A Real American

A Sympathetic Assessment of the Hulkster's Biggest Years

As a young pro wrestling fan in the 1980s, I was a Randy Savage guy and a Ric Flair guy. I was also a Ricky Steamboat guy and even a Rick Martel guy. Hulk Hogan was more often my antagonist. I wanted Andre the Giant to beat him. I wanted The Big Bossman to come out on top.

In the broadcast TV and early cable era of the 1980s, Hogan was the major presence. My mom and I used to watch Saturday Night Live together while my stepdad played in a swing band at the Air Force base. Once a quarter, SNL gave way to Saturday Night’s Main Event, the big WWF show of the early WrestleMania years. We’d watch that, too. That’s how I got into wrestling. This was an era of cheesy WWF gimmicks. A lot of the wrestlers were something other than participants in a combat sport. They were absurdly rich, models, Elvis impersonators, perfectionists, geniuses, hillbillies, prison guards and even the embodiment of the American Dream.

Hogan was the super hero and “A Real American,” who embodied Reagan America’s self-image. He told us to train, say our prayers and eat our vitamins. He had 24-inch arms, measured biceps to triceps. He battled monsters, gangs assembled to take him down and conspiracies against him were constant, but he always won.

Thing is, Hogan was a cheater in the ring. He raked eyes and choked opponents blatantly. The Real American would do anything to win. He would eliminate friends from battle royals and beat up diminutive managers like his real-life friend Jimmy Hart. He had lust in his eyes for his best friend’s wife. This was all years before he would shock the world and revitalize his career by turning into an actual bad guy and founding member of wrestling’s “New World Order.” Like the United States of the1980s, good-guy Hogan was a bully driven to win at all costs and he demanded to be liked for it.

“A blatant eye rake by that cheater Hulk Hogan, McMahon. How are you going to defend that?” -Jess “The Body” Ventura, probably.

Hulk Hogan spent most of his pre-fame career as a bad guy. He was huge, standing well over 6’5” (they said 6’8”) and weighing more than 300 muscular pounds, Hogan was really built like one of wrestlings monster bullies. In Rocky III his character “Thunder Lips,” makes Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky look small. So, the part he played for a long time was as the physically gifted wrestler who also cheated and wanted to hurt people. That bad guy run involved his first feud with Andre the Giant.

The “Real American” character emerged in 1984, when he defeated the Iron Sheik, billed from Tehran, Iran, for the world championship. He would feud frequently with other wrestlers who embodied foreign policy opponents, including a Russian (later Lithuanian) named Nikolai Volkoff or a wrestler selected by the manager Mr. Fuji, representing Japan. But it wasn’t all just foreign menaces.

What propelled Hogan to fame was a feud with the maniacal Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, that wound up on MTV and managed to involve both Cyndi Lauper and Mr. T, forging a “rock and wrestling connection” that led into the first WrestleMania and the formation of the first truly national wrestling promotion as local entertainment and broadcasting faded and the cable television era began.

At the time in wrestling, good guys were all friends with each other and had each other’s backs against the dastardly rule breakers. Andre, a beloved good guy and true attraction in the business, was presented as Hogan’s best friend. They also decided to claim he was undefeated, had never been body slammed and all sorts of other fakes things. The story going into their match was that evil manager Bobby Heenan, the World Wrestling Federation’s biggest Hogan-hater, had gotten in the Giant’s ear and convinced him that Hogan had betrayed their friendship by never offering him a title shot. Andre attacked Hogan and the build to the biggest WrestleMania was on.

The truth about body slamming Andre is that it had been done by Hogan before and by a lot of other people. It’s just that Andre had to want to make it happen. At III, Andre gave Hogan that moment and really made him seem larger than life.

It’s hard to keep childhood memories straight but at one point the Honky Tonk Man, who was Intercontinental Champion and an evil Elvis impersonator, and the Hart Foundation attacked Randy Savage and Hogan came to the rescue. The Mega Powers were formed — Hulkamania merged with the Macho Madness of fandom. Note the name of their team, as Vince McMahon searched for a way to make his hero gladiators grander than the “Superpowers” of foreign policy. He should have called them The Hegemony, which is what the WWE would eventually become in the wrestling business.

Later, Andre showed up for a WrestleMania III rematch on Saturday Night’s Main Event, with “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase in Andre’s corner. DiBiase’s gimmick was his unlimited wealth and his belief that he could buy anything. He humiliated fans by offering them money to perform simple tasks, like bouncing a basketball ten times, which he would then thwart to avoid a payout. He would knock out his opponents with his “million dollar dream” and then stuff a $20 bill into their mouths while they were unconscious. In this case, he hired Dave Hebner, the real life identical twin brother of referee Earl Hebner to count a phony pin on Hogan. Andre won the title but then abdicated hit, giving it to Dibiase. Hogan ranted in the back about the conspiracy against him. “How much did they pay for the plastic surgery?” he fumed, assuming that having a man surgically altered to look like a ref was more likely than twin magic. In this way, they got the title off of Hogan without beating him fairly.

A tournament was held and Randy Savage won the title, beating Dibiase in the finals. Hogan and Andre, who were both given buys into the second round of the tournament eliminated each other. But Hogan showed up in the end to stop Dibiase from cheating Savage. Their friendship resumed, but now with Savage as champion.

Later, The Mega Powers teamed up to face the Twin Towers, a team the manager Slick had assembled of The Big Bossman (a prison guard) and Akeem, The African Dream (a large white man with afro-futurtist tendencies, formerly known as The One Man Gang). In this match, Hogan abandoned Savage to take an injured Miss Elizabeth to the back, leaving Savage to take on the titans alone. Savage accused Hogan of having “lust in his eyes” for Elizabeth (and, it seemed like Savage had a point).

Hogan won the title back from Savage and went on to feud with Mr. Perfect who, did everything perfectly, and then the mammoth Earthquake, a legitimate sumo champion turned pro wrestler.

Hogan’s feuds throughout the 80s were the birth of “sports entertainment” where stories are told through athletic expression (and yelling at each other). Hogan’s opponents represented the anxieties of the 1980s American guy. Roddy Piper was a dangerous maniac. The giants like Andre, Big John Studd, Kamala, Bossman, Akeem, King Kong Bundy and Earthquake were the immovable objects we all face. The foreign menaces speak for themselves. That a man like Dibiase is rigging life against you is something we all suspect, from time to time. The breakup with Savage reminds us all what happens when two ambitious people have to deal with there only being room at the top for one. Mr. Perfect was the guy who could do no wrong, trying to take your spot. The Genius, who actually got a win over the Hulkster by using a complex mathematical formula that ended in “Hulk Down” was the nerd who’d become the tech titan.

And Hogan? He was America — big, loud, willing to bend the rules but absolutely sure of his righteousness, brother. What made him right? That he was big, strong and popular. That’s why he used to end all his promos by asking, “Whatcha gonna do, brother, when the power of Hulkamania and the 24 inch pythons, run wild on you?” I mean, come on. It’s only been US foreign policy since Viet Nam.