During a recent edition of his “1 Of A Kind” podcast, Rob Van Dam discussed Hulk Hogan being booed out of the Intuit Dome during the premiere episode of WWE RAW on Netflix earlier this month.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the backlash: “Of course, I did see video of Hulk Hogan’s part of the show on every single website and news platform that there is online. Everybody picked that up, and they still are. Why is that such big news? ‘Pro Wrestler is booed at a wrestling event.’ I understand why it’s so hot. And I mean, Hogan, he’s controversial and quite possibly the most recognizable celebrity on the planet, so I get where that’s hot.”
On Hogan’s rollercoaster reputation: “They light him up, and they let him cool down, light him up. Lights himself up, he cools down. He goes through cycles and always seems to dig himself back out mostly, and then bury himself again. And this one, I’m trying to figure out why everybody is so into this moment that Hulk Hogan got booed.”
On whether fans might be overanalyzing the situation: “I think maybe, one factor that I suspect — but I don’t know. Everybody wants to fake-ify wrestling so much. People don’t like to feel like they don’t understand something, anything really. But they want to believe that they do have an understanding of how everything works. And I think that people — maybe one of the reasons that it’s such a big topic is because people are thinking, ‘This wasn’t their plan. WWE didn’t want people to boo him. Hulk didn’t want people to boo him. He was supposed to get big cheers, and the people doesn’t like him, so they booed him.’”
