Hulk Hogan is known to stretch the truth quite a lot, especially in recent years.
The WWE Hall of Famer has accomplished so much in his career, yet continues to embellish his stories, and straight-up make a lot of others ones up.
Some examples include him being offered the chance to play bass by Metallica (something the band have refuted), and having partied with John Belushi after WrestleMania II in 1986 (Belushi died in 1982).
Because of this, some of his stories may be a little bit hard to take seriously, and should be considered with a massive dolloping of salt.
This makes his autobiography an interesting, yet ultimately pointless, reading. You don’t know what is true or not, but you get to enjoy the deliciously embellished tales from Hulk Hogan (‘s ghostwriter) himself.
One such lie is about “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes, that doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny, or a quick google search.
Hulk Hogan On Dusty Rhodes
Hulk Hogan has claimed that Dusty Rhodes was his “hero”, and that he watched him on the television when he was just a child.
In the beginning of the book, “Hollywood Hulk Hogan”, the former WWE Champion speaks about watching Dusty Rhodes on TV as a child, and being annoyed if Dusty Rhodes wasn’t on his Sunday Morning TV show.
“From the very first time I saw it on TV, as a very little kid, I was hooked. By
the age of six or seven I was looking for it every week. My hero was Dusty
Rhodes, the American Dream.
From the very first time I saw it on TV, as a very little kid, I was hooked. By
the age of six or seven I was looking for it every week. My hero was Dusty
Rhodes, the American Dream.
I’d sit home on Sundays to watch the local
wrestling show and if they didn’t have Dusty Rhodes on I’d be really pissed. I’d
start stomping around the house and cussing under my breath.
Pretty soon, I talked my father into taking me to see the matches at the Armory
on Tuesday nights.
It was better than TV, that’s for damn sure. The wrestlers were
like Greek gods to me. They were giants, larger than life, and the combination of
entertainment and physicality that I saw in the wrestling ring was something I had
never seen in other sports.
Dusty Rhodes… he was it, brother. He was the real deal. Dusty Rhodes
was the first guy in Florida to do the show business thing in the ring. He had a
Muhammad Ali-type rap-“Dusty Rhodes, the tower of power, the man of the
hour, too sweet to be sour” He was a white guy but he talked like a black guy,
and it worked for him”
There are some issues with Hulk Hogan’s story, however. While he claims to have grown up as a big Dusty Rhodes fan, he was actually only 8 years younger than the former NWA World Heavyweight Champion.
Another was that Dusty Rhodes did not debut until 1967, when Hogan was around 14 years old. This makes his claim of watching him as a 6-year-old a straight-up falsification (although it could just be poor writing on the part of Michael Jan Friedman).
To make it even worse, Dusty Rhodes did not wrestle in Florida, according to Cagematch, until 1970, when Hogan was a 17-year-old. This makes his Sunday morning strops about the lack of American Dream on his TV a lot sadder.
The truth must be that he became a fan of the wrestling as a teenager. It is known that he was always high on “Superstar” Billy Graham, given that he stole his entre gimmick from him.
Other wrestlers Hulk Hogan mentions seeing in “The Amoury” in Florida include;
- Ox Baker
- Pak Song (The Giant Korean)
- The Missouri Mauler
- The Assassins
- Joe LeDuc
- Crusher Verdu
- Andre The Giant
- Haystacks Calhoun
Hulk Hogan did actually get to fight his “childhood hero” Dusty Rhodes, losing to The American Dream in a match in New Japan Pro Wrestling in 1980.
