Hulk Hogan‘s self-serving Jeff Hardy comments:
Although he can barely walk and is more than happy to take up valuable TV time with a tired old shtick that is drawing nobody new, one thing Hulk Hogan is good at is working his immediate audience. Granted he puts his foot in his mouth a lot, but the Hulkster always knows how to say the right things at the right time to the right people (it just falls apart when the wrong people pick up on it). Take his recent comments about Jeff Hardy in the UK’s Fighting Spirit Magazine

TNA pulled an utterly cheap and unprofessional move by advertising Jeff Hardy for the recent UK tour, only to yank him at the last minute with the fanciful claim that he was injured. They may have gotten away with this if they said something freak happened on a house show and Hardy backed it up with a legitimate looking Tweet, but the company stooped so low as to claim the injury was at the hand of the Aces and Eights!

So not only was arguably the promotion’s biggest draw removed from the tour at the very last minute, making it impossible for fans to reassess their ticket situation, but instead of giving a valid explanation viewers were told on the scripted wrestling show that he was hit with a hammer, and this was the reason he couldn’t make it to see the UK fans. Obviously this is NOT why he couldn’t make it.

Yes wrestling is a work, part of the reason we enjoy it is because in the arena and on TV it’s presented as legitimate and we can suspended our disbelief to enjoy the product. This however doesn’t mean you continue to feebly try and pull the wool over fans eyes when it comes to asking for their money for a live event. The show is scripted, ticket sales are not. If you advertise A and A doesn’t show up you better have a damn good explanation, especially when everyone can turn on their PC, laptop, phone, tablet, TV or whatever other device in our 24/7 Internet connected world and Google the real reason A didn’t make it. It’s frankly stupid and incredibly poor PR to think you can just sweep it under the rug, to think the marks won’t find out, or worse to think it doesn’t matter if the marks find out.

The truth is Jeff Hardy has quite a criminal record stemming from his various drug related convictions. While this doesn’t technically prevent him from ever entering the UK if it’s deemed within the public good, there are significant hoops, paperwork and interviews to jump through. TNA know this! Jeff Hardy has never appeared on the UK tour because of this, so quite how they had the balls to advertise him before they were 100% certain he could make it is quite astonishing. Even if they thought they could get everything in order, if there’s any doubt DON’T advertise him!

Was this just a underhanded way to ensure ticket sales? What else are we supposed to think?

Enter Hulk Hogan…

“Dixie [Carter] runs the company, but if it was up to me and it had been my decision, Bobby Roode would have been a great champion to have right now,” says Hogan to FSM. “The (UK) tour plus a champion makes sense; a tour with no champion doesn’t make sense. [But] I choose my battles; some people look at the picture differently to how I do.”

Well thanks for telling us now Hulkster, might have helped a bit before the tour! And don’t pretend like whenever you talk to Dixie Carter it’s a “battle”. If she didn’t fawn all over you, you wouldn’t be in the company. She’s just another one of your suckers. If you really wanted to have corrected this situation you could have done, and we all know your job would still be perfectly safe.

Hulk is just playing to the smart fans that read FSM for self-serving purposes. “It wasn’t my fault brotherrrr, we know you all want Bobby Roode as champ brotherrrr”. After all, remember these comments last year to Busted Open radio about Bobby Roode not being ready for the title?

“Ya’ know, they might think he is. Dixie Carter might think he is. The whole world might think he is. He’s not the next guy. If I had to bet money on anybody and really be serious about betting money on anybody, I’d say Jeff Hardy is the next guy if he keeps his act together. Um, that’s what you gotta to have, man. This is much more than being a wrestler, this is crossing barriers, medias, ya’ know media barriers, and, and entertainment barriers of all kind. Getting your character down verbally has 90% to do with getting over.”

Hogan got panned on the Internet after this interview and had to “clarify” it by completely changing his point. Flipity flop brotherrrr.

So what is his point? Who does he actually think should be champion? Judging from other recent interviews he thinks he himself should be the Champ!

He told the UK Guardian in December: “3 Knee surgery I’ve had eight back surgeries, I’ve had knee replacements, I’ve had both hip replacements. I only need one more surgery – to fix my right knee – then I’m going to go for the TNA world title. I want to be 59 years old and be the champion.”

Could you imagine what an illogical and horrendous move that would be? It would be on par with David Arquette, apart from Arquette actually had some athleticism.

This is the thing with Hogan. When he’s talking to wrestling publications he serves the wrestling crowd, when he’s talking to mainstream newspapers outside the bubble he’s putting himself over, when he’s talking to entertainment rags it’s all about nearly being in Metallica or the original person tapped to play Randy The Ram in the Wrestler. Ultimately it boils down to one thing, Hulk Hogan cares about Hulk Hogan…not pro wrestling, not TNA (he basically just dropped Dixie Carter in it), not UK fans being duped out of tickets, and certainly not being honest to himself.

There’s so much good he could be doing in TNA right now as an egomaniac heel authority figure with a spoiled daughter, but that would be too close to home and might bruise his real ego. So instead he’s the super good guy.

You may say well he still gets cheered and TNA still draws ratings. But how many people are actually at TNA’s shows and how big are those ratings? If we flew back to the Monday Night Wars when WCW were drawing triple TNA’s current numbers, do you think if we were given the current TNA product those WCW numbers would remain that high? Of course not.

There will always be X amount of hardcore wrestling fans that watch no matter what garbage they feed us. There will also always be X amount of fans that cheer whoever the hell they’re told to cheer. And there will always be X amount of wrestling fans that have nostalgia for the old Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately those X amount of fans don’t make for a product with wide public appeal and will never take TNA past a 1.X rating.

TNA it’s time to start respecting your fans, it’s time to start taking some risks, and it’s time to either force Hulk to do it right or hit the bricks. He certainly doesn’t respect the company, so why respect him back?