Hulk Hogan lied about wrestling at Wembley Stadium, inventing a sick child to try and sell his album. In his mind, this worked, as Hogan also lied about the album being a big hit, despite it being less notorious than the infamous Randy Savage rap album (“Be A Man”) some years later.
Hogan claimed that he wrestled at Wembley Stadium at Summerslam 1992, but a dying child he promised front row seats never showed up. Later learning that he died, he spent the night writing an album in his honor, which included the iconic “Hulkster in Heaven” song created, allegedly, in tribute of the child.
However, would it shock you to hear that almost everything Hulk Hogan said about this song was a complete and utter lie?
Hulk Hogan’s Story About A Make-A-Wish Child At Wembley Stadium
Hulk Hogan’s song “Hulkster in Heaven” was written about a Make-A-Wish child that he met, but later passed away.
Hogan has previously claimed that he met the child before Summerslam 1992, but only learned that he died when he looked out into the crowd and saw an empty seat at ringside, where the child was supposed to be sat. However, he claimed in an interview with Muscle and Fitness that he smelled the child dying backstage, just moments before he walked out to wrestle at the event.
After the event, he wrote an entire album called “Hulk Rules”, allegedly paying tribute to the child. This included the emotional ballad “Hulkster in Heaven”, where Hogan half-sang about the young child dying at Wembley Stadium before seeing Hogan wrestling at Summerslam 1992.
The song is written from Hulk Hogans perspective, and features some incredible lyrics like “First I tore my shirt, but now you’ve torn my heart”, and sees Hogan speak out about peering into the crowd in Wembley Stadium, seeing an empty seat where the child should have been sat (“There’ll be an empty seat, when I wrestle at Wembley”).
The song was based on that Make-A-Wish Child that he met backstage at Wembley Stadium, although there is one slight issue with that story – Hulk Hogan never, ever wrestled at Wembley Stadium.
Hulk Hogan Never Wrestled At Wembley Stadium
The only time WWE or WCW ever ran Wembley Stadium was in 1992. The WWE brought Summerslam 1992 to the United Kingdom during a down period in their history. While US business was looking bleak, the success fo Bret Hart and British Bulldog had made the company very popular in the United Kingdom, so Vince McMahon decided to book the 80,000-seater Wembley Stadium (which was knocked down to make way for the new Wembley, which AEW ran in 2023).
The show was headlined by Shawn Michaels vs Bret Hart, but also had The Ultimate Warrior defending the WWE Championship against “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Other stars, like The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, also wrestled on the event, so where was Hulk Hogan.
Hulk Hogan wasn’t at Wembley Stadium. He wasn’t in the country. He was on a long hiatus after WrestleMania VII, following the intense scrutiny of Hogan after the steroid trial that nearly tanked the WWE. He was never book for Wembley Stadium, didn’t wrestle at Wembley that night, and has never wrestled at Wembley Stadium. The entire song was an elaborate lie to sell a music album, and is one of the most disgusting promotional tactics a wrestler has ever done (which says a lot!).
Hulk Hogan wrestled at Wembley Arena in September 1994 with WCW, facing Ric Flair during WCW’s Hulkamnia tour. This was a year before the album released, so would make sense within the timeline, so you may be saying “perhaps Hulk Hogan just got his dates confused”. This would be a legitimate take, if he didn’t continue to make up facts that make this utterly impossible.
Hulk Hogan Claimed To Be With Michael Jackson and Mr T In Wembley Stadium
During a recent interview with Muscle & Fitness Magazine, Hulk Hogan span a bizarre tale (read: lie) about being at Wembley Stadium with Michael Jackson and Mr T, where he (and I wish I was making this up) smelled a make-a-wish child dying.
Hogan keeps changing his story about writing “Hulkster in Heaven”, with this version of events claiming that he booked a ringside seat for the child for Summerslam 1992. He claimed he wrestled in the main event of the show, and was looking out for the dying child as he got into the ring.
After noticing that the child wasn’t there for the match, he went backstage and asked about the child. The parents told Hulk Hogan that the little boy had died, which whirred the creative gears in his brain. Grabbing his manager, Jimmy Hart, the pair locked themselves in their hotel room and wrote twelve songs “for the kid’s family”. Inspirational, melancholy tunes, paying tribute to the young cancer victim included “Hulkster’s in the House”, “Wrestling Boot Travelling Band”, “Beach Patrol” and, of course, “Hulkster in Heaven”.
The album went to number one on the billboard charts, after help from music mogul Simon Cowell (it did not, this was also a lie). Hogan said that it was him who introduced Simon Cowell to the United States, and even got big stars together to produce the song “Land of 1000 dances” (which, if you recall, had absolutely nothing to do with Hulk Hogan).
