#2024 - Hulk Hogan
2023-08-23 02:57:31
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, the great and powerful Tony Hinchcliffe, the biggest pro wrestling fan in the world, totally appropriate that he's here today, because we have the king!
Whoa.
We share a birthday, we share four letters of our last name, the fucking man, Hulk Hogan.
Do I need these things, brother?
You don't have to. I like them. They lock everybody in. They look great with your do-rag.
Can't even hear you, man.
You can? Is it not on?
A little cranker.
Chest, chest, chest. Whoa. Here we go.
Strong, brother. Well, thank you for having me here.
Please, it's an honor. Oh. Great, to see you, man. Yeah. What's cracking?
We were talking about back surgeries before this. I can't believe how many you've gone through.
Let me wake you up here. I need to do the Hulk Hogan thing real quick. Okay. Well, you know something, Joe Rogan, when I walked into this place, it was the perfect style for me, dude. The paintings, the mug shots, all the people that I beat up, I knew this was the place to be, man.
So what you gonna do when Rogan and Hogan run wild on you, brother?
That's a good question. Yeah! Let's go! I'm good now. Childhood boner.
And an adult boner. I'm good now. I'm good now. Let's go.
I'm good. The coffee's great. Thank you.
My pleasure. It's great. And thanks, for... You have a cannabis company. now.
Tell us about this.
Well, I got hooked up with Mike Tyson, Flair, and all those...
Ah, same company.
Yeah, guys. And our buddy Chad put the whole deal together. And there's kind of like... It's like the Italians, you know. There's an open lane.
There's more room at the table for one more to eat.
Yeah.
And it was a situation. We started talking about the CBD stuff, the energy. And the sleep stuff. And the whole nicotine thing. And there's a way to wind backwards from all the crazy, crazy, bad stuff that a lot of us have participated in over the years.
Yeah. And so it just made sense to move in that direction. And, you know, my brand's been around for so long. There's a lot of people that we really think we can help out with this stuff. So that's why we're going down that road.
Because a lot of my boys, you know, from the pharmaceutical side of things, made a lot of missteps. And aren't around today. Where I think this could have been a situation that might have helped them wind down from that crazy high they were on. From the crowds and the lifestyle and everything. To be able to settle back and become who they really are, you know.
Also pain management.
Yeah. That's a whole other trip, brother. Because I've had 25 surgeries in the last 10 years. So when people say, you know, the wrestling's fake. It goes right up my ass.
Because at the end of the day, it's predetermined. If you and I are wrestling, no one's going to tell us who's going to win or lose. But all that stuff that happens in the middle, it hurts. I mean, you know, it's a rough way to go.
Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think you guys have literally the hardest job in all of show business. Because you're out there on the road. How many days a year in your prime?
Well, we were talking earlier. When I was doing this full time, before John Cena and The Rocket and these guys came around. I was really flying 300 days a year.
300 days a year?
And I was wrestling 400 to 450 times a year. Jesus. I would wrestle twice Wednesday. Like a Saturday morning, I'd sell out the Philadelphia Spectrum at 1 o'clock. And then that night, be in Madison Square Garden.
Wow. Then Sunday morning in the afternoon, I'd be in the Boston Garden. And then Sunday night, I'd be at LA Forum. So it was a pretty good stretch.
That's an insane amount of work. And an insane amount of punishment on your body. Especially knowing what you did. And the way you would fucking drop down. I mean, how many of those impacts do you think you've experienced?
Thousands. I mean, now when I see it. You know, the guys are younger, faster, smaller athletes. But they're super athletes, you know. And the equipment, the rings they have.
Oh my God. It's like they're perfectly made. Where, you know, I'd go wrestle Andre, the Giant in, let's say, Baltimore Civic Center. Instead of the normal 18-foot ring, it would be a 22-foot boxing ring. It would be harder than the concrete.
And Andre would go, don't go down. You know, which means if you fall down, you're not going to get back up. You know, so we'd actually have a match on our feet. Because Andre was like the boss. He was the leader, you know.
And he was my guy. So, you know, the equipment's so much better now. A lot of the guys getting hurt today are getting hurt because of how athletic and the crazy stuff they're doing. But, you know, we were just getting hurt from just pounding on each other so much.
I remember watching Brock Lesnar do a front flip and land on his head. And I'm, like, any other human, is paralyzed from that. Any other human. To be 300-plus pounds, to be built like a fucking superhero, and to do a front flip and land on your fucking head. Most people are dead.
I think it was a back flip. I think it was a moonsault, right? Was it? You would know more than I do.
It was like an inverted. He stood forward looking at you. It was like an inverted. So it was forward.
There it is, Tony. Oh, it is forward, yeah.
Look at the fucking size of him. Oh, it was a forward back flip.
And he landed on his own head.
Oh, my God.
Dude, that's insane. Most people are dead. Yeah, no doubt. Most people are dead. I mean, I don't know what permanent damage he suffered.
But, by the way, he went from that to fighting the UFC. Yeah. He fought in the UFC after that, which is insane.
Well, I got him first when he came back from the UFC, okay? And I was kind of like winding down, putting guys over, and doing my thing. And Vince goes, I want you to work with Brock. I went, okay. Well, I knew his buddy, Brad Riggins, who was in 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 the UFC, they gave him to me first. And he was really intense, brother.
