Talk about it here.

Gene interviews Hogan on the set of Thunder In Paradise, and I think this is Hulk's first appearance on WCW TV. Bobby Heenan shows up and starts asking Hogan about unfinished business in pro wrestling. Hogan takes exception and they are clearly building to his return.

Didn't realize Hogan was on TV by this point. This felt disjointed. If this was Hogan's first appearance on WCW TV, I don't think it was done right. They are on TV set with fans just standing randomly around. Heenan shows up and feels really out of place. They tease Hogan/Flair a bit before Hogan threatens Heenan. Maybe a sitdown interview backstage would have been better instead.

Pretty sure this was his first appearance.

And there goes down WCW.

I do think 1994-1996 Hogan could have had a good run had the Hulkamania stuff not been laid on so thick. Reinventing WCW as 80s WWF was too much. Hogan being pushed more as the icon people believe in instead of pretending it was still 1987, with Savage coming in as a heel, would have been way better.

Their first mistake was letting Flair go heel, and putting them in a program against each other right off the bat. Putting him with Ric as friends/partners for awhile would probably have eased the more hardcore WCW audience into liking him. Eventually of course, Flair does the double cross and it gets them going in a hot angle. Savage coming back as a heel in that situation would have had it's own interesting trajectory, with Randy and Ric (maybe along with Arn and Vader as the new Horsemen) maybe going against Hogan and Sting primarily.

 

It can't be said enough, how much Sting was screwed over by Hogan coming in. What Bret may have felt for those couple of months in '93 when Hulk came back and stole his spot, Sting had to have felt it for those first two years WCW was struggling to make Hogan their top good guy. All of which lent quite a bit of leverage to the character turn and angle he did in '96 and '97, re-inventing his character and becoming the top babyface opponent to the NWO

Sting has said he couldn't argue with the choice to put Hogan above him, but Savage also being above him really bothered him.

I'm sure it was a case of both of them being over him that got at him, and probably not a knock on Randy at all. It showed how little faith they had in the potential of WCW-grown talent had to carry the ball, and how infatuated Bischoff was with anybody who ever made money for Vince.

This was entertaining in a way. Heenan showed up like he said he would and pressured Hogan into discussing a possible return back into the ring.

Real disjointed mess but did get nostalgic seeing the Grand Floridan hotel in the background (that was where we stayed on our honeymoon). Hogan I though took a subtle dig at Sting by saying he had a body double for stunts while showing him, Brutus, and Shockmaster like they do all their own stunts. Really bad first appearance if this was his debut.

How was that a dig at Sting?

It just seemed funny that they showed Brutus and showed Shockmaster in costume next to the guy that was his body double like they were about to shoot a scene and Shockmaster decided to do his own stunts but Sting didn't, I probably read something into it that didn't exist I just found it amusing that Hogan mentioned it.

Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. Gene thinks he's back in WWF, and who could blame him. Am I watching WCW TV here ? Before watching WCW in context, I never realized Hogan showe dup so soon on TV, and it really shines a new light on this few montsh before he actually debuted.

I don't know where I fall on Hogan in WCW. On one hand, without him there probably isn't a Nitro, isn't a talent raid, and isn't a Monday Night Wars--and I'm not sure how there's any way that wrestling would have been better off without that. On the other...he was really, really intolerable for a majority of his run, not fitting with the fan demographics and having unfettered creative control that was almost all for the worse. In the past few months WCW has changed dramatically. Three major WWF icons have jumped ship and the Saturday Night set has been redesigned. It's all an attempt to de-southernize the product but I don't know if it ever really worked. Heenan shows up and calls Hogan out for having unfinished business in wrestling. Okerlund even mentions that PWI issue with Hogan and Flair on the cover. Pretty obvious where they're going by the end of this segment, and for a lot of fans like us that feeling had to be pretty ominous.