That Was Then 2.9.07: The Many Friends Of Hulk Hogan Part 2

Brutus Beefcake (1994)

When Hulk Hogan came to WCW, it was with great fanfare, and he was treated as the great savior. He walked in and defeated Ric Flair for the WCW World title in his first match. Months later, he defeated Flair again in a Career vs Career match in a cage, but in the time between the two matches, he had been continually harassed and attacked by a masked man who wore black from head to toe and carried a tire iron with him which he would use to attack Hogan. After Hogan defeated Flair in the cage, the masked man again attempted to attack Hogan, but this time Hogan was ready for him. He knocked the masked man out and tore the mask off to reveal…Brutus Beefcake. Hogan was shocked, Beefcake had been his best friend for years and had stood by him through so much, even when other friends had turned their back on him, and he was the one man Hogan never expected to have to face. Before Hogan had a chance to react, Kevin Sullivan and Avalanche (the former Earthquake) stormed the ring and the three of them attacked Hogan. This new group, calling themselves the Three Faces Of Fear, dedicated themselves to the destruction of Hulk Hogan and Hulkamania.

Though both men had friends to aid them in their battle, the main focus of the situation was an eventual singles showdown between Hogan and Beefcake. Beefcake, who now called himself the Butcher, felt that after having stood by Hogan through so much, he felt disrespected and forgotten when Hogan hit it big, always leaving Butcher to play second fiddle. Hogan, along with his friends Sting and Dave Sullivan, met the Three Faces Of Fear in a six man tag at the Clash Of The Champions weeks later and won, but Beefcake attacked Hogan after the match and put him out with a sleeperhold. Hogan had won the battle, but the war was not yet over.

A singles match between the two for Hogan’s WCW World Title was signed for Starrcade. Thought Hogan would normally seem to be the overwhelming favorite against a guy like Beefcake, psychological warfare notwithstanding, another element was added to the mix: Randy Savage, fresh off his WWF run, came to WCW and said that he would be in attendance for the main event at Starrcade and would either shake Hulk Hogan’s hand or slap him in the face. Nobody knew what Savage would do, possibly including Savage, but the Three Faces Of Fear seemed certain that he would side with them due to Savage’s own rocky history with Hogan. Starrcade came and, as expected, Hogan easily defeated Butcher. The Three Faces Of Fear rushed the ring after the match, but as they prepared to attack Hogan, Savage ran into the ring. As both sides stared at him to see what he would do, he shook hands with the Faces Of Fear and went to attack Hogan, but before the attack happened, Savage turned on the Faces Of Fear and he and Hogan cleared them out of the ring.

The show ended with Hogan being challenged by US Champion and #1 Contender Vader, but the feud with the Three Faces Of Fear was not yet concluded. Now that Hogan had Savage on his side, the reunited Megapowers tipped the edge in numbers away from Butcher and his cronies. The Megapowers faced Butcher and Sullivan one final time at the Clash Of The Champions in January 1995. Thanks to Savage’s magical reviving elbowdrop, Hogan and Savage defeated the Three Faces Of Fear and put that feud to rest once and for all. But as he left Butcher and friends behind and looked forward toward a feud with Vader and eventually Ric Flair as well, the question was whether Hogan be able to trust Savage this time around, or if Savage would once again stab him in the back.

Lex Luger (1995)

Later that year, Hogan was again at war with Sullivan and his new stable, the Dungeon Of Doom. Sullivan had the usual crew of unimpressive ex-WWF guys for his team members, but Hogan had built up a group of allies that included some real stars: Randy Savage, Sting, and Vader. Vader hastily left WCW a few weeks before the two sides were to meet in the Wargames at Fall Brawl, leaving Hogan’s side one man short. In a huge surprise, Lex Luger showed up on the first episode of WCW Monday Nitro and immediately challenged Hogan to defend the WCW Title against him. Hogan and Luger met the following week, but interference from the Dungeon Of Doom prevented a clean finish. Luger and Hogan, along with Sting and Savage, cleared the ring. With his good friend Luger back in WCW after sevral years, Sting seemed anxious to begin teaming with him again, and suggested that Luger fill Vader’s spot on the Wargames team. Savage vehemently disagreed, thinking that Luger was not to be trusted. Luger responded by bringing up Savage’s own past relationship with Hogan, saying that Savage was in no position to pass judgment on him.

