Bruce Prichard On Why Hogan Has A Bad Reputation W/ Internet Wrestling Fans, How Hulk’s Early Merch Sales Compare To Austin’s

Bruce Prichard and co-host Conrad Thompson took to their Something To Wrestle podcast to talk all things Hulk Hogan and the podcasting duo delved into Hogan’s time in the WWE during 1989-1990.

A fan wrote in and asked why Hulk Hogan has a bad reputation with ‘Internet wrestling fans’ and Prichard chimed in with,

“Because he was successful. He was the most successful. He was the most over and he was the man. It’s en vogue to hate people that are successful, I think.”

Prichard was also asked how Hogan’s merchandise sales compared to WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s,

“I’d say they were comparable. Austin obviously blew Hogan away in terms of number of shirts sold because of all of that different time, different place; but, for live event sales, but even then they brought more for Austin because they knew what that was and for Hogan it was still at a time when they were experimenting with merchandising sales. If you were to go apples to apples, I bet they would probably be comparable.”

Conrad Thompson added,

“I’m so glad you explained that because I really do feel like some people forget that when Hogan was doing all of this it was really pioneering sh*t, so you didn’t know how many shirts to buy because you didn’t know if people were buying shirts. Really, Hulkamania was one of the first mass produced crazy sold shirts and you didn’t know what the appetite was really gonna be. Yes, tee shirts and merchandise and photos and gimmick tables had existed; but, to the scale that they were about to be, that didn’t happen before, so it was unprecedented territory, right?”

Prichard responded,

“Also, you have to understand as well that for the smaller territories and how we had done merchandise before was you had a merchandise person that hauled that stuff from town to town. Now when they’re running major arenas, you had to drop huge quantities of all your merchandise to an arena where they would then count it all out. Then you would bring a person in. They would count it. The arena would sell your merchandise for you. They would take a percentage and settle up with you at the end of the night, so there was sometimes just no way of knowing until you’re into it so yeah, it was all new in the mid-80s; but, Hulkamania that was the shirt.”

Readers interested in listening to Something to Wrestle in its entirety may do so below:

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