Tooned In: Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling (FINAL WWE Vault upload)

HERE is your Dudley Boyz Before They Were Stars moment this week on the vault! Happy?

Happy Saturday Morning! Well it was fun while it lasted, but this weekend was the last of the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling episodes to be uploaded to the WWE Vault. And my choice to go out on is the one I actually owned on VHS; as such, it’s lived rent-free in my head for decades now. (The segment that accompanied it, “Three Little Hulks,” was uploaded as well, featuring the antics of Hulk’s three nephews. So Horace and Mike Awesome before they were stars?)

And to go with my finishing up on this, another Forbidden Door moment hits MeTV Toons in November, as the Terrytoons — Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, et al — finally arrive for Sunday afternoons. Pleasant memories of the 90s USA Cartoon Network at 6 am or so, when we had these and Deputy Dawg shorts. I think with Mighty Mouse, we also get the ’80s CBS series with that. Cool, but of course, screw John K. forever.

As part of the Halloween build, outside of MeTV Spooktacular (Funky Phantom, FANGFACE…) I’ve been watching a few of the early Paul Fusco puppet specials. Fun to pick out which characters are actually the ALF voice at different pitches. The Rankin-Bass Jack O’Lantern special too…why does it always go back to the Irish with their non-Christmas holiday shows? Oh and the Miss Switch ABC Weekend Special cartoons. Gotta watch them with THIS at the beginning, it’s just not the same…

Well now, time to give the Hulkster and his friends a proper sendoff, with…

THE WRONG STUFF

But first, Captain Lou and Gene are in live action at a restaurant. Odd moment when they pretend to see Sheik and Volkoff off camera and call them the tag team champions. They lost the titles back to the U.S. Express way before Rock ‘n’ Wrestling started airing. The idea is Lou loudly complains that his food hasn’t come yet, and Gene reminds him that patience is a virtue. Speaking of Patience, way to flush my predictions down the toilet again, Ghosts. In a good way, of course. The season premiere was aces and featured probably the biggest sense of danger in the series. But I was convinced somehow that Patience would make the sacrifice to save Jay. It almost worked out that way, but not quite. (as a sidenote, I guess Jay doesn’t also nearly die after all and wake up seeing the ghosts permanently too…) But, as with most parts of my life, I am letting Ghosts talk overtake other matters at hand. My interest is piqued to hear that the waitress’ name is Sherri. THEREFORE, she finally brings out a whole cart of food that is presumably the Captain’s order, and if you don’t know why this is “funny” yet, you’re in the wrong column. Albano caps it off with the old “seafood diet” joke.

Onto the adventure proper, we’re at Granny’s farm and we get a rare look at the matriarch of the Hillbilly family to boot. She was generally right up there with Jim Cornette’s mother in the “always mentioned, rarely seen” category. The wrestlers are doing yard work, which Hulk refers to as “the best body training.”

They’re interrupted when Superfly mentions that the World Series is on at 10 am. 10 AM?!!? Andre, who canonically here was ashamed to be a wrestler, naturally says baseball is his favorite. They have to wrest the TV away from the farm animals, leading to Captain Lou wrestling them over it and reminding me, via OVP Podcast, of Bobby Heenan’s WrestleMania IV promos where he threatened violence on the Bulldogs, Koko, AND Frankie and Matilda. However, a special bulletin airs about trapped astronauts whose ship is on a collision course with a passing satellite. Now remember, CBS PULLED another series because the Challenger had just happened, so it’s a bit odd to see an episode involving a space shuttle in danger. But I guess enough time had passed by then. NASA needs to recruit “two of the strongest men in the world” to pry the door open. Wanting to avoid having to choose Ted Arcidi and Dino Bravo, NASA agents arrive at the farm looking for rescue astronauts.

Hulk and his friends go over to NASA HQ, where they meet the other candidates: of course it’s Roddy Piper and his gang. Despite astronaut lives being at stake, Hogan refuses to compete with them as if they were cruiserweights or something, and lets his personal grudges in the way as he picks a fight with Piper instead. They’re reminded indeed of the lives in danger, and both Hogan and Piper in unison agree, “Yeah! His!” Cooler heads prevail, and then we get a montage of the wrestlers in various physical tests. The heels try to cheat when they can, and hilarity generally ensues. It ends with Sheik and Captain Lou in a weightlessness test, and the show conditioned me to expect a fat joke. But they actually subvert that when Sheiky says Lou IS weightless (inside his head). After all is said and done, they pick Hogan — yeah, I’m as shocked as you — and Nikolai. Never mind that their tests had little to do with strength; Volkoff lucked into passing a cognitive test, and Hogan proved he could stay underwater. So it’s like a Superfriends adventure where they just bring Aquaman along because. And hey , it’s another Wacky Partners Who Can’t Get Along episode. Vince Russo would be proud. Of course, he’d also write it so it was a SWERVE, bro, and NASA turns heel on both Hogan and Volkoff because they were really Disco Inferno’s Martian Invaders.

After arguing whether to call themselves “cosmonauts” or “astronauts”, there’s MORE comic training montages. Finally, the two are ready to board the ship, and the US President (who they make an effort to sound like Reagan, vaguely) and the Russian Premier offer their words of support as Tetris-style music plays for Nikolai. But what’s this? Piper makes a last-ditch effort to stop Hogan from boarding the shuttle, and Sheik decides he might as well replace his less intelligent partner. But they wind up abducting the pilots instead as the shuttle launches, marooning both wrestlers. I don’t know if this was more reckless or Alexandra messing things up and leaving Josie and the Pussycats stranded in space? Well the Pussycats never did return to Earth did they? And spoiler, this gets resolved in a half hour.

So Hogan and Volkoff are left to also pilot the ship, and more hilarity ensues when Nikolai confuses everything with a TV show or video game, and otherwise bumbles a lot. They arrive at the stranded ship, then Nikolai sees a camera and the scene I was REALLY obsessed with begins, when he starts shouting out to his mother, and then says “Hello, Comrade Sheik? Hello, Comrade Piper? HELLO, WRESTLING FANS!” He then sings the Russian National Anthem before being called over to get the doors open. Despite being knocked away due to Nikolai’s clumsiness, Hogan of course singlehandedly saves the day just in time. Back on Earth, Mean Gene takes interviews from both wrestlers, and Volkoff gets a special request from the Premier to do Mother Russia a big favor: “SHUT UP!”

Back to live action is Hulk Hogan himself, who says Hulkamania is like a love affair. Hopefully not one where you get caught on camera and get caught saying unsavory things, but what are the chances of that happening? So Gene takes the opportunity to introduce the Hulkster to some of the biggest Hulkamaniacs: his family, who are all dressed in suits and fake mustaches. Gene Jr. might be adopted, though, cause he has a full head of hair.

So thanks, WWE Vault, for the last two months down memory lane, no matter how corny it was.

And now, since the Vault for whatever reason wouldn’t, here’s the men and women responsible for the last couple of weeks: