After reading the reading on Hulk Hogan and finding out what made Terry Bollea turn into Hulk Hogan, I was curious to know a little more about his past. A time before November 13, 1979 when Hulk Hogan made his debut into the World Wrestling Federation as a heel.
Well the first thing I found out is that his real name was Terrence Gene Bollea. I always thought that Hogan was jsut his last name and that Hulk was jsut a nickname first name. After the reading I read that he wrestled under the name Terry Boulder and then I thought that maybe that was his true name. But again I was sadly mistaken and it wasn't after I did some research was it that I found out his true name. Throughout his career he had several wrestling names which included: the super destroyer, sterling golden, terry boulder, hulk hogan, hulk machine, hollywood hogan, and mr. america.
As a child hulk hogan was a pitcher in little league baseball and was a bass guitar player for several florida rock bands. Hulk Hogan was a fan of pro wrestling as a child, but he never pursued it until he was apporached by Jack Brisco and Gerald Brisco. It was said that he had a strong physique at that age and that is what attracted these two men. I couldn't really find what year this really happened so I couldn't say if Hulk Hogan had his "strong physique" from steroids at that time since from the reading I got that he started taking steroids in 1976. So I don't know if he started taking steroids because he wanted to wrestle or if he started taking it even before.
One thing that I found interesting in the research was that he was trained by Hiro Matsuda. In their first workout session, Hiro asked Hogan if he really wanted to be a wrestler and aparently he didn't like the way he responded and broke Hogan's leg. Hogan came back 8 weeks later, with new determination and a different attitude towards pro wrestling. I jsut found this interesting, I mean if someone broke my leg I don't really think I would respect the man more like Hogan did.
Another interesting fact that I discovered was that when Hulk Hogan first entered the WWF, he was supposed to have red hair, but he soon started to lose his hair and he was allowed to keep his normal hair color. I started thinking about this and it would of been really funny to see Hulk Hogan with red hair. Maybe because I am jsut so used to his blonde hair and it's so hard to change that image of him.
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3 comments:
Chris, some interesting background notes on Hogan. Many people bring up Hogan's background with Hiro Matsuda to point out that it is not exactly fair to call Hogan a poser. On the other hand, I hadn't heard the tidbit about the red hair...
On a side note, I have seen more and more similarities between Hogan and later wrestlers. I guess some wrestlers used Hogan's winning formula for their success. One wrestler that stands out in my mind is Lex Luger. He started out as a heel, the Narcissist Lex Luger, like Hogan. He later became the model All-American wrestler like Hogan. The strongest similarity came during a bodyslam competition, where Luger bodyslammed the 600+ pound Yokozuna. The bodyslam, in my opinion, was almost as impossible as slamming Andre the Giant. When is happened it had the same type of mythical feeling as Hogan's slam. However, no matter how many imitations there are, Hogan is just at a totally different level than any other wrestler, with the exception of the Ultimate Warrior.
Your fascination with the Warrior aside, I think the Hogan/Luger comparison is a very fair one, and you have probably seen by now in your effort to catch up from Thursday's viewings that Bret openly acknowledged they wanted to make Luger the new Hogan but that fans didn't really seem to want it.
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