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By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

The following is a timeline of quotes from Hulk Hogan and his business partner, Eric Bischoff, this year directly addressing the possibility of working for TNA. Both men have questioned TNA's direction, management, and use of top stars. However, key changes have been made to TNA's creative direction that appear to be directly related to appealing to Hulk Hogan to work for the company.

-- February 2009: Eric Bischoff tells the U.K. Sun: "Neither one of us (Hogan and himself) were interested in TNA. It's a small organization that doesn't have very much vision."

Bischoff added they didn't want to work with people in the creative process "that couldn't get a job in WWE or shouldn't have had a job in WCW." The quote appeared to be a direct attack on current head writer Vince Russo, whose job status will be in question with Hogan signing with TNA.

Bischoff continued: "There's no vision for that company. They are people who have never been to the dance. They've never been a part, really, of any of the decision-making processes that led to the success of the industry. Some of them happen to have been working there while other people did it, but have never really done it for themselves. They just don't have the feel for it. So that's the reason we wouldn't want to be there."

-- February 2009: Hulk Hogan said the TNA program looked like the "dying days" of WCW with the Main Event Mafia standing around talking to each other rather than wrestling.

"I watched Sting in the business suit without his make-up and it's kind of like the NWO not when the NWO was hot, but when the NWO started losing steam when these guys didn't want to wrestle anymore and all they wanted to do was talk," Hogan said in February.

"TNA is lacking that one momentum-shifting move, that one big name that would even the playing field ... TNA's lacking the big piece of the puzzle," he said.

Now, the Main Event Mafia has been disbanded, Sting is off the TV show, and Hogan appears to be the "one piece of the puzzle."

-- June 2009: Hogan completely changed his opinion of the TNA product from February when he dogged the product for being stale. "They gain momentum every week. They seem to be real fresh," Hogan told Jessi Virtusio of the SouthtownStar (Ill.). "When a lot of guys go over to that side of the fence, they seem to get a spring in their step."

-- September 2009: Hulk Hogan told TNA World Hvt. Champion Kurt Angle in a radio appearance on Bubba the Love Sponge that they should work a program together with Angle putting the "red, white, and blue" back on and turning babyface. Angle agreed and said he could make it happen.

After Hogan and Angle tossed around the idea of Hogan coming to TNA to "turn this thing around," Bubba called TNA president Dixie Carter, but only got her voice-mail. Bubba then laid out his elaborate plan approved by Hogan and Angle to work a program in TNA.

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