10 Wrestling Secrets Everyone Knows Except You

Hulk Hogan was directly responsible for an attempt to unionise in WWE failing back in 1986, and the conversation's barely been broached since.

Jesse Ventura said as much on a Stone Cold Steve Austin podcast several years ago, noting how WrestleManias 2 and III represented a sweet spot for the wrestlers to capitalise. Hogan finding out about it as how they never did. As he put he;

“It was WrestleMania 2. Two weeks before it, all the publicity had gone out. The advantage was ours. I stood up in the dressing room and I gave a speech to the boys...‘if we go together and simply tell the media we are not wrestling unless union negotiators by federal law come in and give us the opportunity to unionise.’ And I said, ‘guys, the people that turn on the lights in these buildings are union.’ I said, ‘they have to do it by law. It’s in our favour...The next night, I got a phone call from Vince who basically threatened to fire me if I ever brought it up again and read me the riot act. And I then did WrestleMania 2 and immediately left and did Predator and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild now, my union that I get retirement from now, healthcare from, all of that from. And so, when I came back, I told Vince pointblank, ‘Vince, I won’t ever bring up union again.’ And I said, ‘if these guys are too stupid to fight for their rights, I have my union now. I’m a member of the Screen Actors Guild. I get healthcare, I get retirement, I get everything from them. I’ll pay my union dues.”

He continued;

“When I sued Vince, we had to depose him...And so, when we got in there Vince, and my attorney was great. He said, ‘Mr. McMahon,’ he said, ‘has there ever been a union in wrestling?’ Vince [replies], ‘no.’ [The lawyer asks] ‘Anyone ever try to form one?’ Vince sat a minute, he says, ‘well, yeah, as a matter of fact, Jesse Ventura spouted his mouth off about it once years ago.’ And my attorney goes, ‘well, how do you know that? Did you hear him? No? Well, how did you know he spouted his mouth off?’ He didn’t even hesitate. ‘Hulk Hogan told me’…It was like someone punched me in the face. This was my friend and I thought, ‘Hogan betrayed me? Hogan called Vince and ratted me [out], was an office stooge?’ In my day, that’s what they were called. That was a lowlife, somebody who reports to the office in the old days. And it stunned me, stunned me. I sat there in the chair and I couldn’t even think that it was Hogan. And then Vince admitted it on Larry King too. And there’s no reason for him to lie...in the trial, we got the [financial] records of WrestleMania 3, the big one, him and Andre [The Giant], well, Hogan made more money than all of us combined, including Andre. That could even out the money a little bit more and I saw that he made more than Andre and all of us combined, then, the picture was crystal clear to me, that he sold us out because he was getting taken care of and he didn’t want nobody else horning in on the good deal he had.”

The rest, sadly, was history.