In the edition of “Muscle and Fitness”, Hulk Hogan said;
“He came to help with the wrestling album. Long story. I’ll make it short. I was in Wembley Stadium and I saw a lot of Make-A-Wish kids. It was me, Michael Jackson, Mr. T. It was all the Make-A-Wish kids during the 80s and 90s. I had a kid there that was in rough shape. The EMTs were with him and he was on the stretcher and you know, his body odor and stuff, it had a smell to it that I hadn’t smelled in a while.”
“Not bad, but it was just a different type of smell. I really wasn’t sure what it was and the parents were freaking out. They were Hulkamaniacs. I told the doctors and EMTs you know, ‘The kid is in kind of trouble here, you know? So let me say my goodbyes and give him a hug and kiss him. I got a nice place for him out at ringside at Wembley Stadium and it was all roped off.’ So I went to wrestle and I kept looking, I kept looking, and the kid wasn’t there. So when I came back from wrestling, I was the last person to wrestle in the main event. I said, ‘What happened to the family out there?’ They said the kid passed away.”
“So when I found out the kid passed away, my manager Jimmy Hart, The Mouth of the South, he used to be in a band too. He had a couple of number one hit songs here in the States and I played music before. So we stayed up all night and we wrote 12 songs for the kid’s family. I didn’t know anybody in the UK. and Jimmy knew somebody from Select Records and they got a hold of Simon Cowell. He produced a little album for us and it went number one on Billboard for eight weeks and we gave, donated the money to the family.”
“Then Simon came back to me and said, ‘We need to do a song with a band called Green Jelly over in the UK, something called Leader of the Gang, a Gary Glitter song. So that did really well on Billboard too.”
“So I came back to the States. I had the crazy idea since I was wrestling, maybe we should do music here. So I grabbed Cyndi Lauper and Rick Derringer and a bunch of people and we recut a bunch of songs, Land of a 1000 Dances and stuff and Simon came over and helped produce the Wrestling Album. Then he came and produced the second Wrestling Album, Piledriver, and he never left. He stayed here and he became this monster producer and nicest guy in the world.”
“He plays a tough guy on TV, but he’s a real sweetheart. He’s a really nice guy. It’s amazing because I’ve watched him on America’s Got Talent. You know, he’s doing the character, you know, he’s doing the Simon Cowell up there, you know, with the stern face, but in real life, he’s a real sweetheart.”
So, just to recap what you’ve just read – almost everything Hulk Hogan said was absolute rubbish. He took some very, very tiny facts of things that did happen (mainly that he is a wrestler, made an album and that Wembley Stadium exists as a venue), and embellished it so heavily that it barely resembles the facts that inspired the tale.
Some of the lies included in this story by Hulk Hogan include;
- Hogan wasn’t at Summerslam 1992 at Wembley Stadium and never wrestled there.
- I doubt Michael Jackson & Mr T. were there
- The “Hulkster in Heaven” song about the make-a-wish kid was on his 1995 Hulk Rules album in WCW.
- It didn’t go to #1 on Billboard, but charted on the Kids album chart
- The Gary Glitter cover just charted in the UK in 1993, not on Billboard
- Hogan claims this all led to Rock ‘N Wrestling, which was in 1985
- Simon Cowell didn’t produce any of these albums. He did produce Wrestlemania the Album in 1993 with the WWF (which Hogan didn’t seem to be involved with since he was on hiatus between WM8 and the run-up to WM9)
You may think that these are some of the most horrific lies that Hulk Hogan ever told, you will be in shock – it gets much, much worse. Learn more about Hulk Hogan’s lies by clicking this link!
It truly gets worse. In his 2002 autobiography, he didn’t even mention Simon Cowell. He’s not even trying to lie effectively, the timeline is all over the place; one presumes that after his ‘main event’ at Wembley Stadium, he got various creative people, and Simon Cowell, and hopped into a DeLorean with Doc and Marty McFly.
His lies can be debunked so easily.
A while back, I saw a clip from MTV Cribs, where he showed the boots he wore at WM III. He then said, “I wrestled Andre the Giant with these boots on – and then a couple of days later, he passed on.”
A couple of days later? Did he not recall wrestling Andre a year later at WM IV, and then in a tag match at SummerSlam 1988? Did he not see or recall Andre being in the corner of the likes of Jake Roberts and the Bushwhackers in 1991?
Since only non-wrestling people interview him, he can put out these lies, but I sure wish someone like Cornette or Meltzer would interview him. Be great to see someone ask, “But you weren’t at Wembley, were you? Bret and Bulldog main evented.”