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COLUMN TITLE: "Lions in Winter"
By Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist
Originally published July 16, 2005
Pro Wrestling Torch Weekly newsletter #870

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

- Michael Corleone

What a week...

The wrestling world turned upside down.

And this time it wasn't hype.

It started to become clear on, of all places, the holiday 4th of July Raw show. Usually when Raw or Smackdown lands on these days WWE books a no-news feel-good show. Ratings are lower than usual on holidays since a good part of the consistent regular audience is out shooting off fireworks or eating turkey or sleeping off a drunk. It's a good time to trot out A Salute To The Troops, A Best Of Raw, or everybody's childhood favorite, Hulk Hogan.

Until the very last second things went according to the July 4th formula. After some good old fashioned All-American nipple fun, Hogan did his Real American routine in the main event. He had a good worker, Shawn Michaels, by his side to do the selling and to set up the hot tag. He had the big heel, Kurt Angle, to get the big heat. He had the new guy, Carlito Cool, to stooge for him and take the legdrop. The guy would be only happy to do it, seeing how it's a milestone in most wrestlers' careers.

The red, white, and, blue posing was over, the show was done, and Jim Ross was ready to call it a night when out of nowhere, Born Again Hero Shawn Michaels superkicked Hogan, pulling the string that unraveled a new tapestry for WWE.

Clearly Hulk Hogan wasn't just in for a special appearance or two to let all the Hulkamaniacs past and present know about his new VH1 reality show "Hogan Knows Best." The show reveals to the general public what everyone in wrestling already knew: there is no "real" in Hogan's reality. Also, he's the type of dad who taps his child's phone to make sure she doesn't try anything, but also lets you see her in a skimpy bikini. Now, with one kick we found out Hogan was going to be a regular on Raw for at least the five weeks leading up to Summerslam.

Before, his one scheduled appearance on "Hogan Knows Best" debut week being stretched into two seemed simple to understand. Because of July 4th, Hogan's appearance on Raw was inevitably going to get a lower rating. Almost no one wanted that on Hogan's ratings resume. So Hogan was made new hot guy John Cena's mystery partner the week before. That show was a ratings smash, even if a nitpicker might point out that the spike in the last quarter came before Hogan, not Rock - who part of the audience was anticipating, was the special guest star. At the very least, though, Hogan kept the biggest audience Raw had in months. In the end, Cena, a Hulkamaniac from way back, graciously stepped out of the way to give Hogan his cameo and the Hulkster did his Hulkster thing unabated. The kick unraveled everything.

Rumors flew that Hogan was going to be around even longer than until Summerslam, that he was going to be the permanent face of WWE 24/7, that he had signed one of those twenty year Bret Hart contracts - you remember, the one Vince McMahon released Hart from because he didn't think business warranted it, the pulled string that led to the Montreal Screw Job, that pulled all the strings that led to WWE winning the Monday Night Wars. At press time none of those rumors had been confirmed, but the circumstantial evidence was growing.

Hogan is at his cockiest and most delusional right now as he hypes his reality show, usually a sign that he's getting what he wants. Hogan usually wants it all. He told a hometown paper that Ted Turner did a survey to see how he'd do if he ran against Bill Clinton. He said the result was he'd get 70 percent of the popular vote. He told another reporter his bodyslam of Andre the Giant at WrestleMania (a key angle in the buildup) was improvised. He took a veiled shot at the Rock for not being loyal to wrestling and going off to make movies. (Oh, brother.) His wife Linda even repeated the same old nonsense that got Hogan in such trouble on the Arsenio Hall Show, stating that he used steroids "to rehabilitate injuries."

Hogan claimed in one interview he would be with WWE another twenty years. The threads pulled ever faster.

It's been quite a comeback for Hogan. A year ago his career rival Ric Flair was on the Legend Throne that once seemed Hogan's by divine right. Flair no longer feared Hogan's power to the point that in his New York Times Best Selling autobiography he bluntly wrote "I have something Hogan will never have." Hulk Hogan is one of those celebrities who shrinks when the cameras are off. The cameras were off a lot more than they were on then.

