Hulkamania is dead

[Chili]

The WWF could have probably ended up popular but they needed an anchor character to really make them even bigger, and whatever Hogan had, it just absolutely worked in that time, place and feeling in the US. The other rumoured people Vince always wanted it he couldn't get Hogan was Dusty, Kerry Von Erich and Snuka. All good choices for various reasons but none of them would have really hit like Hulk, and all had bigger negatives to them as well. With Macho Man, he wasn't as 'normal' or as approachable as Hogan, so he would have always been what he was in a 1B/top supporting role. It's why the Warrior was popular but never eclipsed/replaced Hogan as they wanted in 1990. He was a great character but you couldn't chuck him on a talk show because he was too fucking weird. Hulk Hogan had every IT factor in 1984, just every boxed ticked from size, look, concept, even down to the simple but memorable and very wrestler sounding name.

Edited August 4, 2025 by Chili

[Infinity Land]

33 minutes ago, RedTwoster said:

I wasn’t alive at the time, so I’m asking this from a slightly ignorant perspective I suppose but is this really true? Surely if you take Hogan out of the equation, someone else just steps in and does exactly what he did - maybe Randy Savage, maybe someone else entirely. It doesn’t look from my 2025 perspective like there was a shortage of colourful, charismatic characters back then. 

Clearly he was very, very important - but had Hogan not existed, surely someone else could have been just as important?

I think someone else could have stepped in and there would have been a boom period with the rise of cable and Vince's expansion with focus on Sports Entertainment. I don't think it would have hit the same heights. 

Hogan was already a significant star before coming back to be the face of the company. He was big in Japan. He should have been AWA World Champion at a time it would still have been fairly relevant. He was also someone that saw the value in breaking out of the wrestling bubble. Not sure how much of it was mythbuilding but choosing Thunderlips over his spot in the WWWF. In 1983 he was already a nationally known personality which made him the #1 pick. Savage by comparison was still working for his dad. Kerry Von Erich gets a mention in these examples but he was still behind his brother David when people would talk about prospects. 

 

 

[BomberPat]

On 8/2/2025 at 8:42 PM, Cannibal Man said:

I do agree with them about Hulk's relevance to today's wrestling. I'm not interested in stamping on anyone's posts or tributes or whatever but the amount of talk I saw on nearly every outlet for this sort of stuff mentioned how all of us 'owe' several things to Hulk Hogan or how none of this, that or the other would be here without him probably helped in getting me to realise the same point. All of it was reading completely alien to me. At least with my own experience of wrestling fandom anyway.

This is similar to a point I made when writing about Hogan; the star power and fame is impossible to argue, but I struggle to buy the idea that he was so hugely influential. I made a clumsy comparison to the Brian Eno quote that while only a few thousand people bought their first album, everyone who did formed a band; there's a difference between success and influence, and while Hogan might have been the most successful name of his era, I don't see his influence really anywhere in modern wrestling, and he was already an anachronism by the early 2000s, if not earlier. I compared that to Antonio Inoki, whose fingerprints are all over wrestling in a lot of different ways.

I think Hogan got a lot of people watching wrestling, but I don't know how many of those people became wrestlers, so in the music industry analogy he's a popstar chart topper more than he's the Velvet Underground inspiring other people to pick up a guitar. And that's brilliant if you're Hulk Hogan's accountant, but I don't find it very interesting in terms of charting the history of wrestling as a medium.

It's obviously impossible to say if the WWF's success would have occurred the same way without Hogan. Vince McMahon had the advantages of coming from a family that were already part of the NWA, and part of previous wrestling cartels before it, that basically gave them exclusive access to the biggest media market in the country, and a position that allowed him to capitalise on the growth of cable and nationwide TV much quicker than anyone - and almost fucked that up with Black Saturday, and the outcome of that directly leading to Ted Turner buying into Jim Crockett Promotions. That position was more important than Hogan, and both Vince and Hogan being instrumental in the WWF's success relied on them both being uniquely ruthless and cutthroat, but also being incredibly lucky in a million ways to end up in the positions they were in, and to be up against other promoters ill-equipped to compete with them.

I think there's a possibility you can swap someone else into Hulk's position and get similar success, but the likelihood is that you don't, at least not in the same timeframe. In terms of people usually floated as alternatives, neither Kerry Von Erich or Jimmy Snuka were good enough promos to carry the company, and both carried way too much baggage. The timeline probably isn't right for Randy Savage to have taken Hogan's spot. I don't think you get Mr T coming in without the Rocky connection, and without Mr T, do you get the media coverage, do they get the thrown together free publicity of hosting Saturday Night Live the night before Wrestlemania 1? 

