“Not guilty”
Those two words reverberated throughout the Eastern District of New York on July 23, 1994, after a twelve-person jury did not find the prosecution’s case compelling enough to determine that Vince McMahon conspired to distribute steroids.
For years, McMahon would trumpet taking on the U.S. government and winning, but the eighteen-day trial did a number on the dwindling image of his empire.
McMahon wasn’t going to prison, and the prosecution fell prey to an insufficient amount of evidence to prove any distribution had occurred in the Eastern District.
But it was not just McMahon on trial, the whole industry came under fire and once clean image of this “children’s product” had been marred by horrific charges of child abuse, sexual assault, and the biggest star in the industry taking the stand to state under oath that he estimated “75 to 80 percent” of the WWF locker room was using steroids when he was there.
Hulk Hogan was considered the star witness for the prosecution, and it’s lead attorney Sean O’Shea. Hogan was valuable enough to be granted immunity in exchange for taking the stand, feeling he had the information to sink McMahon’s defense. When Hogan was under oath, he admitted to discovering steroids around 1976 and denied ever being instructed by McMahon to take steroids or instructing other talent to partake.
Hogan admitted to usage while believing it was legal, had steroids shipped to Titan Towers for pickup, and to a friend in Tampa, where the two would dispense between them. It was “truth-telling” time as Hogan admitted to lying on The Arsenio Hall Show three years ago when he claimed to have only used steroids on three occasions for recovery purposes.
Whether McMahon was upset over Hogan agreeing to take the stand or bitter about his recent signing with WCW, McMahon was furious over Hogan’s testimony and cited it as a betrayal in a 2003 promo when hyping their WrestleMania 19 contest. But Hogan provided great cover for McMahon, and the air evaporated out of the sails of the prosecution when their ace in the hole was only a joker.
While Terry Bollea left the stand, Hulk Hogan walked out of the courthouse, in full “promo mode”, ushering the media to his pay-per-view match with Ric Flair in two days at Bash at the Beach for his WCW debut.
The major signing was a coup for Eric Bischoff, grabbing the biggest star in the industry with the belief that his promotion finally had its “game changer”. Hogan commanded extraordinary leverage and would sign an eye-popping contract, giving him guarantees that no performer had been privy to in the industry’s past. The gamble was worth it for WCW.
Hogan’s deal included 25 percent of the promotion’s pay-per-view revenue that he headlined if it hit $2.4 million; otherwise, a flat fee of $600,000 would be made out to Hogan.
The area of business Hogan’s impacted immediately was pay-per-view, where his match with Flair attracted 225,000 buys, the largest number in WCW’s history on the medium, and more than its previous two pay-per-views combined”.
A rematch at Halloween Havoc with Flair’s career on the line drew another 210,000 buys, WCW’s second highest figure in history, and an increase of 110 percent from the previous year.
Numbers began to settle in 1995, and the initial Hogan bump was diminishing. The new WCW was starting to reflect the castoffs from the WWF, with many of Hogan’s close friends joining the company with varying degrees of success. Booker Kevin Sullivan had to serve multiple masters, but none bigger than catering to Hogan, who held the greatest influence as the golden goose.
In September 1995, the industry changed forever with the launch of Monday Nitro on TNT with a one-hour program in prime time airing head-to-head with WWF’s Monday Night Raw. Immediately, WCW was competing neck-and-neck with its competitor on their night, although the added attention to the product was not translating to pay-per-view, with several poor performances at World War 3 and Starrcade, and Halloween Havoc dropping by 43 percent from 1994.
The red and yellow versions of Hogan were beginning to wane with the audience after so many years, and seeing Hogan overcome every conceivable villain. He was feuding with the campy Dungeon of Doom and desperately required a shakeup. This was the era where Hogan began to change things up, going to “a dark place” and appearing in all black after his famed mustache was shaved off. It was fully realized the following summer in a more significant fashion.
On Christmas Eve in 1995, Hogan was served with what he claimed was an “extortive letter”, accusing the star of sexually assaulting a woman in September at the Bloomington Marriot Hotel, two days before the first episode of Nitro. Hogan would proceed to sue the woman and her attorney over the accusation, who he claimed were threatening to sue Hogan if he did not pay them.
The woman filed a countersuit and detailed the allegations that Hogan forced himself on her in a hotel despite her verbal and physical attempts to stop him, and made it clear she was not consenting. She also accused Hogan of sexually assaulting another woman, which she said she was informed of after sending the initial letter to Hogan in December.