You know, he was real intense. So my whole thing is we always grab somebody and squeeze them and give them the office. Or, if you've got my head and you're about to break my neck, I give you the office, so you lighten up, you know. I squeezed the piss out of him, giving him the office. And finally, I just started calling him Broccoli.
And I said, 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 going to make you look really, really bad. Because you're going to be in here by yourself.
You know, I used to tease him all the time because he's a really good friend, you know. And so when I got him first, he was really, really intense. And now he's like, he turned out to be one of the best workers this business has ever seen. I mean, 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.
That's interesting, that it's like a lost art form. Because for people who don't know how you guys do a match, like, there's a lot of improvisation going on.
Yeah. If you're really good at what you do, you're in the back. And all of a sudden, if you're really good at what you do, back in the day, I'm talking old school stuff, the referee would come to you and say, hey, you know, Hogan, they want you to go over Piper with a leg dropper. They want a count out or whatever. You know, so knowing that, you know, Piper was so good at what he did, or, Mr.
Wonderful, a lot of guys I worked for,
if we were in the same dressing room, we wouldn't even talk. I'll see you out there, brother. You're going over tonight. Okay, I'm going over. It was that good.
You know, and the crowd will tell you what to do if you listen.
And you guys have worked together so many times.
Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of times where you run into guys like Chris Jericho. First time I ever worked with him, you know, they wanted Jericho to put me over. And Jericho and I went out there, and I didn't know what to expect, and he was brilliant in the ring. It was like magic.
We didn't even have to say a word. I told Vince, give me that guy every night. That's like a day off. You know, I didn't get hurt at all.
What's incredible with Brock is that Brock went from pro wrestling to being the UFC heavyweight champion. I mean, and did so with such a short amount of time of training in MMA. I mean, obviously he had a spectacular amateur wrestling career. He was a legit top-flight amateur wrestler and a fucking genetic freak. All those things.
But to be able to make that transition to winning the fucking world title against a guy like Randy Couture, I don't think he gets enough credit for what I think a lot of people say. Like, oh, he was so big, and he was this and that, and he did steroids, and there's all these excuses. Like, you don't understand what that guy did. Like, what that guy did is nothing short of insanity. Like, no one's ever done that before.
No one's ever gone from, I mean, the way he did it, too. And to fucking, to get in there and beat a guy like Randy, who's, you know, one of the best of all time. Like, Randy was a real pioneer, and Randy was still really at the top of his game back then. It wasn't that, it was just, he was just fucking a freak. Just a real freak.
Like, I always said that if, like, that guy, like, fresh out of college. Like, if we were in a different era, like, if he's coming fresh out of college today, and someone like Farah Sahabi, or, you know, Henry Hooft, like some top-flight MMA instructor, gets a hold of him as a young man and teaches him how to, really, teaches him how to strike, where, you know, he's comfortable and he can move just like elite guys of today. Fuck. He would have been unstoppable. He would have been unstoppable.
He's a monster, brother.
He's a monster.
He still is. Still is.
He's, like, the biggest genetic freak, maybe, I've ever seen in the sport. Me and my crew used to go to the Royal Rumbles for a few years, a few years back.
And it's 30 people, one comes out every minute. And that's where you really see what a freak he is.
Because it stands out amongst 30 other wrestlers.
You can tell with two, but with 30, and he comes in and he's flying.
He's faster than the other people. He's stronger than the other people.
It's the closest thing to. it is, like, watching LeBron James play basketball. You're like, how does he move like that? He just got to the hoop in two steps, and that's what he's doing in the wrestling ring.
You ever see his NFL combine numbers? Uh-uh. He had, like, legit top-flight combine numbers, like, ridiculous numbers. See if you can pull those up, because just a fucking freak, man. Yeah.
Like, a real rare one. Very fast, too. Like, his run was fast. Look at this. 6'3", weighs 283 pounds, a 40-yard dash of 4'7".
4'7". That's crazy.
At 283 pounds.
That's insane.
Jumped 35 inches vertically and 10 feet from the standing long jump. 10 feet. He's hurling 10, he's hurling almost 300 pounds, 10 feet. He bends 225 pounds for 30 reps. 225 for 30 fucking reps.
That's crazy.
Oh, look, it's me. Astounded. I've been astounded multiple times by that guy. That's crazy. There's a few guys that I say, like—.
He can still go, brother. Yeah, I'm sure he can still go.
Well, there was talk about him fighting again in the UFC just fairly recently, like, a few years ago. You know, I mean, I'm sure, in the back of his head he still wants to stomp some people. You know?
He's intense, brother. I mean, last time I was around him, I was in Saudi Arabia with him. You know, he's real intense. He hasn't changed a bit.
I mean, the guy went from—he goes and fights Frank Mir, who was a former UFC heavyweight champion, right into the top of the food chain, gets leg-locked, comes back, and beats Frank Mir in the rematch. Just beats the shit out of him. I mean, he was the real deal, man. And a lot of people don't give him enough credit. And then there's the problem with the diverticulitis.
So he had to get a long section of his intestine removed, I believe. I believe it was his intestine.
