EVANSVILLE – Hulk Hogan was in trouble.
The 6,000 fans packed into Roberts Stadium for a then-WWF house show on Jan. 2, 1989 watched as Big Boss Man ensnared him in strangling bear hug that seemed to knock the life out of him. The ref tried to raise the most popular wrestler in the world’s 24-inch-python arm, but it fell limply to his side.
Then, as it always did with Hulk, a miracle happened.
The ref raised the arm again. This time it sprang to life, his hand morphing into a fist that held up one finger. The fans screeched as they realized what was about to happen. Hogan, always at his strongest when he was at his weakest, was about to Hulk Up.
He seized control of Big Boss Man and hurled him out of the ring. The challenger took too long to climb back in, and Hulk was declared the winner. Kids cheered and a gaggle of women bunched near the ring went wild.
“I love it when he tears off his shirt,” one told an Evansville Courier reporter afterward. “I’d love to spend an evening with him.”
“I’d give him three home-cooked meals,” another said.
“We paid $12 to look at these guys,” a pair of sisters added. “Couldn’t you hear us? We were the ones yelling take if off!”
Hogan found fans almost everywhere he went through his long wrestling career. He eventually became the biggest star in the history of the sport thanks to a wave of “Hulkamania” that gripped the nation in the ’80s and ’90s and continued at a simmer for the rest of his life.
That reign ended Thursday, when Hogan – born Terry Bollea – died in a Clearwater, Florida hospital from cardiac arrest, police there said. He was 71 years old.
Hogan’s match at Roberts in ’89 was starkly different from his first appearances in Evansville in the late ’70s. Then known as Terry “The Hulk” Boulder or simply The Hulk, Hogan fought a series of matches at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Coliseum, sometimes alone and sometimes part of a tag team.
By 1985, hordes of fans were trekking to Roberts just for the chance to watch him on TV. Organizers beamed in a closed-circuit broadcast of Wrestlemania from Madison Square Garden, where he fought alongside Mr. T. And he came here again in 1991 to defeat “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair.
Hogan kept at it for decades afterwards, alternating between an NWA villain and his famous yellow-clad persona. All the while he kept his infamous mustache and headband and guttural utterances of “brother!”
Out of the ring, his life was more varied. In 2016, he won a $31 million lawsuit against Gawker Media after the website published a clip of a Hogan sex tape. Not long after, the company filed for bankruptcy.
During that trial, audio entered into evidence captured Hogan saying the n-word. The WWE responded by terminating his contract, but reinstated him in 2018 after he publicly apologized. He said using the slur was “the stupidest thing” he’d ever done.
His most recent high-profile appearance came last year, when he endorsed President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
On Jan. 2, 1989, though, it was just him and the fans. Since it was a house show, the match wasn’t even televised.
“I like some of the others,” one of the fans said, “but Hulk is the best.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Hulk Hogan dies at 71. In Evansville, he shocked Big Boss Man and drove the crowd wild
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
