Hulk Hogan was a recent guest on “The Steve Austin Show”. During the interview, he discussed his early training in Japan and more specifically, the physical nature of learning from Hiro Matsuda. Here are the highlights:
On If He’d Change Anything About His Career:
To answer that question first, yes. (Austin: ‘I agree’) I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean it was great life, it was fun. I love the business. Anybody that really knows me can tell you how much I love wrestling. I’m a fan, I’m a mark. I’m the biggest mark you’ve ever seen, I’m a huge fan of yours, I’m a mark. When you were coming over today, my wife goes, ‘I haven’t seen you this excited since we were married!’ I mean I’m a huge fan, so I just love the business, but when I first started, they said ‘real wrestlers don’t wear knee pads.’ That was the rap I got from Hiro Matsuda when he broke me into the business. He goes, ‘If you’re a real wrestler you don’t wear knee pads’ so about a year into the business you know trying to do twenty minute broadways with Brian Blair and Gordon Nelson and all these crazy guys that were just bending my head around and sticking it up my ass. I couldn’t wrestle and they could wrestle. After about two years I had to start wearing knee pads cause my knees were already blown out. So all those injuries that they said, ‘Kid if you keep doing that 25-30 years from now, you’ll be sorry.’ It all came back to haunt me. Everything they said was true.
On Hiro Matsuda Breaking His Leg:
I was going to be an accountant and play music on the backside to make some extra money, but I was a huge wrestling fan so when I had enough courage to go down there, they didn’t want some long-haired hippie cause I had long blonde hair, full head of hair playing in a band, plus the biggest mistake I made was I ran my mouth around this small town. ‘I’m gonna be a wrestler! I’m gonna be a wrestler!’ Big mistake. So when I went down there, Matsuda broke my leg the first day. Sat between my legs, put his elbow in my shin, grabbed my toe, posted my leg, snapped my leg and told me not to come back. I went back four months later. I had my hair cut real short and my brother was the tough guy, I wasn’t, you know? And so I was always in the shadow of my older brother who was this biker, who ran around with a tough crowd and when I got my leg broke, my dad was pissed. He goes, ‘How dare you let anybody hurt you. What’s wrong with you? You’re not like your brother.’ He lit me up, you know? And so I went back, cut my hair short and I said ‘no one is ever going to hurt me again.’ That was my attitude and they weren’t trying to hurt me now that I came back, they couldn’t believe I came back, but they were exercising me, getting me in really, really, really good shape. I went down to about 245-50 pounds. Right now I’m 290 at 66 years old.
On Learning To Wrestle A Softer Style:
So I went back and they taught me how to wrestle and Gordon Nelson would come and work out with me, Jack & Gerry [Brisco] would come and work out with me, Pat Patterson came down to help me do some stuff. And so they kind of like taught me how to wrestle like Florida-style, like you were doing in Texas and all over. Actually have wrestling matches. That’s how I was broke in, but when I went to Japan, that’s the only time that I could really wrestle because I soon as I got a chance to go to the Fuller territory, P-Cola, Mobile, Dulton, Alabama, Birmingham, soon as I got there they wanted me not to go down on a dropkick. Big man, you know the one-arm thing, push everybody off, test of strength, they didn’t want me selling. They wanted me to work like Andre kinda cause I was 300 pounds.
On Having To Wrestle A Certain Style Because He Was The Biggest Guy In The Territory:
So it was tough because I wanted to actually wrestle and take a back drop for somebody or a hip toss or an arm drag, but they said ‘you can’t do that.’ So even when I went to Minnesota, fast-forward years later, Verne Gagne goes, ‘We don’t want you going down.’ Dude, that got all kind of heat from like Ken Patera and 450-lb Jerry Blackwell and all these guys that I was friends with and I said, ‘God, I’ll have a match with you, but Verne doesn’t want me going off my feet,’ so going to Japan and getting to wrestle was actually fun for me, because in Japan they don’t talk a lot of English and they don’t go over matches for hours and hours. You just go out there and you work and so for me to go to Japan, I was in my heyday, I was having a blast there, but we did do a lot of technical wrestling in Japan which they wouldn’t let me do here.
You can listen to the interview below:
Credit: The Steve Austin Show. H/T Wrestlezone.