Well, he eats everything that he hunts. That's the deal.
Yeah.
You know, so he's always out hunting stuff.
I don't know how you get diverticulitis. Anthony Bourdain told me it's a real mystery, because you could actually get it from a seed. Like, a seed could get stuck. Because it's not just—like, people say, oh, he ate too much meat. That's not necessarily the case.
He said there's a lot of things that could have happened. But either way. So he has that. And then he comes back and fights Alistair during the Juicy Juice days, when Alistair was on everything known to man.
Wow. I think he just got kicked in that spot, right? Exactly.
By a K-1 Grand Prix champion. Like, Alistair Overeem was the elite of the elite for kickboxing. And he was saucy. I mean, he came in saucy. There was no USADA back then.
So you just had to pass a test on the day of the weigh-ins, which is like an IQ test. And then, just using all these masking agents and shit. There's like—you know, it's a different world. back then. You know what's crazy, dude?
I found out that, slap fighting, they have to test those guys for drugs.
What?
Wouldn't you want your slap fighters on masking? Yeah. I want a fucking energetic slap fighter.
Oh, my god.
I don't want a slap fighter who's fucking drinking green tea and taking creatine. I want my slap fighters drunk. Right? Don't you?
Oh, my god.
It's ridiculous. Apparently they're treating it like a real sport, so it has to get approved by the athletic commissions.
They just want their money, man.
Yeah. That's one there. You know, you talk about—I wonder, how many times can you do that? How many times can you just let a dude smack you in the head? You got five of those in your body?
Ten? How long can you do that for?
You know? Well, I don't know. The first time I was ever knocked out from a slap was from a girl. Whoa. In the garden.
Sherry, Martell. Scary Sherry.
Oh, wow. Of course. Sensational Sherry.
Yeah, I had Macho Man hooked. You know, took him over to the apron. Sherry stood up. When she went to slap me, he ducked and she cupped my ear. Whoa.
I stumbled and went down on one knee. When you go down, you know, my leg went off. Yeah. I came back up. And then I sat on my butt and I was kind of like out for about 30 seconds, but just from that slap from a girl.
And, you know, Sherry was a tough girl and she was strong, but still, I was surprised she could knock me out with it.
People would be stunned at how easy it is for them to get knocked out. They really would. If someone has good mechanics, if they can really throw their body into it, and I would imagine a woman like her, who's been pro-wrestling for so long—.
Well, you've got to get hit on the butt. if you get hit on the butt in two. Yes. The right spot, you know.
It is the right spot. Yeah. But it's stunning. It's stunning how, like, easy it is to get K. Especially if you're not expecting it.
When you think about all the injuries that you've had and you think about, like, how many matches that you've wrestled, I mean, we're talking about almost like a science project. Like, how many human beings have gone through that amount of punishment over that long period of time? And before you, there wasn't really a lot to gauge before you guys. Because, like, what year did you start wrestling?
77.. Oh, my God.
What? That's insane. 77 all the way up to Brock Lesnar.
Yeah.
Isn't that wild?
Yeah.
That's incredible. So, like, the amount of just physical collisions you've had with gigantic men, it's off the charts.
Well, you know, I hate to keep going back in the day thing, but you know, when I first, when I first went to New York in 78, I'm sitting in a dressing room. You got King Kong, Moscow there, 340, Swede Hanson, 350.. Of course you got Andre, the giant there. I was like 300 pounds. I was like a medium sized guy.
You know, when I first went up to New York, I was like, holy crap. You know, so it's, and you know, that type of people pushing on, you know, especially back then, it wasn't all the high spots and jumping up there and diving over the top rope. You stayed in there and grabbed a hold and wrestled, kind of would fight your way out. And, you know, if they were going to choke you out in the middle of the garden and the lights are 120 degrees, you got to learn how to breathe through it and think through it and know the reversal. So there was a lot of grinding with people that were big.
So it kind of like wore you down, you know, a lot more than me and Jericho or me and The Rock doing our thing. It was different back then. The physicality of it.
So you started in 77?.
77, yeah.
77.. And what was the first match that you did? Like, how did you get into it? Like, did you amateur wrestle?
No, I didn't. I messed around in junior high school, you know, but then, by the time I got into high school, I was playing in a rock and roll band.
Oh, no shit.
Yeah.
What did you play?
Well, I started out playing guitar for several years and my dad had bought me a guitar. My dad was a construction worker and he bought me a cheap guitar and I took guitar lessons. So, you know, through junior high school and stuff, I was playing in these little garage bands on the weekend. And then, by the time I got to high school, we were going up to the University of Florida, Gainesville and playing for the fraternities and having a blast, you know. So I started, you know, playing music that, you know, for many, many years.
For 10 years, I played music to make a living, anything, to avoid working a real job. And then, you know, I started making good money, you know. When I was in high school, I ended up, you know, having to leave home when I was 17, as per my father's request. And I, you know, lived in a hotel over on Davis Island in Tampa, where they had this kind of like, kind of like the disco era, like the Tower of Power, the syncopated music, that, you know, that real funky stuff. And I started playing bass in a show band there.
And so that just kind of ran its course.
