Everybody knows that Hogan was banging Elizabeth and that he screwed Savage over in the Rumble. Don't tell me you fell for the head shakes and those incredulous looks... Hogan was hogging the limelight. Tunney was taking favours from Elizabeth. Savage should've been King of the Ring, shouldn't he have been? God Hogan was a cheat.

Bret Hart

Probably because I've been watching the DVD, but he's the very first guy who came to my mind. The guy, even during his babyface days, could be classified as boastful ("The Best There Is...") but very well can be humble too, for he was never very flashy, and was more no-nonsense. Unlike Hogan, he never attacked when unprovoked, and all challengers when champ, heel or babyface. He also gave sunglasses away to the fans before matches, even those of his opponent (during the Owen feud), which is the type of act you don't see anymore.

 

It's early in the morning, so I'm only really scratching the surface, probably vaguely too. I'll add more later.

 

It brings up an interesting argument. McMahon once said that he could have done what he did with Hogan with somebody else in the 80's but he "chose" Hogan. I wonder if that's true...or if Hogan was as good as some people think he was. In the 90's in WCW before turning heel, Hogan proved that his tried and true formula didn't always work...but could somebody else have done what Hogan did in the 80's if not Hogan?

 

 

Wrestling probably still would have been big, but not *as* big as Hogan made it. Vince likes to act like he could have plugged anyone in that slot and it would have produced the same result, when history shows that the whole reason Vince is Vince is because he happened to come across three of the most charismatic personalities in wrestling history (Hogan, Austin, Rock). Vince's embarrassing attempts to regain lightning in a bottle after the Hulk years illustrates that better than everything. If he was just a cog in the wheel, why was Vince so desparate to find the "next Hogan"?

I would actually attribute Hogan getting booed in 1992 to the cultural changes going on at the time. The country became way more cynical around the time of the Gulf War, and the feel good nature of the 1980's really went sour pretty quickly. Ratings started to sink across the board for family oriented sitcoms and things of that nature too.

You must not have lived through the 80s.

I'd also like to nominate Andre the Giant (sans his Japan work) up until he turned heel in '87. He was a class act all the way up until he ripped off Hogan's cross.