14. Helping Create The Greatest Heel In WWE History
Despite being so painfully patriotic that he was literally put into GI Joe as a character (ok, it was fictionalized, but it wouldn't exactly have worked if he was some sort of America-hating monstrosity, would it?), WWE pulled off a masterstroke in the early '90s by reinventing Sgt Slaughter as a noogie-wielding anti-Yank. Obviously, having him sympathise with Iraq - at the height of Middle East tension - was a quick way to generate heat, but it could just as easily have been deemed cheap. You know, like Vince McMahon was attempting to capitalise on legitimate fears of all out war for ratings, or something. At least Slaughter refused to burn the American flag. The answer - as with every pantomime sized villain - was to bring in an equally powerful force to balance it (and make all that evil magnified). Without Hogan on the roster, Slaughter would have had to settle for a less poignant, and less AMURRICAN symbol than Hulk's shirt to burn. And there's no guarantee that the replacement would ever have generated the necessary pops to give Slaughter's evil the right context. And if it couldn't, the WWE would have been without one its most satisfyingly hateable heel.
