WWE Should Not Trot Out Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania

Hulk Hogan settled his longstanding lawsuit against Gawker Media for many millions of dollars last week. The whole situation was fraught with ugliness that is not necessary to rehash here, but the key in it from a WWE perspective were the racist and homophobic comments that emerged from the tape last July. WWE fired him from his legends contract, pulled his merchandise from their website, and stopped fans from wearing it at their shows.

Now comes word, via his daughter Brooke, that the Hulkster and WWE are negotiating a WrestleMania comeback?

Hard pass. Without even getting into the business of judging apologies or evaluating whether enough time has passed since last July when his bigotry emerged, Hulk Hogan’s WWE appearances have been meh for well over a decade now.

He goes out there with his shtick from 30 years ago and never has anything interesting to say. Lamentably, WWE does not have many links to their iconic 80’s left, and even if more had survived Hogan was the biggest name and draw at that time. Nevertheless, every time they’ve trotted him out since his match with The Rock at WrestleMania X8 in 2002 they’ve diluted the product.