During a recent appearance on the “No Contest Wrestling” podcast, Eric Bischoff discussed his efforts to persuade Hulk Hogan to become a heel and join the nWo as the “third man.”
Hogan ultimately agreed to the idea, and the rest is history. However, during Bischoff’s initial attempt, Hogan rejected the proposal.
Bischoff said, “About eight months before Hulk Hogan turned heel, I went down to Florida during the middle of the week because I wanted to talk to Hulk about the possibility of him turning heel, because the red and yellow thing wasn’t working as well as it used to by that time. He wasn’t getting the reactions that he was used to, we were all seeing it nobody wanted to say anything, but it was kind of not working. So I thought, well I’m just going to go down and put my salesman hat on, you know, pretend I’m selling pop-out caps door to door and I’m going to try to convince Hulk Hogan into turning heel. […] I didn’t want to tell him [who the third man was] not because I didn’t trust him … Hulk is like a child sometimes. When he gets really excited, he cannot keep a secret. I said, ‘Hulk, I don’t know. Who do you think it should be?’ And he went [makes a motion of stroking a beard] curls his lips up like that, looks like a big fish, [and Hogan replied], ‘You’re looking at him, brother.’ Oh, wow, and I got all [excited] because I knew that was big.”
