Hogan talking...I mean running wild

Mr.Nice Guy

Hulk Hogan has given an entertaining interview with The Sun that is well worth a look. You can read it in full here.


Hogan on wrestling:

"I really do miss wrestling.

"I'm 52-years-old, but I'm in pretty darn good shape and have been training hard.

"I spoke to Vince in New York on Sunday and he's asked me to come back. He wants to make me the Babe Ruth or Muhammad Ali of wrestling.

"Next April WrestleMania is back in Detroit, Michigan. Twenty years ago in the same city, at the same event, I bodyslammed Andre The Giant.

"Vince was saying to me: 'Oh my gosh, you have to be in the main event 20 years later.'

"We'll probably end up doing business."

Hogan on working with Stone Cold:

"I've thrown the challenge out there and now it's up to Stone Cold if he wants to do the match.

"I really don't know why it hasn't happened already. I thought maybe Vince and Steve had fallen out, but I've since found out that they've done some sort of deal to keep Austin as part of the company.

"So if he's part of the WWE, I've got no idea why Steve wouldn't want to have a match at WrestleMania.

"I don't know if he has a problem with me personally.

"When we were in WCW, and he was Stunning Steve Austin, he talked to me a couple of times about different ideas he had to work with me.

"The ideas were OK, they weren't home runs but they were pretty good.

"Then when I came back to the WWE with the nWo, he was pretty much in charge there and we had a few storylines together. There were no problems at all.

"There aren't any 'dream matches' for me, because I've done so much I'm not on that level of 'oh my gosh, I'd love to work with him'.

"It's more that I want to do good business, help the sport and give the fans what they want. And working with Steve would do all three."

Hogan on Shawn Michaels' comments after Summerslam:

"That was all about his ego. Shawn Michaels is a born-again Christian, but inside he's the same old Shawn Michaels. He hasn't changed a bit.

"At that point we were talking about doing more matches, but when I heard his promo I wasn't interested in working with him again.

"If Vince McMahon had told me to lose to Shawn Michaels it would have been no big deal, it's nothing personal just business.

"But I don't think he ever got in trouble for what he said, because backstage they think all that stuff is cute.

"I don't know how to explain it, but there was this attitude that came along with some of the guys in the late 1990s.

"They'd take the heat away from the matches and make opponents out to be ridiculous.

"You can only act like that if you don't care about the business."

Hogan on Bret Hart at the Hall of Fame:

"Bret Hart had a case of the ass at the Hall Of Fame," Hogan revealed. "He was mad at me and Ric Flair and a bunch of other people because we told the truth on the (never released) Screwed DVD about him.

"Bret says the business is a work but he really thinks it's a shoot. He really believes he's the greatest wrestler ever. Of course he's not, Kurt Angle or a lot of guys could beat him if it was a real wrestling match.

"My view on the 1997 Survivor Series - that match where Bret screwed Bret up in Montreal - is that Vince needed to get the belt off him, because he wasn't drawing any money, and Bret acted totally unprofessionally.

"So I gave that opinion on the DVD. I said when Vince McMahon asked him to lose the belt, then he should have lost it.

"Because wrestling is not real, it's entertainment."

Hogan on not dropping the belt to Bret:

"There were several miscommunications that happened over that.

"Basically I was leaving and had some problems about putting the belt on the right person, because if you put the belt on the wrong person when you come back it's hard to get the business going again.

"If Vince had told me to drop the belt to Bret I would have done it, but since he asked me I said: 'I need to drop to Yokozuna, he's red hot right now. He can carry it.'

"But it's just an ongoing saga with these guys. I have to focus on what's good for me and my family. I can't worry about these personal b*****s with everybody. It's not what business is about.

"If Vince McMahon told me to lose the belt tomorrow to you, then I'd do it with class and charisma."

He goes on to slag off Macho Man and the Ultimate Warrior. It's worth a read.

Vince135792003

Heres the bit in relation to the Warrior at WM7 which grabbed my attention:

"I’ve been to hell and back with Vince McMahon, I would never to do anything to hurt him. But it’s also survival of the fittest out there. I knew he picked the wrong guy and at the end of the match I had to take care of myself, and one of the ways I did that was stealing the spotlight from The Ultimate Warrior."

gimmick

^ that was so obvious, and Im surprised he actually came out and said that, as it makes him look petty and small.

