I agree on the point of selling if you are talking about his selling upto his Hulk-Up. It was top notch.
Why up to his Hulk-Up? The only reason the Hulk-Up even works is because of how well he sold his opponents offense. If Hogan couldn't sell being beaten down, people wouldn't care if he came back.
Despite what some fans may think, the Hulk-Up is wrestling at its finest. And it only works if the performer doing is good enough to make fans care about it.
On the issue of workrate this is what D-Man mentioned in one thread and I believe that I cannot express it better than him.
You want to talk about workrate Sly. This is what workrate is all about especially the bolded part.
First of all, that has NOTHING to do with workrate, and second of all, that's just simply untrue.
Workrate is the rate at which you "work" the audience into believing the reality of the match. As I've pointed out, Hogan was fantastic at it.
As far as charisma goes, yes it is important in the ring but it is far more important outside the ring.
No, no it's not. Not even close
Charisma is your ability to connect with your audience. If you cut entertaining promos, but your matches are met with yawns from the audience, you cannot be successful. Charisma in the ring is FAR more important than charisma outside of it. That's why Hulk Hogan is still the greatest wrestler ever, and The Rock isn't.
And that is where Hogan did most of his work, outside the ring. Tell me after all those awesome segments between Andre and Hogan who wouldn't be interested in watching the match. From a technical point of view, the match was shit. It is Hogan's and Andre's starpower that made the match, not their in ring ability.
Actually, if you understand what you are watching, the match is quite solid. It's not ever going to be remember for anything other than Hogan vs. Andre and the bodyslam, but it was a solid main-event match.
As for his matches and offense being believable humor me this. Hogan is a pretty huge guy so why should he resort to only punching and kicking when he could easily throw the guy around the ring?
Because he's not an amateur wrestler who does suplexes, he's a John Wayne-style American brawler. Did you ever see the American icon John Wayne picking people up and doing 15 different vertical suplexes and powerbombs? No, what you saw was him using his fists to take down the bad guys.
That's the kind of hero Americans have always loved. That's what Hulk Hogan was. It was VERY believable and fit his character perfectly.
That is what psychology is about, isn't it? Wrestling in a manner that makes sense.
Which Hogan did, so that would mean he has great psychology.
As for his matches what part of being beaten down for 15 minutes and even being hit by your opponent's finisher on some occasions and then hulking up as if nothing had happened just because the crowd is cheering for you believable? I am not saying that it did not work but you certainly cannot say that it was believable.
Oh, absolutely it can. That's just silly. If you want a real life example, look at the UFC fight between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen. Sonnen battered Silva from the bell in the first round, the second round, the third round, the fourth round and the fifth round...until that moment with only a couple minutes left in the fight, Anderson Silva caught him with a finisher and choked him out.
Of course it's believable. Then again, that wasn't Hogan's routine his entire career either. That routine was only a mainstay of good guy Hogan (not Hollywood) for just a few years. His early WWF work didn't use it every match, his work in Japan didn't use it, his work as heel Hollywood Hogan didn't use it every match...it's what we remember, but it wasn't something he did every match over the course of 30 years.
Let's go to the storytelling part shall we? He only told one story in the ring. That being of a hero in trouble and then conquering insurmountable odds and coming out on top.
That's completely fictitious. He told the story which needed to be told. Sometimes it was the hero conquering insurmountable odds, a story which is hardly unique to Hogan or pro wrestling. If I'm not mistaken, that's a very common theme in TV shows and movies as well.
But when the situation called for Hogan to pass the torch to Warrior, the story told was MUCH different and the match is still one of the greatest matches in history. His match with Rock and McMahon were different. The match Hogan had with Sting was different (not good, but different).
The stories Hogan told in the ring depended upon what was needed. He play the conquering hero very well, and Americans have always loved that story, so he told it many times, just like all of the faces in today's WWE do. But when the match called for something else, he gave it to them.
If you have seen one Hogan match you have seen them all.
As I've pointed out, this is completely false.
Yep Hogan was pretty bad in the ring.
No, he wasn't. He was quite good. Ask yourself this question...
You claim "if you have seen one Hogan match you have seen them all". While that's simply not true, let's say for argument's sake it is. What does it say about the ability of a wrestler to have the same match for the majority of his career, and STILL have people on the edge of their seats each time? What does it say when he outpops Rock and HBK in his late 40s? What does it say that when Hogan did his Hulk-Up, people went nuts nearly every time?
Even if we accept the argument every Hogan match was the same, what does it say about the quality of wrestler that Hogan was to make people care every time, even if they had already seen it many times before?
No matter how you slice it, Hogan in the ring was a tremendous worker. Far better than Christian in just about every way.
). However, we're talking about Hulk Hogan.