And then, you know, at the end of the day, all the rest, when I left for a while and I was traveling on the road and doing session work out of Century Artists in Atlanta. And when I came back, I got like a good drummer from the good high school band in one of the bands. And I grabbed one of the really good lead singers from another band that was around the area and kind of like grabbed all the good keyboard players. when I was growing up. We put them all in one band called Ruckus.
And there it is right there. Whoa. How'd you do that, man?
Jamie's a wizard. How'd you do that? Jamie's a wizard.
What's up with that, Willis? How'd you do that? So, anyway, that band Ruckus, all the wrestlers, started coming in, you know?
Hold on. Is that you in the far left?
I'm in the middle. Where are you?
Oh, there you are. Oh, you got, you're in disguise.
Yeah.
Kind of. I don't know. That looks a little crooked. But he's in the back. Well, the thing is, like, you're kind of kneeling.
That's why I was confused. It looks like you're sitting on something. Yeah. The other guy in front of you is sitting too.
Anyway, all the wrestlers kept coming in, right?
Well, you must have been towering over these dudes. So you probably had a set.
Yeah, I was, I mean, I'd started lifting weights, you know, when I was 18.. Oh. And I was kind of.
Which is unusual for a band, right?
Oh, there's another band, yeah.
Look at that. Look at you.
Wow.
Yeah, that's kind of like a funky little disco type band I was in.
I remember very clearly when I was a kid watching Rocky 3 and watching you in Rocky 3 and saying, like, what the fuck do you do if someone's that big? Because this is, like, during my martial arts days. And I remember watching that movie going, there's nothing you're doing. You're not doing anything. If he's getting old, you're so fucked.
That scene. That's crazy. That scene was so wild.
That's crazy.
It was so in tribute to pro wrestling, too, even the way you talked to him after the match. Yeah. It's like he thought it was real. He didn't know what the fuck was going on. And after, he was like, hey, that was a good job.
And it sort of let everybody know a little, maybe one of the first ever windows behind the scenes where you could see what the top flight pro wrestlers actually do. You can call it fake, but there's nothing fake happening. It's just orchestrated, or at least there's a predetermined outcome. But the fucking physicality. It's bananas.
Well, I've got to give it to Sloan. He took all the hits and all the bumps.
Oh, he was an animal.
Yeah, I kind of messed his collarbone up, you know, by accident. But, you know, he was amazing. I mean, I remember when I was going to go do that film, Vince McMahon Sr. fired me because of that. Because of that movie.
What? Well, I'd got the call.
I didn't know there was a senior.
Oh, yeah, Vince Sr. That's who I started working for, brother. Yeah, Vince McMahon Sr.
So it's not the Vince McMahon, that's an old guy now.
No, no.
His dad was the starter.
When I first went to New York in 78, Vince McMahon Sr. had a couple of Phil Zacco and a couple of partners. And Vinnie Jr. had one building, I think, in Cape Cod. And Vince would come in once every three weeks.
He'd hold a stick like Mean Gene, you know. So when I first started, there were 70, however long I lasted until probably mid-80s. And I told Vince Sr. I got this crazy call to come out and do a Stallone movie. First, I was in the dressing room and Gorilla Monsoon gave me the note.
I went, yeah, right. I threw it away because, you know, Stallone was like 150 feet tall in the public's eyes. And I saw Rocky I and Rocky II. I was like, oh, my God. So I said, yeah, another wrestling joke.
You know, like pooping in my bag or putting locks on my stuff, you know. So I split to Japan for like eight weeks. And when I came back again to TV, again in Allentown, they handed me a Western Union letter, this time from Stallone. So I flew out there and I talked with him and got in the ring with him and did a couple of things. If you want to hear about that, that's a little different.
What did you do?
Well, when I went out there, I just had my nose broke in Japan for like the second or third time. And when I went out there, I was so enamored and such a fan of his. You know, he goes, he had a guy with one of those big cameras, old school cameras, you know, when I came in. So I knew I was on camera. Sorry.
At least I knew that much back then. And so he goes, oh, let's just get in the ring and move around. I had jeans on and cowboy boots. He goes, oh, let's just get in the ring like this. So he goes, I'm going to try to hit you.
I said, if you want to, you can hit me in the nose. Because I saw the camera. I thought it'd be cool if he splattered my nose. That's how crazy I was.
This is right after nose surgery?
No, I didn't have nose surgery.
Oh, you just had it broken again. Yeah.
I flew back to TV.
I'm just assuming you had it fixed.
No, no. No, Andre had fixed everything for you. He'd just stand behind you with a thump and push everything down. But so I got in the ring. He goes, you know, try to hit me, you know?
And so when he went to hit me, I just grabbed him. I said, I don't want to hit you. He goes, well, hit me. Give me everything you have. I went, I said, no, brother, you don't want that.
I said, there's a certain place I can hit you harder than others. But if I hit you as hard as I can, it's not going to be cool. He goes, well, give me 50%. I went, I really don't want to. I was like.
What's going on with Sebastian? No, no, no, no. He was because they were filming this whole thing. Right. So I said, well, you try to hit me.
I'll grab you. I'll bend you over and I'll hammer you between the shoulders. And I hit him. I probably gave him 50%. And as soon as I made contact, his face hit my cowboy boots.