[King Coconut]

2 hours ago, Chili said:

Hulk Hogan had every IT factor in 1984, just every boxed ticked from size, look, concept, even down to the simple but memorable and very wrestler sounding name.

I could never buy into him because of the slaphead.

Edited August 4, 2025 by King Coconut

[Chili]

7 minutes ago, King Coconut said:

I could never buy into him because of the slaphead.

Fair.

[Arch Stanton]

45 minutes ago, King Coconut said:

I could never buy into him because of the slaphead.

When you think about it, it was an absolute genius move by Hogan to go bald so young and to develop the face of a fifty-five year old man before the age of thirty. This future-proofed his trademark look until the day he died. 

[tiger_rick]

It was never why I didn't like him but I always got a kick out of Hulk 5 minutes before a match with his bandana on, cutting a blistering promo, with arms like tree trunks and shoulders like a small building looking like the hero on a movie poster versus Hulk 5 minutes into a match when the bandana had flown off and he was on his knees gasping for breath looking like a 55 year old bloke losing a fight in a pub car park after 8 pints. 

Edited August 4, 2025 by tiger_rick

[Arch Stanton]

14 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

It was never why I didn't like him but I always got a kick out of Hulk 5 minutes before a match with his bandana on, cutting a blistering promo, with arms like tree trunks and shoulders like a small building looking like the hero on a movie poster versus Hulk 5 minutes into a match when the bandana had flown off and he was on his knees gasping for breath looking like a 55 year old bloke losing a fight in a pub car park after 8 pints. 

It was genuinely a big part of why so many people did like him, wasn't it? Hulk sold taking a hiding better than most, if not anyone, at that time. It's the most basic of wrestling psychology, but a babyface needs to generate sympathy from the audience and Hulk knew how to do that incredibly well.

[BomberPat]

Absolutely. For all of Hogan's faults, the fact that he made you believe that - as big and as imposing as he was - he was in genuine trouble and needed the crowd's support to be able to overcome the odds is the magic ingredient that made his schtick work. And like pretty much all successful schtick in wrestling, it worked until it didn't, and nobody else can quite figure out how to replicate it. 

Edited August 4, 2025 by BomberPat

[tiger_rick]

12 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

It was genuinely a big part of why so many people did like him, wasn't it? Hulk sold taking a hiding better than most, if not anyone, at that time. It's the most basic of wrestling psychology, but a babyface needs to generate sympathy from the audience and Hulk knew how to do that incredibly well.

Yes, completely agree. His selling, while often fucking ridiculous with modern (cynical) eyes, was the beauty of his work. Always giving enough that he seemed desperate but giving enough hope that he was never beaten. Really speaking to the people in his actions and his looks. Babyface 101.

[Arch Stanton]

5 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Absolutely. For all of Hogan's faults, the fact that he made you believe that - as big and as imposing as he was - he was in genuine trouble and needed the crowd's support to be able to overcome the odds is the magic ingredient that made his schtick work. And like pretty much all successful schtick in wrestling, it worked until it didn't, and nobody else can quite figure out how to replicate it. 

Hulk had a quality about him, whereby even though he was colossal, blonde and bronzed, he still looked more like your dad (or maybe a mad uncle) than a superhero or a Greek God. I think this is what made him relatable and sympathetic in a way that you didn't get with, for example, Ultimate Warrior.

Ric and Dusty had similar qualities, if you substitute Dad/Uncle for your Nana.

[Chest Rockwell]

10 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Hulk had a quality about him, whereby even though he was colossal, blonde and bronzed, he still looked more like your dad (or maybe a mad uncle) than a superhero or a Greek God

The quality you're thinking of is called baldness. 

 

Edit: laughing at my own post here now because when I wrote it I had just jumped to the most recent posts and hasn't even seen the context above. I didn't realise that Coco had already covered this point and that's where the conversation started. 

Great minds and all that... ?

Edited August 4, 2025 by Chest Rockwell

[garynysmon]

10 hours ago, King Coconut said:

I could never buy into him because of the slaphead.

Imagine the heights Stunning Steve Austin would have reached had he kept his hair?

[Merzbow]

Imagine the pops if he was spearing lads with that mop.

[Chest Rockwell]

Shaving your head when you start to go bald looks infinitely better than long hair with male pattern baldness. Most men reach that acceptance in time.

 

It's actually a credit to Hogan's stubbornness that he clung to those wispy locks all the way to the end, tbh... Still looked shit though.