Hulk Hogan Was Furious With WWE After Payday Following Major Match
There are some new details about how Hulk Hogan felt about one of his biggest WWE matches.
Hulk Hogan passed away on July 24th due to cardiac arrest at the age of 71. Today’s date, August 11th, would have been The Hulkster’s 72nd birthday.
After his death, WWE paid tribute to the two-time Hall of Famer on Raw, SmackDown, and NXT, and also invited his son Nick Hogan to multiple shows, including SummerSlam.
The second-last match that Hulk Hogan had in WWE was at SummerSlam 2005 against Shawn Michaels. The story was that Michaels turned heel leading into the match because he was jealous of Hogan’s success, and Michaels wanted to prove he was better. It was a dream match that headlined the show.
Hogan’s match with Michaels is famous due to the comedic style tactics that Michaels used to oversell everything Hogan did. Hogan won with a leg drop, and the two never wrestled again.
There is a well-known backstory, but Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer shared additional details with Chris Jericho on Talk Is Jericho.
“Those two, at that point did not get along, because I think Shawn thought that at this point he was Hogan’s equal. Because Shawn’s one of the greatest wrestlers in the ring there’s ever been, and a superstar, right? And Hogan saw Shawn as the Midnight Rocker… a little guy.”
Hulk Hogan Fought With Shawn Michaels About WWE Match Results
As Meltzer told the story, there were two matches planned for Michaels and Hogan, but they ended up having just the one match at SummerSlam 2005 because Hogan refused to lose.
“They fought back and forth. Shawn want to win the first one. ‘We’ll set up a second one. You can win the second one.’ Hogan goes, ‘we can do two, but I’m winning both.’
So of course, you can imagine how that made Shawn feel, right? So they’re having problems.
“They do the match, and it’s a famous match because Shawn oversells to this comedic point. Basically goes on TV the next day and says, you know, ‘you could watch that match. It was all fake’… to make the match into a joke.”
According to Meltzer, Hogan was mad about the payoff he received for the match, and he even called Meltzer about it.
“So Hogan gets his his pay from the show, which was quarter of a million dollars. Okay? He was mad.
For whatever reason, one of his friends goes, ‘call Dave, because he’s going to know how the pay per view did.’
Get a phone call from him and it’s just like, ‘how did the Pay Per View do?’ And I said, ‘640,000 buys.’ And he goes, ‘I got $250,000. Was I ripped off?’ And I go, ‘you were way, way, way ripped off.’”
One year later, Hulk Hogan was back in a WWE ring to beat Randy Orton at SummerSlam 2006. It was not the main event of the show, and it’s not known what Hogan was paid for the match. That ended up being Hogan’s final match, although he did wrestle again in TNA a few years later.