When Hulk Hogan finally made his fateful return to WWE in 1983, it was put in motion by photographer Steve Taylor who approached him at a show at Chicago's Rosemont Horizon and instructed him to give Vince a call. When Hogan told him that Vince had banned him for life, Taylor told him Jr. was in charge now. When he got back to Minnesota, Hollywood noticed Verne and Greg acting shady when they announced they were leaving a booking meeting early, so he followed them to the airport where he spotted them having a covert meeting with Vince McMahon, Jr. himself. This was the deciding factor for Hulk to make the call to WWE, where Vince sold him on his vision of going national with The Hulkster as his centerpiece star. After somewhere around 9 hours of negotiating the two giants of the industry came to terms and shook hands, and then Hulk quit the AWA with no notice. To his credit he admits he should have put Nick Bockwinkel over on the way out in the time-honored tradition, and his refusal to do so infuriated Verne even more. That anger pushed Gagne to reach out to his old friend The Iron Shiek and offer him $100,000 to break Hulk Hogan's leg in the title match at Madison Square Garden. Shiek's cooler head prevailed (can anyone believe that's a sentence?), he didn't take the money, and the rest is history. Imagine if The Iron Shiek had went through with the double cross and snapped The Hulkster's leg in what was meant to be his superstar-making match. Wrestling would be a VERY different business. Who knows, it might not even exist at all. Check out the interview at http://podcastone.com/Talk-Is-Jericho and tune back in in a few days for part 2.
Brad Hamilton is a writer, musician and marketer/social media manager from Atlanta, Georgia. He's an undefeated freestyle rap battle champion, spends too little time being productive and defines himself as the literary version of Brock Lesnar.
