wrestling / Columns
Hulk Hogan: A Complicated Legacy
I was born in 1987, so I missed the heights of Hulkamania, but my first memories of watching wrestling with my dad still involve Hogan. I, like many other kids of my time, was a Hulkamaniac, I had action figures, I had Colorforms. The WWF WrestleMania Challenge NES games was a frequent rental, I watched the WWF Cartoon, and I loved Mr. Nanny. As a kid I didn’t know about the politics behind the scenes, I just knew Hulk Hogan was a superhero come to life and I loved him. When he jumped to WCW, I was seven years old and Sting had replaced him as my favorite wrestler. I still loved Hogan but I had moved on a bit, even at seven his feud with the Dungeon of Doom felt a bit hokey compared to the rest of what was going on in WCW at the time. He was becoming stale and outdated and the nWo was probably the best heel turn in the history of wrestling. He went from an aging throwback and suddenly felt fresh and on the edge of society. I still go back and watch those black and white nWo vignettes and get chills, as 1997 rolled in and I turned ten it felt like Hogan was cool again, he was a heel sure, but the nWo was something, those of us in the United States, hadn’t seen before and Hogan was the leader. I tuned in every week to see who would be joining the nWo next, Sting was still my favorite, and his Crow era just solidified that, but I won’t lie and say I didn’t tune in to watch those opening nWo promos. Because of wanting to see what the nWo was going to do next, I was introduced to the cruiserweights like Rey Mysterio and Psicosis, the technical prowess of guys like Dean Malenko and Steven Regal, and guys like Raven, and the absolutely mastery of Eddie Guerrero. Being able to get plugged into all these wrestlers and the desire to go seek out wrestling from all over the world comes back to Hogan.
By the time of the 2000 Bash at the Beach, I was ready to say goodbye to Hogan. It was time for new stars like Booker T to carry the company. What happened that night was not the way to pass the torch though, no matter if it was time for Hogan to move on or not. He (in my mindset at the time) deserved a better sendoff than what Russo gave him. So when he was brought back into WWE alongside Hall and Nash, I was excited. I was hoping he would be able to get a proper send off and then he could retire and set off into the sunset. And if WrestleMania X8 was the last match he ever had — if we only ever saw him for one offs, the Hall of Fame, or maybe some short-term GM role? Then the rest of this article would be a lot different. But it wasn’t that way. Hogan would continue to pop up and have matches, he would use his backstage pull to refuse to put over Shawn Michaels, his and Austin’s egos prevented the other dream match from ever happening. And then when he left WWE, he would join TNA and try and change everything that had helped them gain an audience.
Hogan would eventually return to WWE, and then 10 years ago he would be fired due to a video of him making racist comments being released. He would be fired and removed from the WWE Hall of Fame website. After apologizing for his comments and the endorsement of several black wrestlers, he would return in 2018. He was reinstated in the Hall of Fame, and started making appearances on the WWE Network and on Raw and SmackDown. He would host WrestleMania 37 with Titus O’Neil and made his last appearance for the WWE at the Raw on Netflix premiere on the 23rd of January 2025. This appearance would see Hogan heavily booed throughout his promo, the public opinion having turned on him due not only to his previous comments, but also his appearance at the Republican National Convention and endorsing Donald Trump for president.
It is hard to sum up the legacy of Hulk Hogan. Without him we probably wouldn’t be here to write, read, and make comments about his legacy. His impact on professional wrestling can never be understated. He was the center point of two of the biggest time periods of wrestling, he was the face of the WWF for most of the 80s and helped to make WrestleMania a success, which in turn ensured the WWE would become the global phenom it still is today. He also led WCW in beating the WWE for 83 straight weeks and almost drove them out of business, which forced McMahon to adapt and grow the WWE into an even bigger company. Any fan born in the ’70s or ’80s were, at some point, caught up in the wave of Hulkamania, even if you found others to latch on to once you got hooked on wrestling.
Yet Terry Bollea was not a great person. He used his position to hold down talent, has made tons of blatant lies about things he did both in wrestling and outside of it (Metallica totally wanted him to play bass for them), and then showed himself to have racist tendencies. Whether those feelings were due to the time and environment he was raised in or not, when you are an adult you have to take responsibility of your actions and not blame them on how you were raised. Also, it needs to be said, a group of people (race, gender, identity, etc.) is not a monolith. Just because there are black wrestlers who supported Hogan, they don’t speak for all black people or even all black wrestlers. In the last part of his life, he chose to support a very divisive man for president, and a lot has already been written about Trump and how Bollea endorsing him was very telling of the person he is to a lot of people.
I believe in separating art from the artist, and I will never forget my early years as a Hulkamaniac or how much I loved the nWo and how that love introduced me to the much wider world of wrestling. I can go back and enjoy moments from Hogan’s past in wrestling, without enjoying who he is a person or endorsing his views. Not everyone can do that and that is okay, you don’t have to. it’s always complicated when our heroes turn out to be less than heroic, and I understand anyone who can’t enjoy anything Hogan did anymore. In the end Hulk Hogan’s legacy is a complicated one that will be forever linked to the boom of wrestling and the creation of how it is today.