The case went on until July 1998, when Judge James M. Rosenbaum ruled that the matter was dismissed with prejudice.
In 1996, Nitro was expanded to a two-hour format beginning with the Memorial Day episode and featured the return of Scott Hall, who had worked for the company years prior as The Diamond Studd, and found fame as Razor Ramon in the WWF. The memorable entrance through the crowd kicked off the biggest boom in the company’s history, followed by Kevin Nash’s arrival, and culminated with the formation of the New World Order on July 7 with its newly minted leader, Hollywood Hogan.
Presenting Hogan as a heel was the coat of fresh paint he sorely needed and gave Monday Nitro the lead position on Monday nights, as the WWF was in a defensive posture and needed their own transformational angle to shake things up.
The N.W.O. was a simple story of an invading group set to take down the home promotion, and the centerpiece was Hogan, regaining the WCW title and defacing the big gold belt, and the carrot dangled for all the WCW troops to chase.
There was intrigue based on who would join the group next, surprise debuts, revolutionary production elements, and a “cool” factor that made WCW the hot product for the first time since the glory days of JCP.
The financial benefits were outlined in NITRO by Guy Evans, where WCW was projecting a loss of $940,000 for 1996 before the launch of the N.W.O. angle, and ended up turning a profit between $3.5 and $5 million based on varying data Evans discovered.
The company was off to the races, fueled by babyfaces Randy Savage, The Giant, Lex Luger, Ric Flair, and Roddy Piper. But the long-term payoff was for Hogan and Sting to square off and featured a year-plus tease where Sting remained unaffiliated between the warring groups and observing from the rafters until challenging Hogan at Starrcade in December 1997.
The long wait paid off with the most purchased show in company history, with approximately 700,000 buys. However, in front of its record audience on PPV, it couldn’t stick the landing as a mind-boggling ending to the match left fans confused and angry after such a long investment.
The idea was for Hogan to pin Sting with referee Nick Patrick executing a “fast count”, thus “screwing” Sting and prompting the recently signed Bret Hart to even the odds after being a victim of his own “screw job”. The match would restart, and justice prevails, Sting wins, and everyone goes home happy.
Any plan that is laid out can allow for some deviation in the heat of the moment, it’s live television, and stuff happens, but in this scenario, it was absolutely imperative that the fast count would register with the audience to justify everything that would follow. Patrick counted in the normal cadence, and the crowd was flat, thinking Hogan had just won the match clean.
The rest played out as described: the locker room emptied, Sting cut a bizarre promo yelling about “Mamacita”, and the show ended with a whimper, instead of a bang.
Patrick would explain receiving contradictory instructions prior, while Bischoff has acknowledged that Hogan saw the shape Sting was in and became lukewarm about the initial plans.
It was a big mess. They ran it back the next night on Nitro, leaving with a disputed finish, which wouldn’t air on television until the debut episode of Thunder, setting up a rematch for SuperBrawl in February, where Sting would officially lay claim to the belt.
WCW was still coasting off its past success, and it’s hard to flatten momentum when you have it. The rematch drew a healthy 415,000 buys, and business was red hot in WCW, but anyone paying attention weekly could see the cracks in the foundation as the product was leaving openings and things were falling out of sync.
More strain on the product occurred with additional hours of television to produce as Nitro expanded to three hours, while TBS added a two-hour Thunder series on top of the pay-per-view and touring schedule.
In the spring, Hogan opted to re-sign with WCW and his value was evident to the company, agreeing to a four-year pact with a $2 million signing bonus, 25 percent of the after tax ticket revenues for any episodes of Nitro or Thunder he appears on, never pocketing less than $25,000 per show, 50 percent of net receipts that WCW obtained for his branded merchandise, 100 percent of the net revenues if he chooses to do a 1-900 hotline, first class travel/hotel/transportation, and of course, “approval over outcome of all his wrestling matches in which he appears, wrestles or performs, such approval not to be reasonably withheld.”
It was a contract that reads so audacious that you cannot fathom the power he commanded in 1998 and what he meant to WCW for retention.
Sting’s reign was short, with the belt back on Hogan by the spring, but now, another big babyface had emerged in Bill Goldberg and became the next star to push.
Fueled by an undefeated streak, quick and explosive matches, and a great look and presentation, it’s no surprise the former Atlanta Falcon caught on so quickly. By the spring of 1998, it was undeniable, and with the Georgia Dome booked for the July 6 episode of Monday Nitro. Over 41,000 fans filed into the venue and witnessed Goldberg unseat Hogan for the championship in one of the most memorable moments in the show’s history.
