Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [92]
So much so that my next angle was with the Hulkster himself.
Even though Hulk had lost the Undisputed title to The Undertaker, he was bigger than ever and to work with him was a thrill professionally and personally. Hulk had been one of my childhood heroes dating back to when I watched him with the AWA in Winnipeg. I was a little intimidated at first, both because of his legendary status and his increasing immobility. It was going to be a little bit of a challenge to have a great match with him given his physical limitations. But I knew I could do it.
To prepare for our first match on Smackdown! in Pittsburgh, I watched Hogan’s classic WrestleMania matches with Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior. I came up with a do-rag full of ideas, and to Hulk’s credit he went for every one of them.
He had come back to the WWE to work, and he was smart enough to realize that I could make him look as good as he wanted to. And he wanted to look good. The match we had in Pittsburgh and the follow-up in Chicago were two of my all-time favorite matches and (dare I say it) two of the last great matches Hulk had. But I made him work hard. He took a Lionsault and a DDT and gave me a second-rope superplex. The pièce de résistance was when he went for his patented leg drop and I grabbed his legs from the mat and put him into the Walls. I could tell that Hulk enjoyed working with me, and soon I was up against him at every show he was on. He let me put together the entire match and trusted my judgment entirely. He’d get to the arena and ask, “What are we doing tonight, brother?” I would run through my ideas and he’d say, “Sounds goodski, brother.” (For some reason he had a penchant for adding a “-ski” at the end of random words the same way my friends and I have since high school.)
He was really impressed with the guys from my generation, who were more interested in having a good match than in trying to get their shit in. He was right, the new generation had a different attitude than the older generation, and before long Hulk was working the same way we were. He wanted to have good matches—not that it was too hard to do that. He was so over with the fans and had them in the palm of his hand at all times, so it was a lot of fun to wrestle him.
I would rate Hogan as one of my all-time favorite opponents.
He was a master of including the fans and getting them involved in the match every step of the way. One time a kid was holding a sign that said HOGAN IS A JEDI. When I took umbrage to that blasphemy and ripped the sign into pieces, Hogan grabbed me in a full nelson, took me over to the kid, and let him take a free shot. Then he gave the kid a high five and said, “May the Force be with you, brother!”
Working with Hogan was always a blast. I noticed that whenever he hulked up, he would whisper “Hulkup-HulkupHulkup,” under his breath. It was how he got into character, I guess.
But Hulk was still Hulk and he had a penchant for exaggeration and self-promotion. Rock was still wrestling sporadically in between movie gigs, and while he was filming The Scorpion King he was flown to the shows on a private jet paid for by the movie studio. One week he offered to make a stopover in Tampa on the way to Rochester, New York, to pick up Hulk and me.
Rock always kept quiet about his blossoming film career, but eventually the conversation turned to his ascension in Hollywood as the next breakout star. After a few minutes, Hulk jumped in and started explaining why he never made it as big in acting as Rocky had.
“You’ve got no competition right now, brother. There’s nobody around who can challenge you, brother. When I was breaking into Hollywood, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Seagal were all really hotski. There was no room for another action hero and I was a victim of the numbers game, brother.”
Either that, or maybe Santa with Muscles wasn’t the right projectski.
Rock