He came up and his lip was bleeding. So that's perfect. That's perfect. And so he was all excited. You know, just because I hit him.
What a psycho.
Yeah. And then we got out of the ring and he goes, you're a fake wrestler. You know, boxers can kick a wrestler's ass anytime. Get mad. So he wanted me to do an interview.
Right. So I did. Let me tell you something. You know, that whole. Right.
Stick. So he goes, I want you for the film. And I've never had an agent. I've never been in a movie. I don't know anything.
He goes, I'll give you $10,000 to do the film. Me being the negotiation genius that I am. I want 15..
I want 15 grand.
So he gave me $14,000 and I signed whatever.
Oh my God. He bargained with you? Wow.
Yeah. So I signed.
What the fuck, Sly? You're stealing.
Yeah. So I signed whatever he wanted back in the day. And that was it. But how rude. But no.
You wouldn't even give him the 50.. That's some negotiation bullshit right there. But to go backwards.
I had called Vince McMahon senior that night from Fall River, Massachusetts. Cause. I was wrestling at a high school in Fall River, Massachusetts. And I called Vince because he was my guy. We were, we were really good friends on top of him.
Helping me give me the break. Ben senior. I call him in Fort Lauderdale. I said, brother, I'm leaving tomorrow to go to LA to do this film. He goes, no, you're not.
He goes, it's midnight. Now you have to be in Charlotte at noon for TV with Crockett. Cause. that's where Flair and all those guys were. He was sending me down to that Southern swing wrestling thing.
I said, no, I told you I'm not going to do that. You know, I said, I'm gonna go do this movie. And as soon as I'm done with the movie, I'll come back. He goes, don't come back. You're never going to work here again.
Never. So I went, okay. I was single at the time. Spend a 20 to 24 weeks a year in Japan. Had a great hookup in Japan, being single, with my friends and all the stuff that was going on there, you know?
And, um, so I went to Japan. And the movie came out and all of a sudden this guy, Vern Gagne from Minnesota called me wanting me to come in there. So that was the place everybody wanted to go. Wrestling the AWA for Vern Gagne. I don't know if you've heard of him.
Of course, yeah.
Four days a week. He pays you better than any of the promoters. And I just stumbled in right behind this guy, the Crusher. He was like the Hulk Hogan of the Twin Cities and that whole St. Paul across Wisconsin area with Brock Lesnar and Brad Riggins.
All those guys live. So Crusher was walking out. I was walking in. I wouldn't let anybody see my face. My arms were legitimately 24 back then.
And I'd throw my arms up and I'd go, hey, if you guys want to see my face, you gotta buy a ticket. I was trying to be a bad guy. And I'd do all my interviews with the back to the camera. My back was this wide back then. And they wanted me to wrestle Jesse Ventura.
And Jesse Ventura's the one that actually turned me baby face. As soon as I walked up, they booed the piss out of him and cheered me. So I had that little run in Minnesota for three years. Then we were coming into New York. Vern Gagne was going to buy TV time on Channel 9, and all up and down the East Coast.
That's when Vince Jr. came back and said, hey, brother, I want you to come back to New York. And we had a talk. He came to my house in Minnesota at 5 in the morning. We shook hands and we did that whole worldwide takeover.
Vince called the shots and I went out and did the dirty work, flying around and going to all these places. I shouldn't go.
Good for you sticking to your guns and doing that movie. I can't imagine if you weren't in that movie. That was such an important scene.
Well, what's crazy is that you were told that you'll never work in WWF again. And it was before you became the... I had hair back then. Oh, my God. Wow.
This is such a fucking great scene.
Oh, my God.
It's so much bigger than if it's so ridiculous.
Fun fucking scene.
That was weird because, brother, right before I... If you came to my house and my mother was still alive, she would want to know your name and she had a pencil. She would measure everybody, you know? What? Mom would measure everybody?
She had a whole thing, brother. Come on, man, that was her thing. She had a thing. Yeah, everybody. Kids, adults.
And your name would be next to the pencil marker, right?
That's amazing.
So, when I went to do the Rocky movie, I was 6'7 on the nose and I was like 330 pounds. I had like a 34-inch waist. I was in crazy shape back then. And so, right before my mom passed away a few years ago, she goes, Terry, I want to measure you. I said, okay, mom.
You know, this is after 10 back surgeries. She measured me. I was 6'4.. Wow. So I lost that much height.
Three inches of discs. Yeah, between the...
Leg drop after leg drop.
You've been down for 40 years and back surgeries and the knee replacements and the hip replacements. It changes your whole look.
Yeah, that's what happens when old people shrink their backs.
It's a lot of disc deterioration. Easy on the old brother. I just turned 70.. Take it easy.
I just turned 56.. We have the same birthday.
August 11th. Yeah. Happy birthday.
Thank you, sir. Thank you. Happy birthday to you too.
No, Hemsworth has the same birthday as me. Really? Yeah.
Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, what are the odds? 365?? No, it's probably huge.
Well, have you heard of the birthday paradox? The birthday problem? Yeah, how does that work?
It's one of the craziest things ever. It's some statistical anomaly where, if you have...
I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's like 45 people in a room.
For some reason, two people will have the same birthday.
