Bruce Prichard Details Vince McMahon’s Reaction To Hulk Hogan Turning Heel

On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard talked about Vince McMahon’s mindset regarding Hulk Hogan turning heel, confirming that McMahon strongly disliked the idea because he believed it would destroy the foundation of the HulkaMania legacy. You can check out some highlights below:

On Vince McMahon’s Reaction to the WCW Heel Turn:

“Well, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it from this vantage point. He felt that it was killing everything that had been created already. And that it was kind of s**tting on the legacy of Hulk Hogan. And while that’s true, I think what they were doing was they were creating another layer to that legacy of Hulk Hogan. And I think that layer made him last all that much longer. You know, it’s funny because a lot of people just thought, ‘Oh, well,’ they couldn’t have continued with Hulk in the red and yellow baby face that he was portraying then, because he was just another WWE guy. That was the WWE guy.”

On Why It Worked In WCW:

“Now take the WWE guy and flip him on their programming, to be the anti-WWE guy without saying WWE and create a new nWo? Again, that was the new, that was the building blocks and the layers that for all of those guys. For Hall and ash too, that gave them new life. And again, I applaud that creative for the nWo. I thought that was great. It was a way to take something old and make it new. And it was very successful.”

On Pitching Heel Turns For Hogan:

“It never got far. It never got far at all, because Vince didn’t like it. Vince did not want to turn Hulk heel, held Hulk in the highest of esteem, and felt that the audience would turn on us as a company if we had Hulk Hogan be a bad guy. Because your sponsors, your partners, everybody’s — everything was Hulk Hogan. The ability to pivot as it is today didn’t exist then. If you wanted to have a Hulk Hogan action figure, you had that planned out nine months in advance. And that’s how long it took to produce. Things moved much slower at that time, so the lead time was much more so than it is today.

“Today, come up with something and we can have a mock-up of it and have it up on Fanatics tonight and be selling it. And while it’s in production. And the production isn’t nine months, it’s nine weeks. So it was a different world, so it’s kind of hard to compare apples to apples there. And Vince wanted to keep that purity of that character of Hulk Hogan. So, you know, Pat and I throughout the years pitched different ways to turn Hulk heel. I know Hulk wanted to turn heel. There was a pitch going into WrestleMania 9.”

On a Heel Turn In 1993

“Okay, this is when this is actually kind of like, right before Hulk left. Like, this was a pitch to ‘Hey, don’t go away and go on your sabbatical. What if we did this?’ And it was kind of like the battle of the legends, the battle of the two mega stars. The two biggest heroes — Dusty being from WCW, and obviously Hulk from WWE. And it was a story of Dusty, ‘We ain’t never touched, baby. I just want to touch you one time so you can feel the dream. You can feel Stardust himself. And we’ll get little funky like a monkey, we’re going to have a little fun. But when we leave there, Hulkamania won’t be running wild no more because everybody going to be living the American Dream. And they gonna know, that’s all there is to believe in.’

“So that was almost — it was a pick em in a lot of ways. But Dusty and Hulk both felt that the other — you know, that each one of them should be heel, felt that they would be the heel in that scenario. Which I loved.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.