Hulk Hogan On Today’s Wrestlers – ‘They Look Like They Should Be Bagging My Groceries’
Hulk Hogan believes a lot of the wrestlers today look like they should be bagging his groceries.
During a recent appearance on the “Full Send” podcast, the WWE Hall of Famer opined on the differences between today’s era of professional wrestling versus when he was in his prime.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the change in mentality among wrestlers: “It wasn’t the WWE, it was the wrestling business. It was, when I got in, man, when I walked in a dressing room, there were like six guys sitting there. There all 300-pounders. I was a medium-sized guy, and I weighed 300-plus. When I got in, if you wanted to be a wrestler, okay, there’s a guy there. He’s got two big cauliflower ears, his nose is broken, his teeth are knocked out, he’s got four kids at home. This next guy over here was an NCAA Champion. He’s got a steel plate in his forearm, his name’s Harley Race. Good luck with him. Then the other two guys, they look like serial killers, and if you wanted to be a wrestler, you gotta take their job and take the food out of their family’s mouth. That’s the difference. Everybody I wrestled looked like monster-sized men.
“Nowadays, there’s a lot of guys that look like wrestlers, there’s a lot of guys that don’t. A lot of guys who look like wrestlers and a lot of guys who look like they should be bagging my groceries. So the difference is how athletic the guys are. Smaller guys can do all kinds of crazy stuff. They do so much stuff, so much impressive stuff in one match, I wouldn’t do that much in a year. What does it mean?”
On the biggest difference between wrestling today and in his prime: “I think the main thing with the product is that it has had an attraction, like a Hulk Hogan, who you could put with this guy or that guy or him or you or One Man Gang or that guy, and just sell out anything. Instead of having that one attraction, like a Hulk Hogan or a Rock or an Andre the Giant or a Stone Cold Steve Austin, instead of having that one guy that’s really the attraction, I think the star now is the production of the show. I see the guys wrestle, and if one guys is hurt, there’s another one from the Performance Center that slides right in and takes his place, and they’re all the same size and pretty much have the same color hair and their clothes are made by the same seamstress and they learn how to wrestle from the same group of trainers.
“When I got in the business, we all learned from wrestling every night and being in the ring and getting your ass beat and getting hurt. We learned that way, where we weren’t doing forward rolls with helmets on and the doctors and massagers and trainers. If you hurt your thumb, they go put you in the X-ray machine and ‘You gotta take four weeks off, you broke your nail.’ It’s different now. Back in the day it was, ‘Get in the car, shut the hell up, and you’re opening the beers, I’m driving.’”
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