By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

Hulk Hogan talked to the Rivertfront Times in the St. Louis area over the weekend to promote Lockdown tickets on-sale and talk about his in-ring wrestling return for TNA on March 8.

-- Hogan said his body is broken down, but he's getting back in the ring because the fans cheered for him to return. The writing was on the wall in November and December when Hogan went on his media blitz promoting TNA, saying he wouldn't wrestle again "unless the fans cheered loud enough." It led to an angle on last week's Impact with the formula of Hogan bleeding, creating sympathy, and a crazed Ric Flair to set up the big tag match on March 8.

"Oh, I can't, brother (Hogan said about not being able to wrestle). I was in Australia recently and did four dates wrestling Ric Flair. The first day I ran into Ric with a shoulder tackle and knocked him down. He popped up and came right back at me. I didn't have my footing right. I was turned in when he hit me and my right hip popped out of its socket. The pain shot like a piece of electricity to my head and right behind my ear. I felt like my head exploded. I fell and dumbed it up against the rope until I could pop my hip back in. That was my first day back."

Hogan continued: "I really didn't want to wrestle, but I got into a situation with TNA when the fans are chanting 'Hogan! Hogan!' It's hard to say no. I painted myself in a corner. Now I'm fighting a tag-team match March 8 with Abyss against Ric Flair and A.J. Styles. I did that to myself, but I really shouldn't be wrestling anymore."

-- Hogan talked more about his financial need to get back into the wrestling business: "I was in a situation where I was kind of lost and I happened to walk by a ring in a gym. I reached out and touched it, and I got goosebumps. I knew I had a problem, kind of like being an addict. I said, 'Oh boy.' It's like driving a fast car or being on a date with a beautiful woman. So, that was part of it. The other was necessity. After the last couple years, financially, I needed to do something. I was devastated financially."

-- Hogan took a shot at "The Rock" Dwayne Johnson, equating Johnson's high-profile family movies with Disney to the low-budget films Hogan put out in the 1990s.

"I thought about moving out to L.A. and doing the movie thing cause I have seventeen movies under my belt -- mostly low-budget kid movies, kind of like what The Rock is doing now," Hogan said. "My agent said they could put me in supporting roles. I'd never be a Gene Hackman or anything, but there is work for me. But I just wasn't into it. I needed to to work and thought why not get back to what I love, wrestling?"

Caldwell's Analysis: If you need a good laugh, here's Hulk Hogan justifying his in-ring return. "I painted myself into a corner, brother, what was I supposed to do?" Unbelievable. In the same interview, Hogan recommended Mark McGwire should just tell the truth and not half-truths about his steroid use in the 1990s. The same could be said for Hogan booking TNA to get himself over in the 2010s.

If only he would have been upfront from the beginning and said TNA was his promotional vehicle to justify getting back in the ring despite having a broken down body instead of offering the usual half-truths that he was "here for the boys" to elevate the entire roster and not be about himself, then at least his agenda would have been clear from the beginning. Classic Hogan.

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