Let me tell you something, brother
by Ian Williams
Pro wrestling is, in its structure, in its nature, a haven for thieves, rapists, murderers, con men, and perverts. Kayfabe—the great language and logic of pro wrestling—is, deep in its bones, based on ripping people off and making them like it.
In related news, Hulk Hogan is dead.
Until the late 1990s boom of Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, Hulk Hogan was the biggest star in pro wrestling’s century-and-a-half-long history. He’s still the most immediately recognizable pro wrestler. If you ask someone on the street to name a wrestler, it’ll be Hulk Hogan (or maybe, if you ask some Zoomers like my daughter, John Cena). His look—hot-dog-casing skin, feathery blonde hair wisping away from a bald dome, steroidal beefiness—is eternal, already immortalized and lampooned in film, art, games, and stories.
He was also a liar. And a racist. And a union buster. And a drug abuser. And a rotten husband. And a grifter. And a cheat. And the central figure of mass media’s Götterdämmerung. And never a friend, not even in the wrestling community.
Hogan is, by almost any measure, impossible to eulogize. Too important and rich and influential to remain unacknowledged, too terrible to gloss over. We don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, at least not in longform. Save that for social media, where the quips rush hard and the dopamine rushes harder, as it has all day today.
Keep us breathing fire!
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