Spoilers

Hulk Hogan: Real American

Episode 2: Hulkamania

The second episode of the Netflix documentary Hulk Hogan: Real American featured the time frame from when Hogan returned to the, at the time, WWF through his winning of the championship all the way to reclaiming the title from Sgt. Slaughter at Wrestlemania 7.

There was so much covered during this hour episode. In his career, it looked at Wrestlemania I, Wrestlemania III, Wrestlemania VI and VII. In his family, it looked at his marriage to Linda and the birth of his two children Brooke and Nick. All with Hogan doing voice overs and narration.

We got an interview from President Donald Trump speaking about what a great guy Hulk Hogan was.

Much like last week, the negative things about Hogan during these years (Richard Beltzer, Road Schedule, drug use) were addressed but just surface. There was interesting part about Hogan’s brother showing up, asking for money, only to wind up overdosing. There were some real emotions coming from Hogan in this section of the doc, but he did not want to go into depth on it either. It clearly still affected him even after this many years.

The doc seemed to go back to the time when everyone would bash the Ultimate Warrior. There was a time when the Warrior was back in the good graces of the WWE but the section on the Warrior and Wrestlemania VI felt more like the Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior, a WWE produced doc that bad mouthed Warrior the whole time.

Next week’s Sunday Morning Sidewalk sounded as if it was progressing into the negative time of the steroid trial. I am interested to see how this doc, which has been very heavily positive toward Hogan (even long time critics such as Jess Ventura and Bret Hart were recorded saying positive things about him), deals with this time of Hogan’s life.

Spoilers

Hulk Hogan: Real American

“The Rise”

This week, I start the next Sunday Morning Sidewalk show on Netflix, the documentary featuring the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.

Hulk Hogan: Real American started off with images from Hulk Hogan’s funeral. Imagine working on your documentary, with plenty of access to Hulk Hogan himself, and have the subject die. It certainly gives the documentary series a beginning and an end.

The first episode was about the rise of Hulk Hogan, from a kid growing up in Tampa, Florida to the arrival of the biggest star the industry of Pro Wrestling ever saw.

There were plenty of interviews during the doc from not only Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan’s real name), but also people he met and dealt with during the time such as Jerry Lawler, Bret Hart, Jimmy Hart, Brian Blair, and even Jesse Ventura.

The thing is that there was not much negative mentioned. They did not hear the negatives that you usually hear from Hart or Ventura about Hogan. They talked about him being green in the ring, which he clearly was. They mentioned Verna Gagne, but had no video of his opinion of Hogan.

The only negative was the time Vince McMahon Sr. fired Hogan for going to shoot Rocky III. The rest of this episode was basically the typical story of a wrestler making his way through the Indies to make it big.

They did make some references to some controversies surrounding Hogan, so I am interested to see exactly how they deal with the second part of his life. The early days are easy to show him as a “superhero” as his persona, but later on, things got tougher. Will they just touch on this or will this be a major aspect of the doc? I have my suspicions.

This was an intriguing start, but I want to see more in depth from this doc over the next three weeks.