remember when hulk hogan wrestled weekly as a midcarder

i member

>>2905358
That's what happens when you don't draw dimes no more, you get sent to the 2000's equivalent of NXT

>>2905372

Hogan still had dimes in him as he proved in 2005 Summerslam

WWE just used him wrong, he should have been main eventing

2002 Hogan was my introduction to him and even though I had no idea who he was previously, he was still one of my favorites and a reason I would watch weekly.

>>2905358
that was like what, his 30th year as a pro wrestler?

>>2905358
Smackdown was STACKED in 02. Rawetty couldn't compete.

>>2905380
Hogan was drawing so well they had Undercarder go over him

>>2905358
Except it wasn't the B show at that time ya sperg. That didn't happen until 2004

2002 WWE was just so surreal and wierd that it's hard to believe it even exists.

> Austin is back to being a face but reduced to a midcarder
> Haitch was the most over wrestler for nearly 4 months
> The nWo debuts in WWE which fucks with WCW continuity
> breaking kayfabe a lot
> young Lesnar, Cena, Orton and Batista all appear alongside every big Monday night wars star
> Eric fucking Bischoff
> tons of 1999 midcarders mingling with OVW graduates and WCW castoffs

>>2905400
>>2905407
I think remember how much the IWC loved the "Smackdown Six" during this time (Guerrero,Benoit,Angle,Edge,Rey Mysterio, Jericho) and all of them were having ***** matches with each other like every week. That midcard was the GOAT midcard desu

>>2905442
>>2905400
Literally name one (1) good match from this time period

>>2905407
but it was you faggot mark. whatever show you liked more is irrelevant. raw got better ratings and was live. that's where they pushed what they wanted to represent the company. it was the A show despite you liking SD more.

>>2905458
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPasZ90HRog

>>2905459
The Rock and Hogan were on SD. After Austin left, the "best" Raw had was Career B+ Player Triple H.

Plus, SD was drawing near 7 million viewers a week on network television during this time and even outdrew Raw on multiple occasions

>>2905469
this. Rawtist btfo

WHEN IT COMES CRASHING DOWN AND YOU DRAW NO DIMES

mr america was the worst wwe story line of all time. prove me wrong. it's worse than
>katy vick
>the hand
>gobbly gooker [sic]
>raw anonymous / guest GMs
>hornswoggle as Vince's son
>DX reunion

all of those are justifiable no matter how shaky the logic. hogan taking his mask off in front of 10k people and saying SHHH when he was trying to conceal his identity is not defendable no matter how you spin it. especially when you take into account he knew the cameras were rolling.

fucking hell, in canada the week before he took his lid detector the channel that aided SD had a segment on just after the SD leading into that talking about how drinking water and holding it in your mouth can falsify lie detectors. It was a week before he took it but when he passed we were all like "who fucking cares? the network just showed us how easy it is to cheat lie detectors" even though it was probably 100% unrelated and just a coincidence and he probably used a gigged lie detector.

Fuck that storyline got me out of smack down for a while as a kid.

>>2905575
Regardless of how corny Mr. America was, the storyline did draw. All of those segments were the highest rated each week

File: image.jpg (44KB, 585x353px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2905575
>taking a fun storyline this seriously

I usually dont talk like the rest of the /asp/ies, but unironically read pic related, its LITERALLY you

>>2905585
I'm sure they did. I don't have numbers in front of me but i'm sure Katy Vick drew too for that show.

Point is I thought it was fucking retarded even at 8. Maybe me and my friends were outliers but this was the first time in our history of watching WWE/WWF/WCW that left us all like "well that was fucking stupid" and never got redeemed.

I mean it was cool up until the blow off when he revealed himself and just said SHHH.
Why didn't he lose a mask vs hair match or something? Fucking hell them showing him revealing his face on SD really pissed me off.

That and triple H being the one to unmask Kane are the two things from my childhood wrestling phase that i can never let go.

