Hulk Hogan hasn’t wrestled a match in over a decade and will be 70 years old by the time WrestleMania 40 rolls around but that doesn’t mean he’s given up hope of stepping in the ring one more time.
Appearing on the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, Hogan revealed that he was open to having a proper retirement match with WWE. When asked who he would like to face, the WWE Hall of Famer named Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The two wrestling megastars never met in the ring, despite Austin still being active when Hogan returned to WWE in 2002. It has been previously claimed that a dream match between the pair was discussed, but Austin turned it down as he didn’t believe it would deliver in the ring. Even at that stage, both men had suffered a great deal of injury problems.
“If he would get in the ring with me — That’s the reason I the reason I went back to wrestle The Rock was to get in the ring was Stone Cold Steve Austin, because me as a bad guy as Hollywood Hogan, I could have tore the place down with him. You know, cause he was the ultimate good guy at the time. But I think he’s having some physical problems with his legs and nerve damage, and he was about at the end of his run. So if I had one guy to get in there, whether it be him.”
When asked why he said “if he would get in the ring with me,” Hogan claimed that he had been scheduled to face Austin in 2002 after his WrestleMania X8 match with The Rock, but the match was scrapped.
“Why do I say that? Well, because when I went up there, that was when I talked to Vince [McMahon] and she asked me if I’d wrestle The Rock. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll, I’ll wrestle The Rock, I don’t mind putting him over.’ He was going to do the movies and stuff. You were there. You saw the crowd reaction? You know, real favorable for the bad guy. [laughs]
My whole thing was to move on to Steve, but I had no idea that physically he was hurt. You know, so I don’t know, with all this time passing. You know, and both of us getting older and wiser than it would even make sense. So you have to be crazy to get back in there my age anyway. But and I just haven’t talked to him about anything like that ever. So if he would get in the ring, he would be the guy.”
Still an icon of pop culture in 2023, NFL star Stefon Diggs was recently fined over $13,000 for a celebration inspired bu Steve Austin.
Hulk Hogan Discussed Return WIth Shane McMahon
Earlier in the interview, Hogan revealed that it was Shane McMahon who approached him about a retirement match and a potential bout at WrestleMania 39. However, Hogan was still struggling with back issues at the time, so had to turn a potential match with Shane down. In a strange twist of fate, McMahon made his own WWE return at the event, only to get injured just seconds after the bell rang.
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