Both WWF and WCW were on fire by the summer of 1998, and WCW had just launched a new top star into the stratosphere with a strong supporting cast. But the follow-up negated the impact of Goldberg’s win, as Hogan remained the top attraction, who would headline the next two pay-per-views and take the central focus at Halloween Havoc with the returning Ultimate Warrior.
Between July and losing the title in December, Goldberg headlined one pay-per-view despite being the biggest star in the company and representing the future.
After disappearing from television through the fall, teasing a bogus run for President of the United States, Hogan returned for the next Georgia Dome edition of Nitro on January 4, 1999. After Goldberg was arrested, his rematch with new champion Kevin Nash was changed to Nash defending the title against Hogan, ending with the “Finger Poke of Doom” and the latest reboot of the N.W.O.
It was a disastrous night for WCW, cheating the crowd out of the Starrcade rematch and instead delivering a farce where they were the punchline. It was reflected in the return to the Dome that summer when attendance and the live gate dropped dramatically.
Hogan disappeared for knee surgery in the spring of 1999, returning to a WCW that was flailing and had been usurped by the WWF every week, and had caught fire over the past year.
The decision was made to go back to the future, reinstalling the red and yellow version of Hogan after a babyface turn earlier in the year. The main event scene was bleak, consisting of Hogan, Savage, Nash, Sid, and Sting, and a product presenting “yesterday” against a competitor creating the stars of “tomorrow”.
Bischoff was sent home in September, opening the door for the arrivals of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, the former writers at WWF, who were going to bring their adult-themed stories to conservative WCW. Their first order of business was booking the Halloween Havoc pay-per-view and having Hogan lie down for his match with Sting in another middle finger to the audience that may have paid to see the advertised main event.
Hogan was off television, and Russo was sent home within four months of his start. In Guy Evans’ book, he charted the difference where Russo’s period overseeing Nitro in 1999 averaged a 3.21 (down from a 3.24 over the prior thirteen shows), Thunder averaged a 2.25 (up from a 2.24 over the past ten), and pay-per-view buys under Russo grew from a 0.41 to 0.43.
WCW would post a loss of $11.5 million in 1999.
Hogan’s return in February 2000 was under the committee led by Kevin Sullivan, an ally of Hogan’s, and went back to the tried-and-true presentation of the red and yellow Hogan taking on the heel of the months from Lex Luger to The Wall, and the latest rendition of his matches with Ric Flair.
The final days at WCW were run by a returning Russo in April, while Eric Bischoff was brought back as a consultant. Hogan tried to update his character with a biker presentation and the letters “F.U.N.B.” (“Fuck You, New Blood) as a shot at the warring group of young (and some older) talent challenging “The Millionaire’s Club”, including Hogan.
The breaking point was Bash at the Beach in July, where yet again, they booked a finish where one of the advertised headliners would lay down, this time WCW champion Jeff Jarrett, and Hogan was the one who was awarded the belt. Hogan took the microphone, asking Russo, “Is this your deal?” and lamenting, “This is why this company is in the damn shape it is, because of bullshit like this”.
Later in the show, Russo cut a scathing promo on Hogan, obviously going beyond the approved limits, and Hogan was done, filing a lawsuit for being double-crossed on the promo, and the plan of a big showdown match between Hogan and the new champion, Booker T., was out the window.
Hogan sued WCW over defamation and breach of contract, with the Georgia Supreme Court dismissing the defamation claim. However, a settlement for the other charge was reached for an unknown sum.
WCW lasted eight more months and went out of business by March 2001.
Rumors would persist of Hogan and Jimmy Hart getting something off the ground in the wake of WCW, as everyone felt there was a big gap in the market for someone to fill.
They held tapings in late 2001 for a project called the XWF at Universal Studios in Orlando. The big match occurred on the second night of tapings with Hogan beating his former WWF rival, Curt Hennig. In record time, WWF contacted Hennig, and he was in the Royal Rumble in January and back in the company.
In December 2001, Hogan’s father, Peter, passed away, and while speaking with Brian Solomon for a WWF project, Hogan stated that Vince McMahon reached out to him to offer condolences. It got the discussion geared toward a return for Hogan to the company he had not set foot in for nearly nine years.
The door had been opened, and Hogan was ready to return to WWE.
Due to travel, this series will resume next week, and we’ll pick up from Hogan’s return to WWE in 2002