In the end, Hogan brought Luger on board, and the new team beat the Dungeon Of Doom to win the Wargames. Despite doing his part in the match, Savage was still suspicious of Luger afterward. Unlike Savage, Sting trusted Luger implicitly, and would often watch one another’s back and team together. Savage kept taking digs at Luger, and eventually they agreed to meet at Halloween Havoc under the condition that they both won the matches they already had scheduled that evening. Savage quickly and easily won his match against Zodiac (another gimmick of Beefcake’s), but Luger had a little more trouble with Meng later that evening. Meng actually had Luger finished, but Sullivan came in and broke up the cover and gave Luger the DQ win. Now everybody was wondering why Sullivan would help Luger beat his own man, and this only helped to fuel Savage’s accusations toward Luger. They met later in the evening as agreed, and —- made his way down to ringside. He got up on the apron and distracted the referee, but Savage threw Luger into him and then hit the top rope elbowdrop for the win. Now nobody knew what the hell was going on, but the truth would finally be revealed later that evening when the Dungeon Of Doom attacked Hogan after his title defense against the Giant. Hogan had already been betrayed by Jimmy Hart, but when Savage and Luger ran in, everybody assumed it was to help Hogan fight off his attackers. Instead, Luger attacked Hogan and Savage and joined in as the Dungeon Of Doom beat the Megapowers down.

But was Luger actually now a member of the Dungeon Of Doom, or was this a solo act to help persuade Hogan to give him another match? He brought on Jimmy Hart as his manager briefly, but didn’t hang out with the Dungeon Of Doom. Furthermore, he was still maintaining his friendship and tag team with Sting. It didn’t seem like a heel turn per se, but a turn against Hogan and Savage in particular. Still, he was intent on getting another shot at the WCW World Title, and would continue to oppose Hogan, including joining the Horsemen and the Dungeon Of Doom as they faced Hogan and Savage 8-on-2 in a three-tiered cage match at Uncensored. Hogan and Savage won and then Hogan took a leave of absence from WCW, so a feud with Luger would have to wait. In the meantime, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash invaded WCW as the Outsiders, randomely attacking WCW wrestlers and eventually challenging them to a six man tag at Bash At The Beach. WCW accepted, and the WCW team that was picked to face them was Sting, Randy Savage…and Lex Luger. Though Savage still didn’t trust Luger, he thought that since they were all fighting a common enemy, those feelings would have to be put aside until the threat of the Outsiders was gone. However, a lot of people still thought Luger would turn on his WCW partners and join up with Hall & Nash.

As we know, in the end it was not Luger, but Hulk Hogan himself who turned on WCW when he joined the Outsiders to form the NWO. While Hogan would quickly go through Savage (who would later end up joining the NWO) and an eventual showdown with Sting was the focus of the entire angle, Luger spent most of 1997 feuding with Hogan, but from the face side instead of as a heel. He dropped a fall to Hogan in the Team WCW vs Team NWO vs Team Piper match at Uncensored, but came back to score several submission wins over Hogan throughout the year with the Torture Rack. The series of wins led up to one night on Nitro when Luger was granted a WCW World Title shot just days ahead of their scheduled meeting at Road Wild. Luger cleanly defeated Hogan for the title, but Hogan got the last laugh in the end, getting help from the NWO to defeat Luger and reclaim the WCW World Title just five days after losing it. For the first time, somebody had turned on Hogan and wound up as the babyface, but the result was the same as it ever was.

Sting (1999)

This probably turned out to be the worst of the angles where a friend turned on Hulk Hogan. Sting and Hogan had been friends for a couple of years after Hogan first arrived in WCW, but they were firmly opposed during the NWO Era, and a match between the two built for over a year before they had their massively disappointing match at Starrcade 1997 with the controversial conclusion. Months later when the NWO split into two rival factions, Sting joined the Wolfpac, which opposed Hogan’s NWO Hollywood faction. They had spent some time as friends, but Sting and Hogan had also had their differences over the years.

Flash forward to 1999: Hulk Hogan had a change of heart midway through the year and decided to ditch the NWO and return to the red and yellow, flag-waving American he was during the heyday of Hulkamania. Gone were the days of the evil Hollywood Hogan angrily trying to destroy WCW, he was back to being the proud American who posed for the fans after his matches and visited sick kids in hospitals. Somewhere along the way, he befriended his longtime rival Sting and also regained the WCW World Title. But soon, events began to once again conspire against Hogan.

At Fall Brawl 1999, Hogan was signed to defend the WCW World Title against Sting. Hogan’s character was called into question because of what he had been doing over the past few years, and the question was whether or not Sting would be able to trust Hogan this time around. As it turned out, it was Sting who was not to be trusted. Sting used a baseball bat to beat down Hogan and pin him to win the WCW World Title. After all these years as somebody who could always be counted on to be the standard-bearing babyface of the company, Sting had turned heel.

