10 Wrestlers Who Were Secretly Promo GODS
6. Hulk Hogan
Hulk Hogan was a parody of a promo under the bright lights of the Dick Ebersol-influenced WWF, spouting clichés and nonsense that was nonetheless over in a fantastically broad way, but the secret history of his career wasn't written in Japan.
Known in hardcore fan circles as a wrestler who was better technically than he was allowed to showcase in the US, that's true, but what he did in the States was transformative megastar magic. That he could just about hold his own in Japan as a mechanic was good for him, but fairly irrelevant. He was a significantly better worker than a wrestler, and the former was far more important.
The real secret Hogan attribute is that, before it all really exploded, he was a much better promo between 1984-85.
His stuff was still a bit cornball insofar as content - when building a 1984 showdown with Big John Studd, he imagined thousands of his fans shedding tears - but his impassioned, relatively subdued delivery was effective. He put over Studd as a man capable of kicking his head in, but promised - without being a cartoon about it - to withstand the pain and keep fighting. He still had a chemistry and understanding with the wonderful Gene Okerlund, who knew how to pretend to interject before "realising" that Hogan was in a zone and needed to get the words out.
Incredibly, the words "Hulk Hogan" and "understated" once belonged in the same sentence.
It's no shame that people have forgotten this, at least.