Hulk Hogan Wanted To Turn Heel To Face WWE Hall Of Famer At WrestleMania

Hulk Hogan wanted to turn heel in the early 1990s.

In the main event of WrestleMania IX, Yokozuna defeated Bret Hart to win the WWF Championship after his manager, Mr. Fuji, threw salt in the eyes of The Hitman. Well, kind of.

With Yokozuna celebrating, Hulk Hogan made his way to the ring, and Fuji challenged Hogan to a match with the new champion right there and then. Hogan subsequently beat Yokozuna in just 22 seconds to win the World Championship.

Hogan later lost the title back to Yokozuna at King of the Ring in June 1993, in what was his final WWF pay-per-view appearance until 2002.

Hulk Hogan Pitched Shock Heel Turn

However, it’s now been confirmed that Hogan had a very different plan for how he wanted WrestleMania IX to play out.

On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle, Bruce Prichard revealed that Pat Patterson regularly pitched for Hogan to turn heel, and Hogan himself wanted to make the switch. Despite this, Vince McMahon repeatedly refused.

“Vince did not want to turn Hulk heel. Held Hulk in the highest of esteem, and felt that the audience would turn on us as a company if we had Hulk Hogan be a bad guy, because the your sponsors, your partners, everybody’s everything was Hulk Hogan.”

Prichard went on to claim that one pitch for WrestleMania would have seen a heel Hulk Hogan face Dusty Rhodes.

“It was a story of Dusty we ain’t never touched babies. I just want to touch you one time so you can feel the dream… But when we leave there, Hulkamania won’t be running wild no more, because everybody going to be living the American dream.”

Of course, Hogan famously turned heel in 1996 at Bash At The Beach, creating the nWo in the process. But that was only after he’d left for WCW and his initial babyface run had failed.

On a recent episode of his podcast, Eric Bischoff revealed that talks began about turning Hogan heel in late 1995, a little over a year after he made his debut. The former WCW boss said that Hogan was keenly aware that his character wasn’t working, and he needed a change.

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H/t to WrestlingNews.Co