>>2905598
WHERES THE FUCKING LOGIC HULK
WE KNEW IT WAS YOU
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS *NOT* TAKE THE MASK OFF IN A FULL ARENA THATS RECORDING TV.
WHERES THE FUCKING LOGIC.


But really, was there even a blowoff match? In my mind he did that after SD one week, Vince came out the next week and fired him. Am I remembering this wrong or was that the finale?

>>2905600
They seemed to be building up to a Mr. America vs Vince Mcmahon match but as usual they fought in real life and hogan left so the story was prematurely scrapped cuz hogan left irl

remember when roddy piper and sean o'haire were a tag team on smack downs midgard?
Didn't they get the titles at one point?
Post-WCW-Death WWE was a weird thing to experience.

A lot of the guys who you thought of as the "old" generation were coming back for final runs but there was an abundance so we'd see shit like this. And I think Jimmy Snuka was a regular for a bit too but I might be confusing that with someone else. I know he got beat up by 3 minute warning.

This is like Austin and Rock coming back to current day WWE and teaming with like, ambrose and Aiden English respectively.

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40KB, 300x228px

>>2905615
forgot pic

>>2905610
Fucking retarded. They obviously came to some kind of abortion agreement because he did the spot where he revealed himself. Would it have been so hard for vince to "put a camera in his dressing room" and "get secret footage" of him taking off his mask?

Maybe i'm autistic by that just irked me as a kid. You see it build so far and he's so lucky and/or careful with his secret identity, then he's just like
"here's hogan ;) don't tell (shhh)"

I really hope i'm not the only guy who saw that as a kid and thought it was fucking stupid. WWE gets a pass for a lot of shit, some deserved and some not, but NO ONE talks about this outside of the usual reddit tier "le who was mr america he he xD" threads.

This shit deserves Katie Vick heat.

>>2905442

>Jericho
>Smackdown Six

18+

>>2905380
Hogan drew well when he was away from a few years

but as soon as he came back he stopped drawing very quickly

Gotta love how Vince would rather tank his business than push someone who got the better of him.

>>2905718
he made Hogan the champion the ppv after mania 18

but Hogan never drew and ratings tanked, so had to change things up

>>2905721
He buried Hogan and the NWO after WM17. People didn't want 'Eat your vitamins brotha' face Hogan, they wanted edgy and cool face Hollywood Hogan. Everything Vince did to the WWE post 2000 was an absolute fucking disaster for the company.

>>2905599
They were doing the Mr. American storyline during a contract dispute. They needed a kayfabe reason to be able to get Hulk Hogan off TV at any time. At the end of every show where he appeared as Mr. American, he'd remove his mask when they stopped filming for TV and make the shushing gesture. The cameras were still recording, of course but the audience at home didn't see anything.

When the negotiations fell through and Hulk quit/got fired from WWE, they had to end the storyline quickly. So they just used footage from the last time he revealed his face and used that as an excuse to "fire" him. He wasn't around for one more match at that time.

>>2905725
Nope your completely wrong

the reason Hogan was getting these amazing responses was because it was all the WWF fans who remembered Hogan from the 80s, they never give a fuck about the NWO cause they are WWF fans

>>2905721
To be fair, ratings and buyrates were tanking as is. They had to be panicking hard in 2002.

>>2905817
which is exactly why they give the title to Hogan

>>2905810
>your
You're.

>>2905372
>2002 Smackdown was the 2000s equivalent of NXT

18+

>>2905810
>they never give a fuck about the NWO cause they are WWF fans
LMAO

Imagine being this stupid

>>2905676
In my defense, it was 15 years ago and I remembered 5/6 off the top of my head. Also, in my defense, literally who the fuck remembers that Chavo guerrerro was once semi-relevant.

