15 Times WCW Was Better Than Literally EVERYTHING
8. Hulk Hogan Arrives In “The Dubya-C-Dubya”
The summer of 1994 was a game changing one for the company.
Eric Bischoff signed wrestling's golden goose Hulk Hogan, which marked the first time the promotion properly felt on par with Vince McMahon’s WWF as a shiny product you needed to start checking out. Hogan was wrestling to many people who didn't watch weekly, and he was a bonafide celebrity outside the confines of the biz too. That carried a lot of weight with advertisers and sponsors.
WCW knew they had to celebrate bagging Hulk, so they laid it on thick with a special parade at Disney's MGM Studios. People came out to see it, and the whole thing came across as bigger than anything else the promotion had done up until that point. Such was the marketing might of Hulkamania, eh? Over in the WWF, the McMahons were still scrambling to find some direction.
Their 'New Generation' produced stellar matches involving Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon and more, but bankable star power was thinner than the hair on Hogan's head, and a bold bid to turn Lex Luger into the next coming had already failed miserably. Then, to Vince's chagrin, his meal ticket through the 80s and into the early-90s had hitched his horse to Ted Turner's post instead.
Bischoff has noted on his '83 Weeks' podcast that Hulk changed perceptions of WCW overnight. He pulled the biggest pay-per-view buyrate yet vs. Ric Flair on Bash At The Beach '94, and so many more companies were suddenly willing to talk cold hard cash with the organisation that hadn't even given it a look in before.
Hogan brought eyeballs and opened wallets.