25 biggest pro wrestling ‘what ifs’ of the past 25 years

7. What if Hulk Hogan never signs with WCW?

By 1993, the Golden Era of wrestling was coming to an end in WWE. The majority of the big stars of the 1980s didn’t have a big place on the card anymore and names like Razor Ramon, Lex Luger, Yokozuna, The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were being looked at as the future of WWE. However, there was one mainstay that wasn’t quite ready to let go and that was the face of wrestling, Hulk Hogan.

Hogan had been away from the company for some time but returned for WrestleMania IX in Las Vegas to team with Brutus Beefcake to take on Money, Inc. in what turned out to be an awful match. The main event that night was Yokozuna challenging Bret Hart for the WWE Championship, a match that Yokozuna would win after interference from Mr. Fuji. We all know what happened then. Hogan came down on Hart’s behalf and interjected himself into the situation and then randomly won the WWE Championship in an awful booking mistake.

The story goes that Hogan was supposed to drop the belt to Hart in sort of a passing of the torch moment but Hogan decided to drop it back to Yokozuna instead at King of the Ring that June on his way out of the company. WWE was moving in a different direction, his character wasn’t getting as over as it once had and he had turned down an ambassador role to try his hand at more acting roles.

Just a year later, however, Hogan was back in a wrestling ring, only this time it was for WCW in a big-time match with Ric Flair, the one that never happened at WrestleMania VIII. WCW was going all in and they now had the biggest star in the world. But what if Hulk Hogan had actually had success like The Rock in Hollywood or just decided that he was done with wrestling and had never gone to WCW? Would there have been an nWo? Would WCW ever gotten as big as it did? Would Eric Bischoff have had the guts to go against Vince McMahon in prime time? Would the Monday Night War have ever really been a thing?