(Almost) 5-Star Match Reviews: Hulk Hogan vs. Vince McMahon – WWE WrestleMania 19

Can anyone become a pro-wrestler?

Even in the colorful and at times absurd world of professional wrestling there can be philosophical discussions about what is and what can be. The question above is one that many fans have argued over the decades: should pro-wrestling change with time and open its doors to any who want to pursue it, or should it be restricted so that only the best and most well-trained are able to showcase it in front of big crowds?

This match between two of the most recognizable figures in modern wrestling history sought to give one answer to that question. Hulk Hogan was the most iconic wrestler and, in many ways, still is. Meanwhile, Vince McMahon was instrumental to creating Hogan’s nationwide appeal and bringing WWE to a national level. Vince was also critical to his company’s second golden age during Attitude Era by becoming the ultimate villain.

But how well did Vince do in the ring against one of the greatest stars he ever had a hand in creating?

The story

One month earlier Vince interfered in a Hogan versus Rock rematch and cost Hogan the match. He claimed that he wanted to destroy Hulkamania (or what was left of it) and usher in a new era: McMahonamania. In simpler terms, Vince’s ego was running wilder than normal. Maybe it was out of panic due to continuously dwindling numbers and he thought that inserting himself was the miracle response since it had worked so well in the past. Either way, Vince inserted himself into a feud with Hogan claiming he hated the man himself for all that he did, including leaving for WCW in the 1990s and for his testimony during the steroid trial.

Vince’s anger reached such a boiling point that he attacked Hogan during a contract singing and used Hogan’s blood for his signature. It was billed as a fight 20 years in the making, and given the huge personalities that were going to clash, people were expecting something big. Maybe not the most physically destructive match, but something interesting nonetheless.

The Match

This match took place on March 30, 2003. It was rated *** out of five by the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.

Vince bitchslaps Hogan and Hogan double-legs Vince as the bell rings. Hogan pounds on Vince with punches and then drops him with a clothesline. He chokes Vince for a bit and smashes his head into a turnbuckle until Vince hits a back elbow and a clothesline. Although on paper someone bumping for a clothesline from Vince McMahon would be absurd, it’s justifiable here because, a) Vince is jacked, and b) Hogan is a physical wreck.

Vince drags Hogan to a corner and lands some shoulder thrusts. He lands more head and body shots and then Hogan goes down from another clothesline. Then Vince starts WORKING THE ARM on the mat with knees to the joint of Hogan’s elbow. Just what kind of Twilight Zone shit is this? Hogan tries to get a ropebreak to break a hammerlock but that doesn’t work since this is a Street Fight but Vince angrily responds by driving Hogan’s arm into a ringpost.

Back in the ring Vince does the Greco-Roman knuckle lock test of strength which is the most on-brand thing for him to do when suddenly Hogan starts channeling his memories from WrestleMania VI. He starts firing up as the crowd does too but then Vince drops him with a kick to the gut. He tries again but Vince shuts him down once more. He fires up a third time but Vince knocks him down and sends him out of the ring.

Vince drives Hogan shoulder-first into a post and mocks one of his signature poses. Hogan dodges a chair-shot and drives Vince into the post instead. Then Hogan cracks Vince with a chair-shot to the head. He punches the wound to make Vince bleed even more and then follows with chair-shots to the back. he goes for another chair-shot but misses and hits Hugo Savinovich instead. That miss allows Vince to hit a low blow and then hit Hogan in the face with a chair in return.

Vince pulls out a ladder and sets it up ringside. Hogan stops him from climbing so Vince throws him around a bit. He moves the ladder to the space between commentary tables and hits Hogan’s face with a monitor. Then Vince McMahon climbs the ladder, does another Hogan pose atop of it, and dives onto Hogan and the table with a leg drop.

Vince tosses Hogan into the ring and covers him but gets two two-counts. Frustrated, Vince goes to ringside and pulls out a lead pipe. We then get the ultimate wacky Vince shot as his head slowly peaks above the ring, covered in blood, with a wicked grin from ear to ear.

