The late, great ‘Hollywood’ Hulk Hogan has had an illustrious career in the world of professional wrestling. He has had a handful of controversial matches in his career. One such match was his one-on-one match against Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam ’05. Recently, Dave Meltzer opened up about the real story of the match.
The match was heavily one-sided. It was also clearly evident that the Heartbreak Kid was overselling every single move. The Immortal One was the one who had his hand raised at the end of the match.
Dave Meltzer was a special guest on the Hulk Hogan Tribute episode of Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast. During the episode, Meltzer opened up about how the SummerSlam match came to fruition. Meltzer claimed that at the time, Shawn Michaels and Hogan did not get along with each other. He mentioned that Hogan saw the Heartbreak Kid as a little guy.
Meltzer then mentioned that during the creative discussions, Hulk Hogan shared that they could wrestle in two matches, but he wanted to win both and that was what all parties agreed upon.
“They fought back and forth. Shawn want to win the first one. ‘We’ll set up a second one. You can win the second one.’ Hogan goes, ‘we can do two, but I’m winning both. So of course, you can imagine how that made Shawn feel, right? So they’re having problems.” [H/T WrestlingNews.co]
Dave Meltzer revealed that he Told Hulk Hogan was underpaid for the SummerSlam match
Dave Meltzer then shared that one of the main reasons for Shawn Michaels to oversell the SummerSlam match was that he wanted people to look back at the match the next day and see the match as a joke.
“They do the match, and it’s a famous match because Shawn oversells to this comedic point. Basically goes on TV the next day and says, you know, ‘you could watch that match. It was all fake’… to make the match into a joke.”
Meltzer then revealed that he had a conversation with Hulk Hogan over the phone. Hogan had earned a quarter of a million dollars for the match. Meltzer told Hogan that he was ripped off.
“So Hogan gets his his pay from the show, which was quarter of a million dollars. Okay? He was mad. For whatever reason, one of his friends goes, ‘call Dave, because he’s going to know how the pay per view did.’… Get a phone call from him and it’s just like, ‘how did the Pay Per View do?’ And I said, ‘640,000 buys.’ And he goes, ‘I got 250,000. Was I ripped off?’ And I go, ‘you were way, way, way ripped off,’” Dave Meltzer said.
Read More: WWE Hall of Famer Shares Why Hulk Hogan vs. Steve Austin Never Happened
What are your thoughts on the infamous SummerSlam match?