Birthday paradox, known as the birthday problem, states that in a random group of 23 people, there are about 50%... Jamie's the goat. How does he keep doing that? If you go to other podcasts, you'll be confused as to how incompetent those people are.
I can't believe I get to watch Hulk Hogan learn what Google is.
No, it's learn how good Jamie is at getting these things.
I need to learn that too.
So a random group of 23 people, there's about a 50% chance that two people would have the same birthday. Wow. That's weird. What if you get to 46 people, if it's 100% chance?
Oh, God. Crazy.
Wow, it goes up. Interesting. So, with 100 people, it seems like it's going to happen. That's so weird. Yeah.
Yeah. You know what's even weirder? People give a fuck about their birthday. Shut your mouth. Yeah.
You know? Oh, it's my birthday. I guess I get it if it's girls.
For some reason, that doesn't annoy me. When dudes get really excited about their birthday, come on, bro.
Yeah.
I'm not your mom. That's true.
I think 40 hurt worse more than 70.. 40 did? Yeah, that hurt worse more than 70.. Oh, fuck. I'm 10 months away from it.
Dude, trust me. Just stay healthy. It's a number, you know, for you. Yeah. The guy like Hulk, the thing about you is just the amount of punishment that you put your body through.
It's not your mind. Your mind's in a great place. It's just. I don't think people, the average person truly appreciates the unbelievable amount of punishment you guys go through.
But it's not just me. Yeah. You know, my girl Sky that I'm engaged to, I had to slowly bring her up to speed because, number one, I didn't want to run her off, because all the crazy lifestyle and my friends that are around and all the stuff I've been through, there's been a few controversial situations I've been through. Oh, yeah. But just with the injuries, you know, I mean, I took her to her 30th anniversary Monday Night Raw because I opened the show.
And so she's starting to see that it's not just me. Yeah. All the guys kind of walk like I do when they're all hurt. Yeah. You see a lot of stuff on TV with these A&E things and Dark Side of the Ring, where they show you how beat up these guys are.
So, you know, it's what the business does to you, you know.
Yeah. I mean, you're playing, you're in a rally where you're smashing cars into each other, but the car's your body.
Yeah. I mean, and a lot of guys, I mean, you know, like Brock's, an animal, you know, Kurt Angle's an animal, believe me. Oh, yeah. He's too much. And a lot of guys have come through, like Rampage, Jackson, King, Moe, Tito Ortiz.
We've had a bunch of guys come through and, whether they're a day or three or four days ago, we don't want to do this to our body.
Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
They're in the ring, I mean, after the first day. If you can lift your head up off the pillow without having to pick your head up, you know, you're fortunate. You know, just three or four hours in the ring the first day. But, you know, a lot of these guys are like, I have to do this crap every night to myself.
What has helped you the most in terms of, like alleviation of pain or bringing back your movement? Like, what has helped you the most?
Well, I don't have the movement back, you know. I've had a real hard time, you know, just doing normal things.
I can't. From the back being fused?
Yeah, the back.
How many discs are fused?
Everything's fused. The whole back. I've had ten back surgeries. But the thing is, you know, my knees and my hips are so old now. Because I had the left knee scoped three or four times, the right knee scoped three or four times, then I had them replaced.
Then I had the hips replaced. They're all over 20 years old. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like, oh, you can't wrestle a knee replacement. I was wrestling with two knees and a hip replacement at WrestleMania 18..
I was dragging the rock around the ring for a half hour.
Yeah, you can actually do that now with hip replacements. John Wayne Parr had an MMA fight after he had a, actually, I think it was a Muay Thai fight, after he had a hip replacement.
Yeah. The knees are tougher, brother.
The knees are hard to get by, yeah.
But they're doing them now to the point where people can go back to engaging in athletics. And I'm wondering, like, I wonder if they're going to get to the point where these things are like a permanent thing. Because they say you're about 20 years. Is that what they say?
Well, they told me about 15 were the ones I got.
Fifteen?
But, you know.
I think now they're saying some of them 20.. But it's like, man, that means, like, you've got a hourglass in your head, counting down to 20 years, where you're going to have to go through that shit again. Like, every operation I've ever had, and I've only had a few, the thing about the recovery is a bitch. It's like a long time for your body to get used to being, first of all, put under. And then, if you have something major, like an ACL reconstruction or something like that, you're fucked for months.
For months.
Yeah. I've had some close calls and some rough ones, man. I mean, you know, they all weren't just cookie cutter surgeries. I've had some major issues go down, so.
Have you done stem cells?
Yes.
Where'd you go?
Well, I called Mel Gibson after seeing him on here.
Ah, yeah.
And Mel.
So you went with Dr. Neil Reardon down to Panama? Yeah. I sent my mom down there a couple times.
Yeah. And I'd already had several experiences before. Yeah. With stem cells, and they just didn't. I don't know how to explain it.
I'm different. My body's different. You know, there's been so much craziness.
It just didn't do enough?
Well, I went down there to Panama for three days. You know, they hook you up IV-wise, and then, locally, they blast you all over the place. Right. And they have shoulders everywhere. And after three days, you know, they would call me like two weeks later and say, hey, you know, so I feel the same.
