“This Is Gonna Be Tough”: Hulk Hogan Reveals Why He Almost Rejected a Famous Gimmick That Brought Him Massive Success Later

Hulk Hogan is famous all over the pro wrestling world for his red and yellow American hero persona. Fans from all around the world loved his baby face character in pro wrestling. Even Hogan himself loved his positive character a lot.

Hulkamania was so attached to his American hero character that when the former Executive Producer and Senior Vice President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) approached him with the idea of portraying a heel character, he straight up refused to do so.

Hulk Hogan didn’t want to turn heel

In season 3 episode one of Biography: WWE Legends, a segment shows Eric Bischoff and The Hulkster opening up about the latter’s reluctance to relinquish his baby face character in order to turn into a heel. The professional wrestling booker mentions that when he asked Sterling Golden to adopt a negative persona, he said ‘no’.

The reason was that Hogan had “two very young kids” who idolized their father. For his children, he was a “red and yellow hero” that “everybody loved.” And it “meant a lot” to him. 

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Mr. America, on this subject, speaks further, saying that he didn’t want to turn heel for his kids and millions of other young kids who were his fans and looked at him as a father figure. He revealed that his fans would come up to him and say things like, “Oh my gosh, I grew up without a father,” ” If it wasn’t for you I would have never made it,” I quit doing drugs because of you,” My childhood was horrible except I believed in you.”

Hogan did not want to disappoint all the fans that had put so much faith and trust in him.

Fans had a positive response to Hogan’s heel character

Despite not wanting to turn heel, Thunder Lips did adopt a negative persona later and became a part of WCW’s popular faction, nWo. But this came as a surprise to him, that the pro wrestling fans equally liked his heel persona as they liked his baby face character.

In an old interview, Hogan opened up about his loyal fans surprising him when he turned heel. He said when he formed the nWo, he did everything he could to turn his fans against him. But his attempts to make everyone hate him backfired.

Instead of booing The Immortal One, the crowd cheered for him even more.

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Which persona of The Hulkster did you like more? The baby face or the heel? Let us know in the comments.