Sometimes my name trips people up on the phone. In 2008, for example, Hulk Hogan wrestled with it.
“Bill Brioux–sounds like a wrestling name,” said the WWE’s ultimate showman. Hogan was on the line to promote the finale of American Gladiators, then in its first incarnation on NBC and City-TV.
The Hulkster was shocked to learn that this pencil-necked geek had never stepped into the ring. “Well it’s a great name–Bill Brioux–I’m going to use it for one of my wrestlers.”
Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, was born in Augusta, Georgia, a city better known for golf than wrestling. He was raised in Florida, where pumping iron and meeting promoters led to a life of spills and chills.
He arrived on the pro wrestling scene just as things were blowing up to a whole new level. It has always been a beefy circus, a staple on television dating all the way back to the late ‘40s/early ‘50s when commentators would crunch plastic cups into a microphone to simulate the crushing of bones. Gorgeous George was a sensation on television in the fifties, he of the platinum locks and immodest boasts, an act Muhammad Ali admitted he stole when he launched his boxing career as the Louisville Lip.
Back when I watched wrestling as a lad, it seemed more an extension of the Saturday Morning cartoon superheroes of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Guys like The Sheik (and his fez-wearing manager, Abdulla Farouk), Andre The Giant, high stepping Tex McKenzie, Haystacks Calhoun and my favorites, Hartford and Reginald, the paisley-pants-wearing Love Brothers (two guys from Newfoundland named Wes Hutchings & John Evans who weren’t really brothers), would snarl and throw folding chairs and gouge each other with illegal objects.
advertisement
The world was so much more innocent back then.
I can still hear “The Sabre Dance” intro to the CHCH Channel 11 wrestling show out of Hamilton, where Lord Athol Layton (we used to call him Lord Athol Latent) would always threaten to take off his bad suit and drop kick or karate chop his way back into the ring.
Hogan arrived in the eighties and took things up a notch. Standing 6-foot-7 and billed at 302 lbs, he was imposing in or out of the ring. He would rip through thousands of easy-tear T-shirts on his way into a fight, cup his ear, cock his head and whip an arena-full of Hulkamaniacs into a mad frenzy.
The man made even the Orange president look pale. He stood shellacked with gallons of spray tan. In an era filled with hucksters such as Evil Knievel and Tennis bully Bobby Riggs, Hogan became an even bigger crossover media star, urging kids to eat their Wheaties or whatever else he was endorsing and then slaying all comers Snap, Crackle and Pop.
By 1982 he was body slamming his way into movies opposite Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky III.” By 1985, he was hosting Saturday Night Live.
It was at the WrestleMania Main Events, however, where he truly tasted fame. His 1988 match with Andrea the Giant still holds the American network TV ratings record for a wrestling audience with an estimated 33 million viewers. Hogan was a six-time WWE champion, winning other belts in other leagues not run by Vince McMahon.
In the 2018 documentary, “Andre the Giant,” Hogan admitted that his once powerful adversary was so ill, feeble and besotted at the time of their 1988 bout that he could barely stand up. Hogan had to basically throw himself around the ring and make it look like he was being crushed by the booze fueled Frenchman, dead five years later at age 46.
Hogan was an effective talking head in that and other documentaries but never achieved the level of movie fame as later wrestling headliners, such as Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson or John Cena.
Hogan tried his hand at series work, making press tour appearances promoting his reality series Hogan Knows Best (2005 to 2007). This was the era of the celebrity family reality shows, a trend ignited by The Osbournes.
Odd then that Ozzy and the Hulkster died within 48 hours of each other. Each achieved dizzying degrees of fame. Both ravaged their bodies through substance abuse; Hogan admitted to a diet of steroids as he bulked his way up the WWE ladder. Osbourne made it to 76; Hogan died of a heart attack July 24 at 71.
The most famous wrestler ever endured many surgeries trying to repair a back ravaged by drop kicks, chair slams and a lifetime of spinal cracking. Even a scripted sport can be a real scrambler of knees, backs, necks and brains.
In his final years, scandals, endless litigation and three marriages were the foreign objects that brought him down, at least financially. He had also swung so broadly between hero and villain, in and out of the ring, that he seemed lost in a world that made WWE scenarios seem like fairy tales.
Hogan’s appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention, ripping one last T-shirt, was right out of Mike Judge’s spookily prophetic “Idiocracy” (2006). Had he been healthier, he might have been named to a cabinet post. He seemed to grasp that the world was tipping into one big WrestleMania-like brawl, and that it was a good time for shirt-ripping, spray-tanned guys to get back into the mix, before The Undertaker turned out the lights for good.
Condolences to ring friends such as Rick Flair and “Jimmy the Snake” Roberts, his family, and Hulkamaniacs everywhere.
