he ever came out with besides that Japan days thing was that he wrote Hulkster in Heaven about JAMES BULGER. Fucking hell Terrence.

4:50 in the clip.

 

[mim731]

49 minutes ago, Gus Mears said:

Did the interviewer mention Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks? It's law when mainstream British media mentions The Wrestling.

Sadly not, although it only lasted about 90 seconds so Rick Edwards would have done well to get a second question in there!

[DavidB6937]

Meeting Hogan in 2012 at the TNA tour was - at the time - probably the biggest and most significant person I'd ever meet from a wrestling perspective. To be able to meet the guy that got me into wrestling in the first place all those years before was pretty mindblowing. I just never expected to. He always knew how to work for the fans and make sure you felt like you'd had a good experience so I really appreciated that.

It's a top two wrestling moment for me alongside meeting Bret Hart at a WWA event. Odd to think I met both guys outside of WWE at other companies, and both guys couldn't have been more different in their approaches to wrestling, but they were wrestling to me. Hogan first then Bret.

Obviously guys like Austin and The Rock etc came along after but in those early years where I was younger and appreciated things on a surface level a lot more, Hogan and Bret were the guys for me. Ying and Yang in many ways.

[Merzbow]

Tony just Lance Storm'd it, good fella.