A few weeks back I was re-reading my personal copy of Hulk Hogan’s autobiography, imaginatively titles “My Life Outside the Ring”. I mean, come on, the creative team that developed Hulkamania and all its nuances couldn’t muster up a more enticing title than that? Anyway, I digress. Whilst reading the book I came across a point that referred to Vince McMahon’s storyline development back in the 1980’s. Storylines were generally not as complex back then but even I was surprised by this next point. Hogan points out that McMahon’s master plan for generating a following was nationality. His plan was to have enough wrestlers of various nationalities to obtain a following from different cliques of society; with no consideration for how the styles, personas and backstories match up and with no consideration for the overall development of talent and future implications for the wrestlers involved.
Is it only me that finds this incredibly short-sighted and crass? I mean, to pigeon-hole talent in such a way to slavishly play on nationality only serves to restrict the variety of potential storylines, tap into a feeling that fluctuates over time (nationality was deemed irrelevant under Clinton’s third-way regime) and forces contrived scripts that the talent could only struggle to inject feeling and atmosphere into. For a more clear-cut example for you all, the reason Hulk Hogan had his surname changed to HOGAN was to try and make him the representative for Ireland (a la Finlay or Sheamus in the modern day). He was to die his hair ginger and wear all-green attire. Had Hogan not disagreed to changing his look, Hulkamania would never have been born and things would never have been the same again. Does anybody really think the 6ft 7in Hulkster running around portraying a Leprechaun would have been a good look? Following on from this, after Hulkster’s insistence on being an All-American, the feud with Randy Savage was initially supposed to be focused on Randy’s “new Mexican outlook”; an outlook that Macho Man equally rejected.
So, from this, the initial success of the 80’s is partly down to luck, down to self-respecting superstars willing to stand up to Vince. Even today we see this obsession with ridiculous attachments to nationality- it sometimes works as with Sheamus but then it can also fail (who really respects Carlito and Santino Marella). I’m not saying completely erase nationality, it can be a good sub-plot or addition to the canon of storylines; but it should never be a sole basis for character development.If you combine this with some of my previous articles; you’ll notice I’m not Vince McMahon’s No.1 fan. I think much of his success is down to the talented individuals around him and a lack of reasonable competition in the early days. The time will come however, when people see him for his true ability and these blunders of his career keep on being unearthed.
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