KON on… Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan (Brother, Dude, Jack)

Columns, Top Story

Well let me tell you something, brother…

TNA is woeful right now. Don’t get me wrong, RAW and Smackdown are horrible too, but Gunner, Crimson, Garrett and Matt Morgan don’t appear on those shows.

What happened? Even during 2010, a terrible year for the company, the show was watchable. Now we can’t even pay someone to recap their next PPV…

Flair and Hogan are no longer wrestling. That has to be a good thing, right?

In Flair’s book, To Be The Man, he talks about WCW ruining the name Ric Flair, ruining his connection with the fans and making him feel shitty about himself in general. He said he didn’t feel like Ric Flair again until facing HHH in a WWE ring. Ten years have passed, and it’s like the fucking circle of life or something, he’s gone through the motions. TNA made him a joke, so he went to WWE’s Hall of Fame and got the respect he deserved.

Flair is also far too old to be doing anything even remotely related to wrestling. This is slightly problematic, seeing as he can’t make money doing anything else at his age. He’s tried selling phone-calls, voicemails, skype “interviews” and all sorts of depressing stuff. If he bothered to learn a trade, invest any of his cash or just treat any of his wives with respect, he’d be sitting at home right now with a huge fucking grin on his face, laughing at the fact that Hogan is still pretending to be relevant in this day and age.

Remember that interview I did with CB? I talked about wrestlers being arse holes in real life, but being able to look past that when it came to watching them in the ring. I can’t do that with Flair, he’s like a senile old man wearing a Ric Flair costume.

I can’t do it with Hogan either. Hogan right now is an embarrassing, old, bald, porn making, Brutus shagging, backstabbing, bastard. Everything I hear about Hogan, or read, just makes me think less and less of him.

“Hey, Hogan was an arse hole back in the day too, what with all the politics and whatnot!”

Yeah, that’s true. As nice as it is to point out every now and then, it doesn’t make the good things that came out of it seem horrible, nor the bad seem worse. The NWO happened, the Sting build happened and we were all like “Fuck yeah!” at the time (we had yet to experience Hogan vs Sting or Hogan vs Sting II). Hogan may have stopped guys like Jericho and Guerrero from moving up the card, but we still got to see their matches. It’s not like every episode of NITRO consisted of nothing but The Nasty Boys, Brutus, Horace, whoever smuggled weed through the airport that week and Hulk himself.

Dixie often talks about all the shit Hogan does when he’s not at TV tapings. Do you think we’ll ever see the day when he just does that stuff?

I thought it was gonna happen in November, but during promotion for the UK Tour, Dixie said she hadn’t spoken to Hogan for “months.” Now he’s back and, much like Puffy in ’96, he’s all up in the studio, all up in the videos, dancing…

Hogan wouldn’t be able to argue with TNA if they did ask him to keep off TV, he needs all the money he can get right now. Linda owns 40% of Hulkamania, so it’s not like he can live off DVD sets and merch (which might be a blessing, as nobody wants to own a TNA DVD including Hogan’s matches with Flair and Sting last year). He’s not in a Sorensen situation, but  he’ll do whatever the higher-ups tell him to.

We need to convince TNA that Hogan is worthless. I’m not sure how to do that, seeing as their PPV buys are on par with ROH’s at the moment. We could turn over whenever Hogan shows his face, but this is TNA we’re talking about, you’d have no reason to turn back (unless you’re recapping).

Hogan often talks about “turning the company around, brother” during his meetings with the press. Imagine advertising your company like that. They, right now, are in the middle of a “storyline” where Hogan tuns the company around.

I can clearly see why the roster, bar ex-WWE guys, is mostly shite (Gunner, Crimson, Garrett…).You’d never see McMahon, Ace, JR., or whoever-the-fuck trying to reel in rising stars from the indies with lines like “Shit’s gonna get better soon, brother!” Who in the world is sitting at home right now, hoping that one day, if they play their cards right, they can end up in TNA?

Other shite Hogan and his chums have come up with to bring in more viewers include:

  • Open Fight Night – It’s a work, brother.
  • Living the gimmick – Because it worked out so well for Hogan and Flair
  • Sanitizing the product – Who gets paid to come up with this stuff? WWE got massive hate on the internets for focusing on a PG market, why the fuck would they pick that aspect to copy?

Blood and strong language don’t necessarily make a show better, but the chance of either occurring gives them an edge WWE don’t have. What can they do now? The same thing they did years ago, focus on the X-Division. Austin Aries is worth 100 Bobby Roodes, 500 Meth Hardys, 1000 fifty-three-year-old Stings…

Martin is a mediocre blogger who somehow managed to blag his way onto the Pulse Wrestling team. When not writing about men in spandex, he can be found fannying about with synthesizers. He goes by the names KON in the comments section & martyrshow on the twittors.