Hulkamania Lives On Forever

I just got a text from my brother with some bad news. I don’t think the Iron Sheik hacked my brother’s phone to send me a fake message… so could it be true that the legend Hulk Hogan is gone? I Googled it and sure enough there are a lot of posts from every outlet spreading the news. First we lose Theo Huxtable and now this? Not shaping up to be a great week for any of us who grew up in the 80s… in other words, everyone over the age of 40.

When I was a kid my dad took my brother and I to a WWF match. It was a Saturday night (I remember that because my dad said we still had to go to church in the morning 😇) and the highlight, of course, was seeing Hulk Hogan wrestle. I also remember seeing the Ultimate Warrior and the Honky Tonk Man that night, too. I can’t remember if Ultimate Warrior or Hulk Hogan wrestled against Honky Tonk Man, but I know for sure there was a smashed guitar by the end of the match. I even snagged a piece of it that I held on to as memorabilia for many years. Where IS that splintered piece of wood, anyway?

That was just one tiny spec of a highlight in Hulk Hogan’s very long wrestling career. From drinking eggs to saying his prayers, the leg drop, Hulkamania running wild, or Hulk himself running out to defend a lesser wrestler, he was a legend and the hero of every boy in the 80s. Although, I’ll just be totally honest, for some reason I really liked The Iron Sheik, too. Maybe because he was the outcast, the outsider, the villain. Every hero has a villain to deal with, right? There was Andre the Giant, too, a notorious villain of Hulk’s. Over the years Hulk had many opponents who tried to take him down but with a 2-count fist pump to save a match and then a twirl of the hand to his ear, we were all in his corner.

I’m sorry to hear the news but deep down I know Hulkamania lives on. Even when he was ‘bad guy’ Hollywood Hogan, we all still knew the ‘good guy’ was behind it all. The words of his theme song come to mind…

I am a real American
Fight for the rights of every man.
I am a real American
Fight for what’s right, fight for your life.

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Upon his entrance to Heaven and he hears “Well done thou good and faithful servant,” I wonder if there’ll be an angel lifting up Hulk’s arm with a victory in his final match of life. Everyone’s gonna miss you, brother.

-Out of the Wilderness