I don’t do celebrity eulogies often.
This one, I had to do.
The question is, how does one eulogize a person one has never met?
By talking about myself, of course. It’s the influence of the celebrity that drives the compulsion. And there are few stars in my firmament with the sort of influence Hulk Hogan had.
Be clear: this is not a simple nostalgia trip. It couldn’t be.
Because while yes it was as a semi-sickly, underweight adolescent that I first became aware of Hulk Hogan, that encounter was not exclusive to my childhood. It was a seed planted in my childhood. A seed that sprouted into the mighty redwood you see before you today. Like Hulkamania itself, it will never die.
Hulk Hogan was everything that I was not: healthy, flashy, colorful, strong, popular. Unshakeably self-confident. More than that, he stood for something. If he saw a wrong, he would right it. If he encountered the unjust, he would punch it in the face until it learned the error of its ways. Being the champion wasn’t his reason for being… it was a natural by-product of who he already was. Power personified in a responsible way. Though he didn’t win every match, he was never defeated. That’s a very important distinction to make. He also never neglected to be grateful to fans and God and country for giving him the means, motive, and opportunity to be and do all that he was and did.
Most important to me at the time was that Hogan looked through the camera every week and told me that if I worked hard enough, said my prayers, ate my vitamins, trained and believed in myself, I could be just like him.
That made him the first person other than my sainted Irish mother to believe that I was capable of anything. That, as you can imagine (or maybe you don’t have to imagine), has a profound effect.
I took it to heart.
Now, I never got into The Business™, (though I did eventually design and build the ESWA Intercontinental Championship belt) but I learned from The Business™.
Over time, I learned public speaking, body language, a certain vibrancy of presentation. The art of balancing the comfortably familiar with the completely unpredictable. With some practice, I developed a set of skills I would never have had otherwise, skills that granted me gainful employment and a certain amount of local celebrity as a DJ, front man, and duly ordained minister. Very local celebrity, sure. That’s more than I ever would have had. More than I ever would have tried for. More than I would have believed myself capable of.
I made more friends than I ever would have had, also. From all walks of life, in person and online. There is a love and appreciation for pro wrestling that bonds people in a way that nothing else could. I learned a lot from that, too, and have enjoyed as much as I have learned.
The English language does not possess a suitable phrase to convey how much love and respect and sheer fun I’ve experienced—coming and going—as a result of this community. I don’t think the Japanese language has a suitable phrase, and those guys have an expression for everything.
This world outlook has not stopped, is not a distant, fond childhood memory. This world outlook still permeates parts of my life you wouldn’t expect it to, including my art and my literary endeavors. There are times when humming wrestling entrance themes helps me tackle some of the bigger jobs around the house. Puts me in the right frame of mind.
Sounds silly? Eat me. It works.
All of this can be traced back to Hulk Hogan.
And that’s just me.
On a bigger scale, Hulk Hogan was friendly, clean, and above all packageable for a much wider audience with a much deeper range of ages and social classes than was traditional for pro wrestling.
By making the concept of “cartoonish and over-the-top” socially acceptable almost across the board, Hogan didn’t just make himself a star… he made whole galaxies possible.
Today, baseball players have entrance music.
Politicians cut promos.
You know what the term “cut promos” means.
There’s hardly anyone left on the planet who can’t catch a pro wrestling reference. That was not the case in the early 1980s.
Today, pro wrestling is on TV a minimum of four times a week. Nine hours at least. That’s just TV, there’s a lot more on the internet. That’s a whole lot of jobs, a whole lot of ad revenue, a whole lot of mouths fed and people entertained, even if the tide of popularity isn’t quite as high as it was thirty years ago.
All because Terry Bollea accepted being Hulk Hogan, and because he was damned good at it.
Being damned good at it made him a kulturbärer, an avatar, if you will. When you think 1980s, you think Hulk Hogan. He made a staggering chunk of human culture possible, by making pro wrestling palatable to a broader audience. Would the 80s Action Movie have been the genre that it was, without him to let everyone know that it was okay to like that sort of thing? Somehow, I doubt it.
He quite literally changed the world. It wasn’t his idea, I won’t pretend it was. That’s not really important, in the long run. What’s important is that he did it.
There were other people, other colorful characters… (others who usurped his place at the top of my favorites list, not gonna lie) but only one man in that time and place could have been “Hulk Hogan.” In a wonderful bit of cosmic irony, that man turned out to be Italian.
Nothing would ever be the same, after him. For me or for anyone else.
However, being host to an avatar comes with a price. After leg-dropping his way through a forty year career, Terry Bollea’s back was unfixable, he couldn’t feel his legs, and he needed a cane to walk more than a few feet.
That’s just the physical toll. I’m not certain I can imagine what it’s like, to be the embodiment of an era, when new eras constantly bury the previous ones. Elvis Presley would be able to tell us in detail, if it hadn’t killed him.
Hogan didn’t let that side of it kill him. At the end of his time on Earth he was working on a new promotion, still going, still seeking to entertain.
He always found ways to move with the times.
He didn’t always find favor with the world at large.
This is the part where I’m expected to make a soulful expression of disapproval. But to coin a phrase, “that doesn’t work for me, brother.”
Whatever of Hogan’s actions I could point a finger at here, I’ve forgiven worse. Hell, I’ve done worse.
And when I remember that people who are suited to pro wrestling are not always suited to anything else, and that thanks to Hogan there are hundreds, thousands of people pulling down five or six figure salaries in or around a squared circle, instead of slaving at three underpaid jobs that all make them different kinds of miserable…
When I think of the millions (and millions!) of lives those people have made (and continue to make) just a little bit brighter, more fun, more hopeful, more livable even for just a few hours a week; lives like mine...
Well then in my book, Hulk Hogan has done more good than bad.
Will anyone be able to say the same of me, when the time comes?
I don’t do celebrity eulogies often.
This one, I had to do.
Hulk Hogan told me that I could be something more than a sickly, insecure child. Took a while, but he turned out to be right.
To this day, I say my prayers, eat my vitamins, train, and most of all believe in myself.
And I’m better for it.
Thanks, Hulk. Godspeed.