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Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon have long been involved in a rivalry for power within the wrestling industry. Sometimes they work together, other times they're at odds. This column by PWTorch senior columnist Bruce Mitchell details one of their battles that helps put in perspective what might be motivating Hogan two-and-a-half years later to make a bold move to help TNA compete with WWE.

BRUCE MITCHELL COLUMN
PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 2007
PWTORCH NEWSLETTER #955

Neither would have made it to the heights without the other one. In their shriveled, swollen hearts, both know it. Neither knows, ultimately, just who is most responsible.

They love and hate each other for it and will fight forever to prove to the other just who really needs whom.

This year the war, the love affair, has a winner: Vince McMahon.

It's the twentieth anniversary of the fabled Wrestlemania III and the legendary moment when Hulkamania rose up and slammed that nasty ol' Giant. It's guaranteed, Hulk Hogan looks to the rafters and not a dry eye in the place, he pauses, because, well, it's so real...

But now it's gone.

Hulk Hogan, one of the best card players ever in a business full of dealers, the shark whose steely-eyed bluff cleaned out at one table or another greats including Ric Flair and Bret Hart and The Ultimate Warrior and Verne Gagne and Ted Turner and Eric Bischoff and the Jarretts and some old billionaire in Florida, finally misplayed a hand. He bet it all, the WrestleMania main event pay off, the easiest all-time pop from the easiest all-time Hulkamaniacs against McMahon's Legacy of His All-time Greatest Creation - WrestleMania, the marketing opportunity that would only come around once, the chance to tie all those Manias together in a promoting genius bow, and all the extra buys the match would bring in (and don't kid yourself, the old-time Hulkamaniacs would all come back for this one) that McMahon would pay him and not his limo driver exactly what he asked.

Hogan was so cocky he spent a boozy afternoon proving to his new Bobo Bubba the Love Sponge what an important guy and what a crazy, Morning Zoo type character he still was by taking the piss out of some WWE secretary and those wrestlers he carried to their biggest paydays and now he had to carry into the Hall of Fame. McMahon, though, was not as amused as Bubba, and no matter how many times Hogan had out-played him, he was never a Bobo (but once upon a time, in a Pinehurst trailer park, he was a Bubba.) Hogan made that mistake the Vegas casinos count on when they give you that free booze; he took his eye off his cards.

He didn't know that Vince McMahon isn't taking any crap off anyone ever again. The same self-absorbed nature that drove Hogan to take WCW to the top and bankrupt failed him here.

Hogan reminded McMahon what a demanding pain in the ass he is to deal with and what a selfish egomaniac he is. There's a reason Hogan and Bischoff aren't best party buddies like they were ten years ago and Vince McMahon was parting with the Hulkster ten years before that.

McMahon had all the cards he needed without an old, bent Hulk Hogan: two of today's star World Championship main events and a reality TV star who Trumped Hogan. McMahon can have all the ego stroke fun he wants playing Dueling Billionaires, steal the show overacting his way through a haircut, and make all the money.

All the fake flirtation with amusement park wrestling promotions and Memphis flea markets, all the He's Got Some Nerve complaints about merchandise payoffs, and the special guest appearances at the Big New Thing mean nothing because, as anyone who plays cards knows, when the game's over, the game's over.

And it's hard to see why Vince McMahon will ever need to play this particular card game ever again.

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Bruce Mitchell of Greensboro, N.C. has been a Torch columnist since September 1990. The Bruce Mitchell Audio Show can be heard every weekend at PWTorch.com/members.

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