6 Ups & 4 Downs From Vader's Legendary Wrestling Career
Downs...
4. Hulkamania Runs Wild
The senseless and self-serving booking afforded to Hulk Hogan following his mega-money 1994 WCW deal wasn't without rationale. The Hulkster's debut match against Ric Flair had scored the biggest buyrate in company history, and though Eric Bischoff hadn't financially turned a corner for the Turner money pit, the slow journey to pop culture acceptance had begun. Hogan's prominence in repositioning that perception was crucial.
And he knew it.
Hogan steamrolled over 'The Nature Boy', got all his friends jobs and made the existing crop of WCW talent do them, and set about directing his own version of Vince McMahon's carefully crafted 1980s 'Hulkamania' run. To this end, Vader found himself crushed under the weight of Hulk's definitely-not-24-inch "Pythons".
Thief rotten matches spoke to the form Hulk was in, but the worst offence from the WCW Heavyweight Champion came during a pay-per-view match buildup. Still on his 1980s bullsh*t, Hogan literally popped up refreshed after getting flattened with the once-devastating powerbomb. There was nowhere to go for him as a heel after that, and only one place left when he turned babyface the following summer too - WWE.