Hulk Hogan and the heel turn that defined the entirety of his professional wrestling career

Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea wrestled across five different decades and in essentially every major promotion in the world. Well before his death on Thursday, Hogan's case for placement on the professional wrestling Mount Rushmore was firmly set in stone, pun intended.

While Hogan’s overall legacy is entirely up for debate, with as much time devoted to his myriad transgressions and shortcomings as his triumphs during his in-ring career, it’s undeniable the past, present and future of professional wrestling could not, is not and will not be written without Hogan’s imprint being somewhere on it.

So, in a career filled with so many signature moments and hidden gems, what is the defining one of Hogan’s?

The obvious one is arguably the match that cemented WWE (then WWF) at the time — Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III. Far from a technical masterpiece, the build and actual facts around Hogan-Andre has become the stuff of legends, with not only the WWF Championship at stake, but also a kayfabe undefeated streak on the line in a deeply personal feud. No one would argue if you called this Hogan’s crowning achievement, with his body slam of Andre being perhaps the most celebrated maneuver in wrestling history.

Maybe you pull one of his myriad other early WrestleMania matches as his de facto “best.” There’s Hogan versus “Macho Man” Randy Savage at WrestleMania V, where again friends-turned-foes became the central theme as the Mega Powers exploded. Or is it WrestleMania VI, where Hogan dropped the WWF Championship to Ultimate Warrior in a “passing of the torch” moment. It’s hard to argue either were bigger “moments” than Hogan-Andre, but the spectacle of WrestleMania was firmly established and the actual matches themselves were better.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a similar Hogan moment years later, in WCW in 1998, when he put over Bill Goldberg, one of the most popular wrestlers in the entire industry at the time, on an episode of "WCW Monday Nitro" at the Georgia Dome. Not on a pay-per-view, this match came at the peak of the Monday Night Wars and was a raucous environment right in WCW’s backyard. Considering the stakes, it at least deserves a sliver of consideration.

There’s a very strong case to be made for the Icon versus Icon match between Hogan and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at WrestleMania X8, Hogan’s first Showcase of the Immortals since leaving WWE in the mid 1990s. No match mentioned to this point illustrates the control Hogan had over a crowd and his understanding of the business quite like this one. The atmosphere that the prolonged stare down between Hogan and Johnson at the start of the contest created is the kind of thing that if you could bottle it up and sell it, you’d be a billionaire. Oh, and he put Johnson over here, too.

Despite all of these being in the conversation — with the latter two being quite impossible without the actual defining moment — they all pale in comparison to one Daytona Beach night in July 1996, where Hogan and WCW transformed professional wrestling as we knew it then and as we know it today.

Of course I’m talking about Bash at the Beach, when Hogan turned heel and formed the New World Order, a stable that revitalized his career, WCW as a company and ignited an era where professional wrestling became more mainstream and popular than it had ever been before.

To set the stage, WCW in 1996 was far from the juggernaut it would become. Billionaire Ted Turner had devoted plenty of resources (read: money) to the primarily southeastern wrestling promotion, bringing in names like Hogan, Savage, Lex Luger and, crucially, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. Turner had also empowered Eric Bischoff to run WCW, and he had certainly started to make waves with not only the talent that was brought in, but by shooting “Nitro” live every Monday night. In the case of Hogan, after an initial pop from his move to WCW from WWF, things were far from the heights he had experienced with Hulkamania a decade prior. Creatively, it appeared as if he hit his ceiling.

The arrival of Hall and Nash in spring of that year successfully blurred the lines of entertainment and reality. Billed as “The Outsiders,” Hall and Nash were perceived to be agents of chaos working for WWF to destroy WCW, all the while teasing another accomplice. Everything was set to finally come to a head in a six-person tag match at Bash at the Beach, with WCW’s babyfaces — Savage, Luger and Sting — taking on Hall, Nash and the mystery third man.

As the match reached its climax, with the heel team of Hall and Nash in control, the red-and-yellow-clad Hogan marched down the aisle, presumably to save WCW. Instead, Hogan delivered a pair of leg drops to Savage, completing the greatest heel turn in professional wrestling history. Fans were incensed, throwing garbage into the ring and one onlooker even boldly jumping the barricade to attack Hogan. As debris rained down on Hall, Nash and Gene Okerlund, Hogan muttered the line that would change the trajectory of his career and the business as a whole forever.

“This right here is the future of wrestling,” Hogan said, as he gestured to Hall and Nash. “You can call this the new world order of wrestling, brother.”

In one night, Hogan was able to dramatically transform a character that had been cultivated relentlessly as the all-American hero for a decade. He launched himself and WCW into an entirely new stratosphere, with the promotion dominating the television ratings for 83 consecutive weeks and, indirectly, pushing the competition to transform itself into what became known as the “Attitude Era” in response.

Even before Hogan’s death Thursday, the ripple effect of the 29-year-old heel turn was being felt in wrestling. John Cena, arguably the most comparable babyface to peak Hulkamania Hogan, is in the midst of a Hogan-esque heel turn that began earlier this year. In the immediate aftermath of Cena’s betrayal of Cody Rhodes and alignment with Johnson at Elimination Chamber, comparisons didn’t go to Seth Rollins’ betrayal of Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose in 2014, they didn’t go to Evolution turning its back on Randy Orton in 2004, they went directly to July 7, 1996 and Hogan. It’s still that significant of a moment in professional wrestling history and by far the industry’s defining heel turn, regardless of generation.

WWE via Getty Images

There’s even some logic in saying that Hogan’s turn shapes how we remember him today. 

Who’s to say that if WCW went a different direction at Bash at the Beach that Hogan’s mediocre run doesn’t fizzle and an entire generation of fans doesn’t get to experience the “Hollywood” or Hulkamania 2.0 versions of him. Does the NWO reach anywhere close to the impact it had on popular culture or force Vince McMahon and WWE to adopt more adult, reality-based storylines? If Hogan’s career unceremoniously ended in the late '90s, are the same shockwaves from his death being felt today among those who grew up on the relatively brief but ultimately brilliant NWO run? Maybe, maybe not, but you can be certain that the conversation and obituary would be undeniably different.

In the end, as complicated as Hogan’s legacy is away from the ring, his impact on the business of wrestling really isn’t. A generation of fans will remember him for vitamins and prayers, another for spray paint and steel chairs, but neither version of Hogan is better without the other.