Hulk Hogan Honored At Madison Square Garden

WWE held a live event in New York City on Friday night at Madison Square Garden. They don’t go to MSG (aka The World’s Most Famous Arena) as often anymore because of how expensive it is to run shows there. It would be nice if WWE did a PPV or TV show there, but they would rather do it in Brooklyn or New Jersey because they are far less expensive to run shows there. It’s all about the mighty dollar after all.

There were eight matches on the show that ran over three hours long, which is definitely long for a house show since they usually last about 2 hours and 30 minutes. The reason this one ran long was because there was a 30 minute tribute to Hulk Hogan that took place before the main event. If you’re wondering, the main event saw Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns beat Seth Rollins and Kane. Other matches included Randy Orton beating Bray Wyatt, John Cena beating Rusev by DQ and Chris Jericho over Luke Harper. Babyfaces win on house shows. That’s the business.

Getting back to the Hogan tribute, according to some notes from PWInsider‘s Mike Johnson it was a great evening with Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Ric Flair, Jimmy Hart and Triple H showing up. They also had a VP that works at MSG and a photographer from the arena that took a lot of photos of Hogan over the years. Hogan was given a framed photo from WrestleMania 1 in 1985 that he could take home as a tribute. All of them took some time to talk with Flair thanking Hogan for his friendship, Hall & Nash talking about NWO days and Hunter saying he was there as a fan of the Hulkster.

In what sounds like a really cool moment, MSG also raised a banner with Hogan’s name on it saying that Hulkamania ran wild in message in MSG for over 30 years.

Hogan was apparently overcome with emotion multiple times, which is to be expected. Some of us may criticize the man a lot and I know I certainly have, but it’s hard to deny his impact on the business of pro wrestling as arguably the biggest name in wrestling history.

At this point WWE hasn’t released videos from the event although as Johnson noted that’s likely coming soon. It sounds like it would make a great WWE24 special for WWE Network in the very near future. It’s a shame that this kind of thing couldn’t air live on WWE Network. That’s something they have to think about doing down the road.

For now here are some other photos from the festivities from WWE.com.

Great stuff. Congrats to Hogan and the fans in attendance for being there because they witnessed a historic moment…brother.