Or at least he did for a week or two. The unfortunate thing about WCW at this time is that it would start these storylines and either not have any kind of payoff or it would take so many twists and turns that the story would begin to contradict itself and nobody would know what was going on. This was one of those times. Sting’s heel turn was half-hearted at best, and the whole angle fizzled out a month later at Halloween Havoc when the scheduled rematch turned into Hogan walking out in street clothes, laying down, and allowing Sting to pin him before leaving on an extended vacation. Sting got squashed later in the PPV by Goldberg, but by that point nobody cared anymore. Though Hogan never cleanly beat Sting, this series of events, on top of the bizarre turn their blowoff match took in 1997, did more to damage Sting’s career than anything else, and ruined the guy who could have been THE babyface for WCW in its final years. Even though Hogan never beat him, in a professional sense, Sting still lost.

Shawn Michaels (2005)

When Hulk Hogan left the WWF in 1993, it left a gaping hole at the top of the WWF hierarchy. His departure also coincided almost exactly with the beginning of Michaels’ big push as a singles wrestler, and Michaels used the opportunity to its fullest advantage. While Hogan was the star of the show in WCW for six or seven years, Shawn Michaels carried the WWF for much of the 90s. By the time Hogan returned to the WWF years later, Michaels had settled into retirement after an injury, and then Hogan was gone again by the time Michaels returned to action at Summerslam 2002. They always seemed to miss being in the company at the same time, and people often wondered what would happen if Michaels and Hogan ever were to wrestle one another, and how such a match would work out politically. But for one reason or another, Michaels and Hogan never crossed paths…until Spring of 2005.

Michaels had been having some trouble with evil Arab Americans Muhammad Hassan and Khozrow Daivari, and needed a partner to face them at Backlash. He knew that when there was trouble with evil foreigners in the WWF, there was always one super American that you could count on, and that man was Hulk Hogan. Hogan returned to a thunderous ovation at Madison Square Garden and announced that he would indeed team with fellow icon Shawn Michaels against Hassan and Daivari. They won the match, and then Hogan went back into retirement, but soon came back to team again with Michaels. After winning a match on Raw, Hogan was doing his usual postmatch celebration when Michaels shocked everyone by knocking Hogan out with a superkick. The announcers were silent as Michaels stood there staring down at Hogan’s unconscious form as the show went off the air.

Michaels wouldn’t leave us wondering why he would turn on Hogan for very long. He said that when Hogan ran off to WCW for more money and left the WWF high and dry, Michaels carried the WWF almost singlehandedly. He went on to accuse Hogan of what many on the internet and in the business had been accusing Hogan of for years: being a selfish politician who holds everybody else down and will bury other people’s careers to keep his spot at the top. Hogan and Michaels signed to meet at Summerslam, but Michaels wasn’t done sniping at Hogan. For weeks, Michaels went out of his way to run Hogan down and mock him, even dressing up like Hogan and doing a fake interview on a fake Larry King Live where he talked about how bad Michaels was going to beat him at Summerslam. He said what everybody else already knew, that he is light years ahead of Hogan as an athlete and as a worker, and that all through his career, people have lost to Hogan because they froze when faced with the aura of Hogan and Hulkamania. Michaels said that for the first time ever, Hogan would be faced with an opponent who wasn’t intimidated by Hogan and his reputation.

Indeed, as much as Michaels made note of Hogan’s backstage reputation, he was also known for being a master politician, and much of the debate leading up to the match was not how good the match would be, but which one of them would be willing to do the job to the other. In a weird sort of way, that made the match more interesting than much of what else has happened in WWE in years. For the first time in a while, people didn’t know who to predict would win the match. In the end, Hogan went over just like always, and after the match, Michaels said to Hogan “I had to know” and extended his hand, and the two men shook hands to end the show on a happy note. Hogan went back into Hoganland afterward, and Michaels buried him on Raw the next night, but for that one night, we got the match we always wanted to see, but never thought we would. But despite all the talk and the politics that went into the match, Hogan won again.

Conclusion

There have been others to have turned against Hogan, especially during the later years of WCW when it seemed that people were turning on their friends and reuniting with no explanation on an almost weekly basis, but nobody ever turned on Hogan and wound up winning in the end. With a lot of them, like Orndorff, Andre, and Beefcake, it made sense. But others probably shouldn’t have lost against Hogan. I especially think that Hogan should have done the job to Michaels who, in addition to being a much harder worker and FAR more entertaining performer than Hogan ever was, also had to be back on Raw the next night. I point to this match whenever people ask about Hogan vs Austin at Wrestlemania. If Hogan wasn’t willing to do the job to Michaels, he certainly would balk at doing the job to Austin, and Austin, who is certainly at Hogan’s level if anyone is, wouldn’t do the job to Hogan, either. Whether it’s politics or just the way it’s booked, Hogan always wins in the end. Austin doesn’t play that way.