Hulk Hogan: First 6 Weeks In TNA, Backstage Politics & More
Six weeks after joining TNA Wrestling, Hulk Hogan tells Brian Fritz of FanHouse.com that he's just now getting a handle on how to run a wrestling promotion and admits that for a while, he didn't know what he was doing. Here are some highlights of what Hogan said about:
The First 6 Weeks in TNA: "I've never really done this before and with me everything is by instinct and feel. I was just saying a second ago to someone else that it's actually taken me this long not to be overwhelmed because when I first came in here, everybody was going oh, they're not going to like you, the young guys are not going to accept you. This whole negative veil of tears was thrown at me that wasn't true. The company was very receptive; they gracefully accepted me with open arms. And then I got overwhelmed. There was so just so much good stuff going on but so many other little tweaks that kind of caught me off-guard 'cause I'm just a wrestler. I'm not someone who should be running a whole wrestling company. I know the feel for it. So it's taken me this long to actually get all four of my claws on the ground or four feet on the ground and I feel comfortable."
Playing Politics in TNA: "Well, you have to realize ? barbarically speaking ? I used to lace my boots up, go out to the ring, make my money and go home if you can say it that way. Now, the network is asking for certain things and when things get successful you get input from people you never thought you would get input from that give you, kind of, suggestions that help you or almost kind of like demands of what they want that could not be what's best for wrestling creatively. And so all of a sudden, all these monsters are coming at me and I'm wondering how to politically, gracefully massage them and make them work because sometimes I...I wear my feelings on my sleeve and I'm not real good at being political and graceful with finesse. I'm trying to get all that done because there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. But I get it now."
Hogan also talks about iMPACT! Moving to Monday nights, his relationship with Vince Russo and more in this interview, which you can read in its entirety at FanHouse.com.