Vince goes for a pipe shot but Hogan lands a low blow this time. Both guys stay down for a bit when some guy in a trench coat and baseball cap gets into the ring. It’s ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper! Piper riles the crowd up as he grabs the pipe. Both Vince and Hogan start getting up. Piper swings the pipe…at Hogan. Hogan goes down. Vince crawls over…and gets a 2.9-count. Infuriated, Vince dumps the referee to ringside. Two more refs come out, one of them being Vince stooge Sylvain Grenier. The other ref stops Grenier for a moment but Grenier knocks him down while Vince hits Hogan in the head with the pipe again. Vince lands a Hogan running leg drop. One, two, Hogan kicks out with authority and hulks up. Hogan punches Vince down and shitcans Grenier. Big boot followed by a leg drop. One, two, and three! Hogan beats Vince!

Winner after 20:47: Hulk Hogan

Review

This had no right to be as good as it was. Hogan was pushing 50 and was almost immobile given the state of his body while Vince was pushing sixty. Hogan was never known stateside for being the most adept of in-ring workers (he saved THAT shit for Japan) and Vince was known for being strong but not athletic. On paper this should’ve been a disaster on par with Goldberg vs. Lesnar from WrestleMania XX but these two men made it work through sheer force of will. It was wrestling entertainment at its finest, an inoffensive display of wackiness and theatrics.

On one hand this was exactly what it was expected to be: plenty of character work and smoke-and-mirrors to hide the fact that neither man could do all that much athletic. On the other hand it didn’t overstay its welcome. Both men hammed things up by being as cartoonish as possible and Vince actually showed ~psychology~ by working Hogan’s arm. He knew it wouldn’t make sense to fight fairly so he cheated and used underhanded tactics in any way he could. Even under the no-rules parameters Vince knew how to heel it up as much as possible. He went for low blows, was the first to use weapons, and tried to stack the odds in his favor with crooked referees. He built up a few dramatic encounters to make up for the fact that he couldn’t that many moves; and yet he also threw caution to the wind as he took chair-shots to the head, bumped in the ring for Hogan, and did a ludicrous leg drop onto the announce table. No amount of steroids and muscles could’ve inflated his body to the point that such a landing wouldn’t hurt. But he still threw everything he had into the match and his role in getting being the ultimate villain.

As for Hogan, he had this old gunslinger returning for one last showdown aura about him here. While the match wasn’t as dramatic, cohesive, or electric as his match with The Rock from the prior WrestleMania, it still had its moments. Hogan was in worse physical condition but he was facing a more traditional opponent. He turned the clock back to his babyface peak as much as possible. He did even less than he did in the Rock match in terms of action but Vince was able to work around those limitations by being, well, himself. With Vince cheating and using a multi-pronged strategy to wear Hogan down by any means necessary, Hogan had to dig down deep and make the ultimate character comeback. Yes it was a throwback to a different time, a far cry from what WWE had become as seen with the main-event having something completely different from this. But it worked: in spite of being a bit slow, hard to believe, and more surreal than anything, the fans still loved it for what it was.

Final Rating: ***1/2

Most people have grown tired of the authority figure in wrestling but Vince was able to make that concept work here. He knew he wasn’t as athletic as his opponent so he used storytelling and gimmickry to tell the story properly. It wasn’t the best, though: it was slow at times, both guys got blown up several times, and there was plenty of time during which both guys were just laying there because they were exhausted. While that was to be expected of two men with a combined age of over one hundred, they could’ve shaved off around five minutes and this would’ve flown much better than it did.

Ultimately, Vince proved to be the exception rather than the rule. He was an untrained promoter who shouldn’t’ve been in the ring but he was compelled to enter it all the same because he was always the ultimate villain. He knew that abusing his power was a surefire way to get his opponent, whosoever that may be, over by default. And even though what he and Hogan did was far from realistic and at times completely unbelievable, he still knew how to connect with his audience by being as ridiculous and over-the-top as possible.

This is a rare match: one in which a physically limited veteran and someone with little experience outside of bumping making a compelling and interesting match out of relatively little. But people shouldn’t copy this story because there are few larger-than-life characters left in the business that could make something like this work on this level.

Thanks for reading.