His latest ploy for attention, "mentoring" his daughter Brooke's singing career, had stalled in a miasma of mall tours. His last wrestling stint as the masked Mr. (Captain? Uncle?) America was something of a dud. His snotty Florida neighbors were complaining about all the animals roaming his over-sized mansion. His usual outlet for starting something, Bubba The Love Sponge, had been kicked off the air. Steroids were a scandal in mainstream sports now, thanks to Jose Canseco, and a lot of mainstream sports reporters thought of him as a living symbol of the drug scandal, when they thought of him at all. His hips, back, and knees hurt. Hogan was spending a lot of time at home brooding.

Then the opening he needed presented itself, just like it always had before. Hogan was offered his rightful place at the head of the WWE Hall Of Fame. There he put on a masterful performance, one of the greatest of his career. After fading movie star Sylvester Stallone, who like Hogan was trying get back the spotlight with his own reality show "The Contender," introduced him Hogan bowed his head, raised his eyebrow, smirked, pointed, and gave an appreciative audience every reason to stand up and chant "One More Match."

Vince McMahon, like a lot of people who should know better, is a mark for the pop. He booked Hulk Hogan, unadvertised, on WrestleMania, where the Hulkster upstaged two of the biggest stars in the history of the business, Roddy Piper and Steve Austin.

McMahon didn't realize it, but the game was on and Hulk Hogan was already winning.

Again.

One string pulls another.

Steve Austin knew. There was no use going forward with his planned program with Muhammad Hassan now. Except for a cameo at the ECW pay-per-view, one that had no resonance on any other WWE programming, Stone Cold was out. When the latest game started, Austin, who hit rock bottom in WCW in part due to Hogan's machinations, was no Hulkamaniac. Hogan could point at him from the dais all he wanted. Austin wanted no part of it. Now he too is making noises about doing a Hogan Dream Match (with its requisite Hogan Dream Job)

Hogan got more than a chance to steal the show at WrestleMania. McMahon signed him for the next Backlash and ordered an extra ad campaign seeking to bring the lost Hulkamaniacs back to the WWE fold. It didn't quite work; WWE was disappointed in the buyrate. Hogan, though, is too canny to let that change perceptions, because for him, perception is reality. WWE Creative even wrote that into Shawn Michaels's speech Monday night.

Hogan's next step was an old one. He put out word, at the finale of "The Contenders" and elsewhere, that he was either working with TNA again, getting hired by a big, new wrestling company, or becoming the silent partner in a big, new wrestling company. When things were nice and murky, the way Hogan planned, McMahon, like a teenage boy whose neglected girlfriend tricked him into thinking she had other suitors, quickly acted.

Vince McMahon may well be the most powerful man in the entire sport, but Hulk Hogan had once again beaten him at his own game.

One string pulls another...

Shawn Michael's superkicked Hulk Hogan back into the main event storyline and started the questions about wrestling's other eight hundred pound gorilla, Triple H. Suddenly his two week absence from Raw seemed like more than just selling the Hell in The Cell blow off match with the departed Batista. Suddenly, it was more than odd that not only had Triple H not only been physically absent from Raw, but there were no taped fifteen minute interviews or video packages extolling his greatness. His lackey Ric Flair got his own spotlight in a match with Kurt Angle the week before, then both he and his boss were glossed over the entire show.

Triple H, incredibly, had a disagreement with WWE Creative, took his sledgehammer, and went home. His disagreement? He distrusts Hogan, Hogan distrusts him, and as long as Hogan is around, sooner or later Triple H, who already has a Hogan match on his resume, will get the Hogan treatment. So it appears Hogan manipulated Vince McMahon into going against his own daughter and son-in-law, something no one thought possible. Ric Flair bet his career on it. All that's left for Triple H is to eat it and wait for the short-lived nostalgia to wear off and Hogan to smartly go home.

Beating Triple H like this may be the greatest accomplishment of Hogan's storied political career. Triple H should give his Game nickname to the man who earned it.

....and another.

John Cena was poised as the closest thing WWE has had to a breakout star in the years since The Rock. Now Hogan has taken the strong emphasis that Cena needed to strengthen his career momentum. Fortunately, though, the generous Hogan has shown public interest in having a match with Cena, too, a match where Hogan would surely eat up the inexperienced, laid back Cena.

The tapestry unravels further.

