The last time we brought you "crazy story time with Hulk Hogan," he was spinning a yarn on begging World Wrestling Federation (WWF) owner Vince McMahon to sign Sting away from World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1987 so Hogan could turn heel and put him over because he thought the Stinger could be the biggest babyface of all time.
Yeah.
Now, he's got another story in the latest edition of Fighting Spirit Magazine on his apparent want to turn heel earlier in his career than he actually did. This time, he says he wanted to be a bad guy during his feud with Ultimate Warrior that would culminate with "The Hulkster" going over at WrestleMania 6 because it would have been intense and he would have become the best bad guy of all time.
"Vince and I were best friends, but when we talked about money, we were enemies. So I went [to WCW] with the red and yellow, beat Ric Flair, and Hulkamania took off again. Then, creatively, I turned into a bad guy, which I always wanted to do in the WWF, but nobody wanted me to. I always said, 'I could be the best bad guy ever. Just let me do it', but no-one wanted me to be a bad guy. At Warrior's time, I really wanted to fuck him as a bad guy; I wanted to beat The Ultimate Warrior in Toronto, but as a heel. I just thought it would be intense, and I would be the best bad guy ever. I could have done it, and then said, 'Forget the prayers and the vitamins, I did it for the money!' But it's just creative differences, and Vince knows what he's doing, believe me. I just wanted to try something different in the WWF."
Hogan was losing a lot of his heat as a babyface around this time and it probably would have been better for business to turn him heel. But by all accounts, that's not something he ever really considered until he was dragged kicking and screaming into it in 1996 when he joined up with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall to form the wildly successful New World Order (nWo) at Bash at the Beach.
That came only after a failed run as babyface champion. His claim that "Hulkamania took off" after he beat Ric Flair in his first match in WCW is disingenuous at best. Sure, buyrates went up in comparison to other headlining attractions and he was easily the biggest star on the roster, setting new records for the company, but it's not like he was doing nearly as well as he was at his peak.
Essentially, he waited to turn heel until he had absolutely no choice. It got so bad for him as a babyface in WCW that he wasn't even being used on television until he showed up on pay-per-view (PPV) to join forces with the Outsiders (who are locked in a tight battle with Harlem Heat right now in the Cageside Seats Greatest Tag Team Tournament, and you can go vote here).
So if he wouldn't turn heel even when his babyface character wasn't even coming close to working -- and the reason he gave Eric Bischoff when initially confronted with the idea was that his life would alter drastically, even his personal life and he had kids to think about -- but we're supposed to believe he wanted to turn in 1990 when he was still doing relatively well but was on the downturn?
Right.