WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan was recently spotlighted by FOX Network’s Youtube channel where the Immortal One revealed the origin of “Hulkamania,” and what prompted him to go with his signature red-and-yellow attire. Hogan begins by recalling how Vince McMahon Sr. fired him for taking a role in the movie Rocky III.
Mr. McMahon Sr. said, ‘Well, if you do the movie, you’re fired. So, I did the movie, and got fired. The words were, ‘You’ll never work here again.’ At the time there were other places to wrestle, so I went back to Japan, I went to Minnesota after Japan, and I started printing these t-shirts at the local mall. ‘One star, one million enemies,’ and all these other different t-shirts.
He then explains that he started selling Hulkamania shirts out of the back of his car, and was making more money from that than wrestling.
Then, I started printed all these ‘Hulkamania’ t-shirts. Bingo, I hit on something. I started seeing ‘Hulkamania’ shirts in the crowd. Now I’m in the mall trying to figure out how to print more t-shirts because I was out back selling t-shirts out of the trunk of my car, making more money than I was wrestling. So, actually, ‘Hulkamania’ started around 1980-ish, maybe 1981
Later, he states that Macho Man’s father, Angelo Poffo, was the inspiration for his yellow-trunks. He also credits McDonalds.
I always remembered Randy Savage’s father, Angelo Poffo, when I was a kid growing up in Tampa. Sometimes, Angelo was in the main event and sometimes a tag match, but whenever he came out he had this unbelievable tan, kind of like a Hulk Hogan tan. He always wore those canary yellow trunks. It didn’t matter if he had a great or bad match, I just remembered how good he looked in the ring with that tan and yellow. After I stumbled around and tried to find ‘my’ color. I just gave up and I went with Angelo’s color. Then I gotta give props to McDonalds, I stole their red and yellow, it worked forever, and the fans just dug the colors.
Check out the full special below. (H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)