For Vince McMahon, while Hogan may be beating him like a gong, there's plenty of other wrestling people to mess with. And he's been in a mood to mess with them, particularly since WWE stockholders dared question why he wasn't buying back stock and why so much money was left in the bank drawing two-and-a-half percent interest. Like any good bully, McMahon knows if you can't get to the people who really piss you off, find some weaklings you can.

So McMahon, after a week earlier thoughtfully having it announced to the locker room "a lot of you won't be here anymore after tonight," fired some fifteen wrestlers. He dropped his longtime top tag team act in part, rumor has it, for bad-mouthing his daughter. He dropped a pregnant woman flat after promising to take care of her. He gave some newlyweds in the company the worst wedding present ever. He sent his Head of Talent Relations a needed message by dumping his big Japanese brainstorm.

To add to his fun, several of these fired employees wrote confessions for public consumption on WWE.com. What did they confess? They each told of how happy they were to have the opportunity to lose their jobs for such a wonderful company. You know you're a big bully when your victim thanks you for bullying them.

McMahon was hardly through having his own way. Brock Lesnar finally came back to kiss his ring. He stuck it to Spike TV, the network who publicly declined to renew their contract and who's been airing those disrespectful Ultimate Fighter commercials during Raw. One of the Diva Searchers accidentally on purpose lost her top down to her pasties, yet somehow Spike TV wasn't informed. (Here's a hint: If you see an agent or referee ready with a towel, those nipples are no accident.)

Then on Smackdown, through his on air representative JBL, McMahon was able to stick it to everyone who complained when his enforcer beat up some fake ECW wrestler. First, he signed up the victim for a cheap contract, proving once again everyone has a price for the Million Dollar Man. He sent out the least physically credible ECW act out and had his man JBL mercilessly rip the "fat pussy" and the "imitation wrestlers imitating wrestlers." He even built in some plausible deniability by having Layfield beat up the BWO only to do one of those fake jobs. The JBL-Blue Meanie segment ought to be a real clue to WWE writers, who before hadn't been told by Vince and Stephanie McMahon what their opinion of the successful ECW One Night Stand was.

This pulled another thread away and Paul Heyman found out what his consolation prize for spearheading one of the best pay-per-views in history was: writing Ohio Valley Wrestling television shows for an indeterminate length of time. Heyman's dream job came open when his old enemy, another Lion In Winter, Jim Cornette, threw yet another tantrum and bitch-slapped an OVW employee, in part due to his frustration with dealing with a disorganized, Jim Ross-less WWE Talent Relations Department. With Paul Heyman in the job, even temporarily, you have to wonder who's going to drive whom crazy first this time.

Also last Tuesday night at the Smackdown tapings Vince McMahon finally booked Muhammad Hassan, the "Arab Terrorist," the way he wanted to all along. Sure, the live crowd knew the angle was just sports entertainment, so even the Islamic symbolism and the attempted beheading of the Undertaker didn't much rile them up. Who cares if this kind of storyline hadn't drawn money in over twenty years, if low brow entertainment stopped exploiting jingoism like this after the Vietnam War because, guess what, it doesn't work? The important thing was, Vince McMahon got his way.

Then tragic reality gave the angle a boost even McMahon couldn't provide. Eighteen hours before Smackdown was to be aired on UPN, terrorists bombed the London subways and murdered dozens of people. Londoners stood up and responded with a very pro wrestling sentiment: Is that all you got?

McMahon and WWE could have stood with everyone who has fought against these murders, including the U.S. troops they so publicly claim to support. McMahon and UPN could have done the decent thing and pulled the angle off the air, respecting the grief and not exploiting the anger. Instead, again, he did what he wanted.

McMahon and WWE got a bitter lesson for their trouble, if they cared to listen. For a few days, they got away with it. That may have seemed like good news, but it wasn't. It really meant advertisers and media had such little respect for their product that it took four days for them to even take notice of what WWE had done. They expected WWE to act like crass, unfeeling assholes. They had seen it before. It wasn't even a story.

Until the day came this week that it was.

===

Bruce Mitchell has been a Torch columnist since September 1990. Listen to him at the Torch VIP website each Friday night. He recommends "The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Tag Teams" by Steven Johnson and Greg Oliver for your reading pleasure.

Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.

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