8 Signings That DESTROYED Wrestling Promotions
4. Hulk Hogan (1993)
WrestleMania IX was a line in the sand of the Nevada desert back in 1993.
The most devoted of the remaining smaller WWE base had gravitated towards Bret Hart in far smaller numbers than they ever had or would to Hulk Hogan, but the trust in the work and Hart himself as a talisman was a good sign for the future if Vince McMahon had the discipline to not fall back into shortcuts that had worked in the past.
Alas.
Admittedly, fans in the Caesers Palace car park were going wild enough after the returning hero squashed brand new WWE Champion Yokozuna just minutes after he'd won the belt for the first time, and per a recent excellent in-house documentary about the Roman Coliseum edition of the 'Show Of Shows', 'The Hulkster' had spiked the ticket sales. But McMahon clearly entered panic mode when he unfurled the yelow-and-red carpet. Hogan got a big pop on the night, but television audiences appeared to be seeing through the dated and disconnected app - particularly when the five-time WWE Champion didn't make a single appearance in a building between winning the gold in April and dropping it at June's King Of The Ring.
His promos were detached from the product to the point of being nonsensical and alienating, all while the wronged 'Hitman' set about his path back to the top via the gruelling titular tournament. Meanwhile, Hogan referred to the WWE Championship "a toy...a trinket" during a NJPW press conference to leverage a future there instead. Hulkamania wasn't as dead as the company wanted audiences to believe when Yokozuna flattened him, but without any kind of commercial power over the WWE audience for the first time in a decade, it might as well have been.