10 Great Wrestling Moments That Not Enough People Have Seen
4. Hulk Hogan Vs. Earthquake - WWF SummerSlam 1990
At SummerSlam 1990, the WWF programmed a hoss monster against their most popular babyface star. The show drew a healthy buy rate, by the standards of a time in which the Fed's popularity was waning, and Hulk Hogan Vs. Earthquake was a key attraction.
The programme started with a hot angle on the Brother Love show.
Earthquake attacked Hogan from behind with a steel chair before repeatedly nailing him with the Earthquake Splash. This was sold as a career-ending assault by a super-earnest Typhoon. "The Hulkster has never let down a person in his life," Typhoon said, with, understandably, no knowledge of 2015. Gene Okerlund's solemn work is trite now - "I can't do this!" - but was harrowing then in its conviction to the traumatised bairns, who, at his urging, wrote to the Hulkster in a bid to get him back into fighting shape. And he did, at SummerSlam, at which he vanquished the monster to deafening, impassioned cheers.
Sufficiently rehabilitated from his major loss at WrestleMania VI, Hogan embarked on another run at the top in 1991.
Transplant every story beat to the year 2020, and one arrives at the conclusion that Earthquake was "buried," as pro wrestling discourse, warped by modern WWE's hopelessless, becomes entrenched in jargon and stripped entirely of knowledge and context.
The hero overcame, as heroes do.
Cody overcame Lance Archer at AEW Double Or Nothing 2020, and embarked on a TNT Title run that elevated Ricky Starks and Eddie Kingston.
All of this is a cycle, but the cycle ends when the logic of fiction is betrayed.