He did it then to The Warrior, and did it again in 1992, when he totally stole Flairs thunder in winning the Royal Rumble, when the title was actually on the line. Sid eliminated Hogan, Hogan had a hissy fit (in character) and caused Sid to be eliminated, therefore making Flair champion..

"Vince was saying to me: 'Oh my gosh, you have to be in the main event 20 years later.'

Please dont let it happen. Please. I never want to see him in a ring again, unless of course it is a squash, where HE gets squashed.

Whats the link for this by the way? Id be interested to see what he says about Savage.

Edit, sorry, see it now. Just read it. What a self serving jerk that man seems. Me me me. on line in particular made me smile

You have to be consistent, work main events every night and have matches that people really believe in and want to see.

People wanted to see DiBiase and Hogan for the title, people wanted to see Perfect and Hogan for the title, but he didnt want to see that. And as for working matches people believe in? Give me a break, i was about 7 when i realised Hogans matches were un believable. Get the crap kick out of him for the entire match, hulk up, shake his finger, punch punch, body slam, leg drop, match over.

Sure it was over, and sure he was over, and sure, wrestling probably not be where it is without him, but for the love of his credibility, please just go away.

Mossy Monk

Hogan main eventing Wrestlemania next year?

**** that. he shouldnt be in a ****ing ring, let alone headline Wrestlemania

dlofnep

hogan is wrestling.

Terry

Mossy Monk wrote:

Hogan main eventing Wrestlemania next year?

**** that. he shouldnt be in a ****ing ring, let alone headline Wrestlemania

meh.
whatcha gonna do?

Terry

sorry.

Vince135792003

dlofnep wrote:

hogan is wrestling.

No I'd disagree with that. He may have been 1986 but this is 2006.

Undoubtedly he's a huge icon in the industry. But wrestling is almost a universial sport/industry that began before Hogan and will carry on after him. Like I said you can't argue he's an icon in the sport though.

But so too is Flair, Thez, Bruiser Brody (in Japan) and El Hiho del Santo (in Mexico) just to name a few.

Just another example that wrestling did n't begin in the 1980s with Hogan. A match between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks in the late 1970s was watched by more people on ITV that the FA cup final on the same station an hour later.

Certainly Hogan was the figurehead in the 1980s for the WWE when wrestling became a mainstream form of entertainment. But plenty happened before and after him in the US and elsewhere.

Fozzy

He completely contradicts himself in a few places. He says that stuff about taking Warrior's spotlight, and "I showed that a real champion was more gracious in defeat than victory so that in the end nobody cared about the belt", but he also says "If Vince McMahon told me to lose the belt tomorrow to you, then I'd do it with class and charisma." Why didn't he do it with class back then?

I don't blame Shawn at all. He knows he's one of the best wrestlers ever, and at this stage he shouldn't be stuck losing to a 50 something year old who could never wrestle. He obviously does care about the business, because losing to Hogan was not good business and he pretty much said that

Some of the things he says are completely true, but coming from him it's hard to take. Especially about Bret. Funny though, we all know how Bret feels about Hogan, but I found a column Bret wrote about Hogan a few years ago for the Calgary Sun, it's on his site here: http://www.brethart.com/column/june8.asp I found it very hard to believe who wrote it!

Corholio

Had to laugh when Hogan lambasted Michaels for HIS ego

This is coming from the probably one of the most self serving men in the history of wrestling. Every top wrestler has an ego i think anyway, it comes with the territory but i think Hogan's has got its own postcode and applied for planning permission for even more. I really hope Austin dosen't give Hogan this match or if he does i hope Austin win's cleanly..........gees can you imagine that..........a clean win over Hogan, the respectability of his daughters singing career would never allow for that.

I love the way he complains that Michaels didn't get in trouble backstage for the things he said, this coming from a guy who testified AGAINST Vince in court (whether rightly or wrongly dosent matter), for god sake the guy should be glad for any time he's had in WWE since.

He sounds so much a brown nose in the part about Bret, Hogan couldnt lace Bret's 3rd favourite pair of runners, never mind his wrestling boots. All Hogan ever talks about is "the business" and "drawing money", i know at the end of the day thats probably what it comes down to but it's a totally one track mind with him, he's living off a ridiculously stupid gimmick he had in the early 90's. To be honest i think he says it all in the second line of that interview:

"I'm 52 years old........."