10 Wrestlers Who Had To Destroy Themselves To Get Over
7. Hulk Hogan
If Hulk Hogan underwent a cosmetic surgery procedure, in which the skin of an infant was grafted on to his own, he still wouldn't have been as much of a babyface as WCW presented him in 1995 and early 1996.
Hogan's early WCW run was a proto-John Cena paradox; his own fans ordered his pay-per-view main events in large, record-setting numbers, but the WCW fans in the crowd, raised on traditional, athleticism-driven wrestling, despised this cartoonish, invading goof from up north. To counteract the toxic atmosphere in arenas, WCW thought, in peak LOLWCW fashion, that they hadn't babyfaced him enough.
More obstacles! Hogan fights entire stables, and then, those stables balloon in number! In a cage! No, two cages! No, three! What was the dirt-worst, more-Hogan-than-Hogan match he ever wrestled in the WWF? The No Holds Barred tie-in? Let's get Zeus!
As part of Eric Bischoff's overarching edict - everything the WWF does, WCW will do differently - Hogan turned heel and allied with the Outsiders in a shocking development at Bash At The Beach.
Those first Nitros, with Hogan clad in all-black, were a total mindf*ck - akin to waking up from childhood overnight and forgetting that he ever was a hero, like a dream receding from memory.