Hulk Hogan was one of the men that helped bring WCW to unprecedented heights in the mid 90s. There is no doubt about that. But he had a title reign that was so awful that it drags him down into history as being one of the worst champions the company ever had. It was a 69 day run that began on January 4, 1999. A night that helped doom World Championship Wrestling. At the time, the WWF was red hot, and WCW was reeling. Their 84 week winning streak was over, and they needed something big to get their momentum back. Management had a plan, but an terribly ill-advised one. Hulk Hogan vs. the World Champion Kevin Nash was booked on Nitro, which was a fairly big bout at the time. It wouldn't have been a good match by any means, but anything would have been better than what we got. Hogan poked Nash in the chest, and Big Daddy Cool took the biggest bump of his life. He just simply handed over the gold, which brutally damaged the integrity of the belt and the company. During the rest of the run, Hogan only won one singles match, which was against Ric Flair, and then lost the title to him the next month in a steel cage. But even if Hogan were able to put on four star matches against Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko every week, that reign would still have been a fatal mistake.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