Then, a month later, they call me, I feel the same. Then, like three months later, call me. Nothing. You know, so I didn't, didn't get anything from it.
I wonder if your body's so beat up that it's just bone on bone everywhere and there's nothing that can be done.
There's so much to heal that it's not even getting to the big things, because it's, you.
know what I mean? I wonder what it would be like if that shit was in America and if they gave, because right now you can, there are stem cells that are available in America, but it's limited and it's a different situation. Like, that's why I always encourage people to go to, like Panama or Columbia, or Tijuana has a great place too. But if that was legal in America, I wonder if someone like you could be able to go and just do that like once a week and maybe they, it can fix you. Like.
maybe it's just a dosage and time thing.
That's, that was my first thought. You know, if this is what normal people do, like this stuff once every three months, I need it once a week. That was the first thing I thought.
I wonder, I mean, it really sucks that the, because I haven't seen anything negative about the use of stem cells. So I'm, I'm just really frustrated that it's illegal in the United States and that all these people are getting great results. I know so many athletes that have gotten problems fixed through stem cells and most of them have done it in either Columbia or Tijuana. And it's kind of a bummer because if, if we could do that to people like yourself, like it's conceivable that you could really heal somebody like they're, they're doing some amazing stuff where they're shooting it into discs and they're creating new disc tissue. Like if they can do that to people and people can avoid getting fused.
Yeah. That'd be great.
Oh, my God. It just, it's such a bummer that it's, it's so restricted because I don't see the danger to it when you consider it. And in comparison to the danger against some things like opiates, which are legal, like why, why are you restricting this? Like this, this seems like I had a full length rotator cuff tear disappear, just went away from stem cells. Six months later, I get an MRI.
is like, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. is like it's gone. Same. They were going to give me neck surgery. Yeah.
Constant pain in my shoulder.
I thought my shoulder was completely torn out. Got an MRI.
They said it was discs at the base of my neck and just all the nerves.
It just felt like my shoulder, which is crazy. Cause I literally wanted to cut my arm off.
Like if it was, if it was the 1600s or whatever, I was like, this pain sucks, cut it off. And then I still would have had it. Um, but they did it. They set up six up to 60 days. You might, you might, you might feel better immediately.
It might be in 60 days and day 59.. It was like someone flipped a switch.
Dude, you were always like sitting in the green room, like holding your neck. You're always doing that. During kill, Tony, trying to listen to people. I'd have to sit on my own legs if I sat flat on my butt for some reason. So I'd have to like sit like this and listen and pay attention and try to be funny.
It was a nightmare.
I couldn't sit on my butt and you forget. you would, I would forget. So like, uh, there's, there's a bar stool there. for some reason. Bar stools were the worst, different than the 90 degree angle of a chair.
Kind of like, so it's like a very specific angle. You have to hold your head or it hurts.
You'd have to like hold your hip to a side or something. Cause if the weight was straight down, it was just, I don't know. The longer you're hurt, the more it changes. I remember I couldn't sit in the chair, you know, for the longest time. And then I couldn't drive a car, which of course sitting in a chair.
And then my biggest thing was when I'd go upstairs and I'd look at my bed. My mindset was, I dread laying down because I know when I lay down, it's going to hurt so bad. And I'm probably going to wake up with an injury. I'd go to bed and wake up hurt. You know, it was like, how does this happen?
But you know, all. that being said, you know, the body's an amazing thing. And, you know, with all the metal and all the abdominal surgeries and shoulder surgeries and all this stuff that's happened to me, the upside is, bro, I'm, I'm, I'm living a good life. I'm happy. I may not be able to run as good as him or walk as good as you, but at the end of the day, I'm seven years old.
I train every day. I eat great. You know, I hardly ever drink any alcohol at all, you know, and I don't take any pills anymore. Where, through all those surgeries, the doctors are just banging me with these pills and different thing. And the thing that stopped me, this thing that shut me down completely, where I said enough's enough, is when they hit me with the fentanyl stuff.
They almost killed me with that stuff. So that's when I said, I'm done, you know, and I didn't even know. they gave it to me, but morphine and dilaudid and none of that stuff worked on my back. I'd had so many surgeries. If I just moved, if I just, if I see, I'm just barely moving my little finger.
I just moved my leg that much. I just scream like a wounded animal because everything was so torqued. And then there was one night when I don't know what I was taking. I guess they had me on the fentanyl things. You stick up under your gums and patches on my legs, lollipops.
Remember. one night, my body just completely torqued and my head and shoulders were facing the opposite way. And it took a bunch of EMTs to get me out of the house. And when I came back, I said, that's it. I'm done.
You know, and I called one of my buddies in LA, so I can, and they prescribed the fentanyl to me and the insurance didn't cover. So it was $2,000 every two days. And the pharmacist says, I've never seen anybody on so much fentanyl and still be alive. And so that was the prescription they were giving me, because my back was so bad. They cut on me so much and compromise my, the, the structural integrity of my back by cutting so much bone away that I was just a mess, you know?
And so one year, if I went to LA, another buddy of mine in Atlanta said, I can get you off it in six months. And I laid out everything I had. I said, I'm going to get off this crap in two weeks. Two weeks. And I had these 150 milligram patches that go on my legs.
