Hulk Hogan gave a lengthy interview on The Joe Rogan Experience to promote his CBD line. Hogan spoke extensively about his wrestling career, Brock Lesnar, and a variety of other topics.
On requiring 25 surgeries in the last decade:
“I’ve had 25 surgeries in the last 10 years. So when people say, ‘Hey, you know, the wrestling is fake’, it goes right up my ass because at the end of the day, it’s predetermined. If you and I were wrestling, Vince is gonna tell us who’s gonna win or lose, but all that stuff that happens in the middle, it hurts.”
On Brock Lesnar:
“I got him first when he came back from the UFC. I was kind of winding down putting guys over and doing my thing and Vince goes, ‘I want you to work with Brock.’ I went, ‘Okay.’ I knew his buddy, Brad Rheingans, who was from Minnesota. He was the coach of the Olympic team several years back and so when Brock was in high school, we had heard of him. We kept an eye on him, you know, but when he came back from UFC, they gave him to me first and he was really intense, brother. He was really intense. So my whole thing is we always grabbed somebody and squeezed him to give him the office. You’ve got my head, you’re about to break my neck, you give him the office to lighten up, squeezed the piss out of him and gave him the office. Finally, I just started calling him Broccoli. I told him, ‘Broccoli’, I got him to laugh a little bit. I said, ‘Let me tell you something. If you keep hurting me in here, if you don’t loosen up on the old man here, I’m gonna make you look really, really bad because you can be in here by yourself.’ You know, I used to tease him all the time because he’s a really good friend, you know? So when I got him first, he was really, really intense and now he’s like, he’s turned out to be one of the best workers this business has ever seen. I mean, brother, he draws money. He backpedals. He sells. He’s got instinct. He’s got placement. He knows where he’s at. He listens. Like, you don’t have to tell him what to do. You don’t have to have a writer write the match out. He goes out and listens to the crowd with his mind and his heart. You know, and it’s something that’s a lost art form. He’s got it man. So he figured it out.”
Gerald Brisco and Jim Ross scouted Brock around 1999-2000 and Hogan did not wrestle Brock after Brock’s run in UFC.
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
