Hulk Hogan’s Villainous Turn Changed Pro Wrestling

By the time Bash at the Beach, World Championship Wrestling’s pay-per-view tournament, rolled around in July 1996, Hulk Hogan, the wrestling persona of Terry Gene Bollea, was a known quantity.

In the public eye, the character was a Force for Good, a “Real American,” as his theme song put it. He told kids to take their vitamins. He used his bulging muscles and signature leg drop move to slay “evil” forces, like the Iron Sheik and Andre the Giant. His popularity helped propel wrestling from a niche form of entertainment to the center of mainstream culture, making Hogan a star and a profit machine far beyond the ring.

And then, giving a body slam to his carefully curated all-American image, Hogan initiated one of the most shocking plot twists in pop culture history: He became a bad guy. It was a momentous event in the trajectory of sports entertainment, and for Hogan, who died on Thursday at 71.

As Danny McDonald, the owner of the Monster Factory wrestling school in Paulsboro, N.J., described it in an interview, it was a swerve on par with Darth Vader informing Luke Skywalker of his true parentage in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

At the time, W.C.W. was the top competitor to the World Wrestling Federation, which would later become World Wrestling Entertainment. This was the era of what became known as the Monday Night Wars, when W.C.W.’s top program, “Monday Nitro,” on TNT went head-to-head against the W.W.F.’s “Monday Night Raw” on the USA Network. Both were among the top-rated programs on cable.

Hogan was W.C.W.’s top star, having defected from the W.W.F. in 1994 after an effort to ride his crossover appeal to a Hollywood acting career didn’t take off. When Hogan signed, he was given a rare power: creative control over the character. He could win or lose as he pleased.

But “Hulkamania” was waning, especially as the W.W.F. became embroiled in a steroid scandal. In 1995, as Hogan was filming the movie “Santa With Muscles,” W.C.W.’s top executive, Eric Bischoff, pitched him on the idea of “turning heel” — becoming a performer fans root against.

“Like anything else, the new-car smell wears off, and the new car just isn’t as much fun to drive anymore,” Bischoff said in an interview. “And everybody was sensing that, including Hulk, obviously, and obviously myself.”

At first, Hogan said no, Bischoff said. But in 1996, two other W.W.F. stars left for W.C.W.: Kevin Nash, a towering, bulky seven-footer, and Scott Hall, who portrayed the villainous Razor Ramon. Bischoff concocted a story line painting Nash and Hall as “invaders” of W.C.W., with a mysterious third man on the way.

“‘Third Man’ is the second element of a five-element story line I refer to as SARSAP,” Bischoff said. “Story. Anticipation. Reality. Surprise. And action. Action, in this case, was the payoff.”

Bischoff initially wanted Sting, another popular good-guy wrestler portrayed by Steve Borden, to do it. But Hogan was suddenly interested, and pitched himself.

Diamond Dallas Page, a W.C.W. performer and a close friend of Bischoff’s, recalled his reaction when the promoter told him about Hogan’s intentions.

“I go, ‘Oh my god,’” Page said in an interview. “‘That will do exactly what it did.’”

Hogan was famously mercurial, and up until the night of the Bash at the Beach tournament in Daytona Beach, Fla., it was unclear if he would even show up. The main event featured Lex Luger, Sting and Randy “Macho Man” Savage (the good guys) against Hall, Nash and Mystery Man (the heels).

But Hogan entered the ring, sending the crowd into a frenzy. That lasted about 30 seconds, until he executed his signature leg drop not on one of the heels, but on a fallen Savage, leaving the announcers to shout about his betrayal. After some more leg drops, Hogan embraced Hall and Nash, and announced that the three were forming the group New World Order.

Hogan then took the microphone and addressed the fans.

“For two years I held my head high,” Hogan said. “I did everything for the charities. I did everything for the kids. And the reception I got when I came out here, you fans can stick it, brother.”

This kind of radical shift for a character was unusual. Hogan began to wear black and white instead of red and yellow. Jeremiah James, a theater director and a writer of a pro wrestling play called “The Last Match,” described it as a “shock to the system.”

“To see him come down thinking that he’s going to save Macho Man and Lex, it was going to be this grand moment,” he said in an interview. “To see him turn heel, it defied logic.”

Page, who was backstage when Hogan showed up, said, “It was like saying there was no more Santa Claus.”

“The phone lines lit up for weeks afterward” as parents called to complain “because Hulk had turned heel,” he said. It crushed children.”

Hogan’s heel turn changed pro wrestling. For one thing, Bischoff said, it shifted the industry to target older viewers.

“I saw that the 18-to-49-year-old demo was an under-serviced demographic,” he said. “Wrestling wasn’t satisfying that demo.”

For another, it shifted how the next generation of sports entertainers developed their characters.

As McDonald said: “You couldn’t get away with the ‘Hey, everybody, I’m fighting for you! You guys are great!’ Well, they heard that, and that guy stabbed them in the back.”

New World Order, stylized as n.W.o., became one of the most popular, and reviled, groups in pro wrestling. It inspired future heel turns by superstars like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena. It became enough of a pop culture sensation that the N.B.A. stars Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone performed with the group. Today, n.W.o.’s T-shirts are still visible at pro wrestling events.

Eventually, in part because of Hogan’s creative meddling, the n.W.o. story line lost luster with fans and W.C.W. collapsed. (The W.W.F. acquired it in 2001.) Hogan’s public standing suffered in the last decade, in part because of a recording of him using racial slurs that surfaced in 2015, as well as his more recent support of President Trump. Hogan was booed in his last W.W.E. appearance earlier this year.

Even so, the villain switch revived a career that was on the ropes and pushed professional wrestling to new heights.

“It was the definitive moment in wrestling history,” James said.