Terry Bollea, better known by his wrestling nom de guerre "Hulk Hogan", has passed at 71.
Hogan, a consummate performer, helped the World Wrestling Federation go mainstream as the the WWF's programming found it's way across basic cable packages and onto late-night broadcast on NBC in the 1980's.
In a kayfabe world of heroes and heels, Hogan went from heel to hero, defeating multiple ethnically coded villains, like The Iron Sheik. He reigned supreme over the WWF, WWE and helped draw interest in wrestling to help it become the mega-industry it is today.
Through the 1980's, Hogan's persona was turned into a cartoon, Hulk Hogan's Rock'n'Wrestling - starring animated versions of Hogan and a clutch of other popular WWF wrestlers. Fun fact: Hogan's cartoon persona was voiced by TV star Brad Garrett.
There were dolls, figures, t-shirts and vitamins (the vitamins tasted awful).
As a kid, I wasn't really into wrestling but in 1989 a 14 year old me had $15 and accepted a last second invite to see WWF's second-tier when they came to town, and we had a snarky-teen ironic blast. So when Hogan came through in Spring 1990, I went with a bunch of buddies who were unironically enjoying wrestling. The episode we saw aired as April 28, 1990's Saturday Night's Main Event.
This is the Hogan match-up we saw. You may catch 1/2 second glimpses of me and my brother in the audience.
Hilariously, my brother was not planning to go and had no ticket, and we'd purchased floor tickets months before. Shortly after we arrived, I looked across the ring and there was my brother, standing with the homecoming queen. I was so confused - but I guess her dad had bought tickets and she knew Jason is up for whatever, and so there he was, Forrest Gumping his way through life.
My memory is that Hogan was obviously the best athlete and showman of the people we saw that night, and we saw errrbuddy. It was a long, long night as they recorded two or three shows worth of wrestling.
Prior to blowing up on TV, Hogan had done well in the ring and wound up as a minor villain in Rocky III. He would go onto have a TV show, Thunder in Paradise, and star in a series of very bad movies. And at the same time Ozzy was in The Osbournes, Hogan brought cameras into his house and started Hogan Knows Best. Which was canceled as the Hogan family kind of imploded.
In the years after, Hogan's life and career sort of spiraled. His wife left him for a guy who looked just like Hogan in his early prime. He was caught in a sex tape scandal. He became involved in ugly politics. I dunno.
It's unfortunate. For a while he was a curious everyman of an entertainer who appealed to kids and adults alike. The last decade and change, he's mostly been famous for being unpleasant. But at one point in my life, I owned an official Hulk Hogan bandana.
