The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Of Hulk Hogan's Wrestling Career
The Hulkster's legacy is not as simple as it might seem. Should he be celebrated, shunned, or both?
The legacy of the late Hulk Hogan is… complicated.
Undeniably, professional wrestling wouldn’t be what it is today without Hulkamania runnin’ wild throughout the 80s and 90s, until the Hulkster changed the game again and went “Hollywood.”
Ask any wrestler or fan of a certain age and they almost universally will tell you that they dropped a leg on their favorite stuffed animal, cupped a hand to their ear, or said their prayers and took their vitamins because of Hogan.
But just as Hulk left an indelible positive mark on professional wrestling, he also left various scars and stains on the industry, and pop culture at large. Toward the last decade of his life, Hogan had all but become a wrestling pariah, excommunicated from WWE for a period, only to return and face diminishing reactions from a fanbase that had moved on or were judging him holistically, and not just based on his contributions to the industry.
It’s not typically a classy move to speak ill of the deceased, but it also is unfair to whitewash a person’s existence simply because they aren’t around to rebut the negatives. Ignoring the detrimental parts is unfair – to those harmed, to a sense of morality, and to history.
We’ll attempt here to present those different facets straightforwardly and without too much editorializing, simply painting a more complete picture of Hulk Hogan.
Let’s get to it…