I don't often write about what I have watched on TV and this isn't because I don't watch things, I definitely do. In fact, I probably spend too much time watching stupid crap when I should be outside on the beach exploring and taking advantage of the wonderful things that this part of the world has to offer.
My excuse: It's really hot outside and my dog gets lonely if I don't take her with me and she gets too hot if I do take her with me.
Anyway, the other day I was at a friend's pub and he mentioned that there was a 4 part Hulk Hogan documentary that just dropped on Netflix so I went home that same day and started watching it.
When I was a kid I really enjoyed wrestling. My friends were in the same boat with me and we would buy the wrestling magazines and tune in for mostly what would end up becoming WCW (the competitor to WWF-later WWE.) One of the things that myself and my friends had was a kind of loathing for the Hulk Hogan character. We were more fans of the 4-Horsemen and other bad guys. Very few of us had cable, if you are old enough to even know what saying that means, so the only news we ever really got about the WWF was from magazines whereas the WCW (then called NWA) matches were on "regular TV" a couple of times a week on TBS.
So while I was aware of the huge impact that Hogan had on wrestling as far as popularizing it was concerned, I don't think that as a kid that I ever even saw a full match of his.
As I got older I kind of started to fade away from wrestling but I would catch up with what was going on from time to time or maybe play a videogame where since I never bothered to learn the real controls I simply just hit buttons as fast as I could in the hopes that it was going to make some sort of move happen.
In all of those years that I wasn't really paying attention, Hulk Hogan kept right on going at it and staying in the limelight for a long period of time. During all of a lot of this though, the internet was kind of in its beginning stages so I didn't really have any idea, until I watched this documentary, that Hogan was having a ton of problems in his personal life that I think most people are aware of today.
When he popped up in some rally for Donald Trump a few years ago my first reaction was "that guy is still alive?"
well it would turn out that he wouldn't be alive for much longer as this documentary points out in the opening scenes of the first episode where his funeral is taking place.
I think there are a lot of people that really don't like Hogan now but I believe that much of this has to do with him getting involved in a political sense towards the end of his life. I didn't like the Hulk Hogan character because I was a fan of the bad guys or heels and Hogan spent most of his career being the direct opposite of that. He was always not just a good guy, but the goodest good guy.
While I was watching this documentary I recall a lot of the things like the "say your prayers, eat your vitamins, be good to your parents" sort of stuff he would shout during his promos.
I kind of learned a lot about the guy watching this that I kind of missed all of due to one, not having cable as a kid, and then later because I was in college and other things occupied my time and then even later because I had a job and then even later later because I moved to Thailand and lived in a jungle house that didn't even have an internet connection. It's a strange life that I have lead.
I do recall the energy of the Hulk Hogan character though and love him or hate him, I couldn't help but feel a sort of sympathy for the "brother" whenhe is getting interviewed and he is with his kids working out and the guy is just really old and needs to use canes and various other devices simply to get around. I guess that is what a lifetime in the industry will do to a person.
I don't know if this documentary is really going to surprise that many people like when they do the rather soft and kind expose into steroid use and how he cheated on his wife. I don't know how naive a person would have to be in order to not just assume both of these things but apparently you have to be a great deal more naive than I am. Of course he was doing both of these things and it is not a surprise at all to have the man himself admit it for a 4-part special.
A learned a lot about him and his life during all of this that I wasn't privy to when I was growing up such as the fact that in the beginning, even though he was friggin everywhere in adverts, cartoons, merchandising, and films, the guy wasn't making very much money because there wasn't a lot of money in wrestling until around the 90's. They do a whole portion of the show about how the first Wrestlemania involved a lot of people betting everything they have and then a bunch of borrowed money on this event being a hit. Now it is one of the biggest "sporting" events that takes place in the world and WWE, despite being a product that everyone other than little kids already knows is scripted, manages to make just crazy amounts of money every year.
If you were a fan of wrestling then or now I think you will really enjoy this special. I had to cut myself off at midnight when the 2nd episode was over because I knew that I would just binge all the way to the end to the detriment of my own sleep schedule.
There are interviews with basically anyone involved in wrestling and a lot of people that are not including Trump himself. Basically, if the person is still alive, they likely have something to say about Terry "Hulk" Hogan.
This is available on Netflix right now and I think most people have a Netflix subscription, right?
It's a kind of tragic tale but at least they get that out of the way right at the start since they begin the entire thing at the guy's funeral. The really cool thing about the filming is that they spent the time to do a lot of these interviews the year before he died and this says to me that nobody even knew the guy was sick. This was meant to be released while he was still alive perhaps?
Whatever the reasoning is there, I thoroughly enjoyed this and think you will as well.