>>2905438
Two more I'd add to this:

>Mr Perfect returning at the Royal Rumble and featuring in the final three (a significant push) only to get fired a few months later
>Two ECW wrestlers feuding in an arena many times bigger than ECW ever took place in, with a WCW ref, on WWF Raw

The last one especially gave me the hope that the acquisition of ECW and WCW would finally result in some amazing combinations but of course there were a lot of burials and contracts expired early instead.

>>2905876
Adults?

>>2905881
not that same anon, but there was a few years where benoit-y2j-angle were continously feuding in various combinations of that feud. Cut him some slack and knock it off, its an easy mistake to make, youre the one who is soundling like hes not 18+

>>2905900
>n-n-not him b-b-but cut him some slack!!!!

lol

>>2905916
Not that guy but stop bullying the second anon bringing in an important point to the discussion.

>>2905900
>youre the one who is soundling like hes not 18+

The absolute fucking state of this underage goofball

>>2905358
I don't know what you're talking about. Jericho isn't a mid carder.

>>2906058
hes spent more time in the mid card than main event

hes held the intercontinental championship NINE times

how can you say hes not a mid carder?

>>2906073
Bruh, OP's pic is a screenshot from a main event match for the WWF Title. He was an upper mid carder at his absolute worst. True mid card around this time were guys like Regal and Christian

>>2905400
SDL is historically the better show during brand splits. The problem being that once stars get over, they leave for RAW

>Smackdown
Hogan
Undertaker
Jericho
Benoit
Eddie, Chavo
Mysterio, Edge
Kurt Angle
The Rock
Brock Lesnar

>RAM
Hunter-Hearst Helmsley
Diesel
Steve "I'm outta here" Austin

kek

>>2906354
Jericho went to RAW pretty quickly

And it also had...Kane

>>2906314
Just bc that is a popular opinion doesn't change fact it's still a subjective opinion. Numbers tell a different story.

>>2906354
Jericho went to RAW few months into brand split.
The Rock drafted to SmackDown but ended up mostly on RAW when he returned in Summer 2002 & early 2003.

BASED RAW actual roster in 2003
> Goldberg
> HHH
> Austin
> HBK
> Nash
> Flair
> Steiner
> Jericho
> Booker T
> Rob Van Dam
> Kane
> Dudleys
> Batista
> Orton
> Bischoff
> Shane McMahon
> Stacey Keibler

>CuckDown in 2003
> Lesnar
> Undertaker
> Mr. America
> Angle
> Big Show
> Cena
> Mysterio
> Eddie
> Benoit
> Vince McMahon
> Sable

>>2906376
>2003

>Goldberg
>HHH
>Nash
>Flair
>Steiner
>Kane
>Orton
>Batista
>Bischoff
>Stacey
>Shane

kek you fucking dingus

Austin was retired before April

>>2906382
exactly the only good people on his list are HBK and the guys Hunter buried (Jericho, RVD, Booker T)

>>2906382
Austin was GM you dumb fuck. He appeared every fucking week doing angles and still got physical. He was a MAJOR DRAW still. You obviously didn't watch RAW in 2003.

>>2906394
>authority figure
>MAJOR DRAW

'sup nEEtWolfcuc

>>2906402
literally 50% of the crowd in 2003 was wearing Stone Cold shirts

how can you say he was not a draw?

>>2906402
WHAT?
YouTube "Steve Austin 2003"
WHAT?
Enough said.
WHAT?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgirC5yFw8A

>>2905810
>Imagine basing your business off singular crowd reactions
>Imagine being this stupid

Hollywood Hogan is a top tier heel and one of the greatest of all time and a draw.
Hulkamania Hogan is a Cena level face and an anti-draw that made fans gravitate towards Savage and help bury the industry when he refused to pass the torch to Savage or Bret, who were much more complex characters.

Stupid WWE universe drones in one arena may not know this, but the many who were interesting in wrestling at one point and stopped do. They keep checking back in based on draws, and hoping someone rights the ship like WCW did for a while, but they don't agree or wanna hear your bullshit. And the numbers support this. Fools like you keep ignoring it and base everything on the wrong criteria.