And they would give me these 280 fentanyl pills. And you'd have to stuff them under your gums in the morning and then at night. And they were giving me 15 of these 1500 milligram lollipop things to eat during the day. That's how drugged up they had me. And in two weeks, I laid it all out.
And I told my ex-wife at the time, I'm going upstairs. Bring me about 15 gallons of water. I don't want to see anybody. And the first thing I did was cut the patches in half and put them on my legs like an idiot. And I called my pain doctor and told him what I did.
He goes, take that shit off your legs. That's how people overdose. You know, because it's their time released. And here I'm cutting them in half and putting them on my legs, so I'm getting the full blown.
Oh, no.
Yeah. So I pulled them right off. I mean, I called him right away to tell him what I did. And so that would have been my first mistake, you know. But I sat up there and I was there almost two and a half weeks.
And I sweated through the bed all the way through the mattress and stuff several times. I had people come in and check on me. And I saw my ex-wife's teeth come out and talk to me. I saw a plastic squirt gum come out of her chest. And this is coming off the fentanyl.
It came off the fentanyl. I'd lost 35 pounds. Wow. And never. Well, the only other time I had it was when I am.
And I was clean, completely done. The only other time I had it was after a shoulder surgery when I got an infection. They had me on a drip line. I kept telling the infectious disease doctor, I feel like my light's going out, brother. Every time I do a two-hour drip in the morning and a two-hour drip at night, I feel like my light's going out.
Like I'm slowly dying. And, you know, the infectious disease doctor goes, well, I give the same dose to 80-year-old ladies. You need to man up. So I'm like, okay. You know, I'll just, I'll man up.
And about day 13, I went down. And I told my housekeeper, I'm going to faint. And I just, I passed out. Did the splits. Balls and butt on the ground.
Never done the splits in my life. Hip pops out. Knee replacement pops out. And when I wake up, the MTs are sticking a needle in my arm. And I'm going, what is that?
And they're going, oh, we're giving you something for pain. I said, well, what is it? They go, fentanyl. I'm like, oh, my God. So they shot me up with fentanyl.
I didn't even know it. But I didn't get back on the train again. You know what I'm saying? But since then, you know, after having 25 surgeries in 10 years, since then, when I drink my coffee in the morning, if I'm really, really hurt, I'll eat two Tylenols. You know?
And then later in the day, if it was to get really bad, because I need a cup of coffee, about four in the afternoon because I start to nosedive, sometimes, I'll take two more Tylenols later in the day. Sometimes I won't. But done with it all. That's why the stuff we brought in, what I've seen with all my buddies and all my wrestlers, there's got to be a better way than these opioids and crap, you know?
Do you use CBD?
Yes.
Do you take it edibly? Do you use it as a muscle balm?
Well, we've got the drops and then we've got the gummies, the CBD gummies. Yeah, those are great.
Man, they've helped so many people that I know with arthritis.
Dude, I don't need to tell you anything. I don't want to bring it up, but yes, that's something else I've inherited from my parents. Because before my mother passed, my mother lived to be 88.. I mean, my dad lived to be 88.. My mom lived to be 90..
And their hands were just twisted and crippled, you know? And when I was in my prime wrestling, seeing my parents all the time, because they lived close by me, they'd say, Terry, you need to be careful with that wrestling. It's going to make that arthritis kick in. I said, Mom, knock it off. I'm not going to get that crap.
Sure enough, man, it's coming. I can feel it, you know?
Does CBD help ward it off for you?
Yeah, it does. It does.
Do you use a lot of other stuff, like using curcumin and turmeric?
Yeah, bro, I've got a nutritionist and a whole vitamin regime that I take.
Did you get some of that turmeric coffee?
I don't know what I got. This coffee is great, man.
That's what you got. That's the Laird Hamilton one. This is great. Laird Hamilton gave us a machine.
That's the surfing guy, right?
Yeah, he's a freak, like a real physical freak. The guy's a maniac about training and recovering and nutrition, so he has this superfood coffee line where it's turmeric, coconut oil, or coconut milk, and he blends them into these different coffees. You press a button for whichever one you want, but they're all super healthy food, coffee, and it tastes great, too. It's very addictive.
This is going to really sound weird to say, because I've never admitted this in front of anybody, but I wanted to be him.
You wanted to be Laird Hamilton?
When I saw him riding those big waves, bro, that big, tall, blonde guy that was built like crazy, I said, man, I wish I could have been him instead of me.
That's crazy, because you're Hulk Hogan.
No. Can you imagine riding one of those waves, bro, in a rush?
I have several friends that are big wave surfers, and I am in awe. I am in awe. I can't, just the risk you're taking and the way they're able to adjust their weight and balance on a fucking wave of energy coming from the ocean.
On a shortboard.
It's crazy.
Bro, you fall off. You may not come out of that.
No, you might be dead. You might get knocked unconscious by the force of the water. I mean, the amount of water you're talking about is so insane. You're going to get driven to the bottom of the ocean for sure. You could bang your head off a rock.
I mean, these guys are fucking maniacs.
Yeah.
And they're some of the nicest people. Do you surf?
You know, I used to. I used to. My old attorney, Henry Holmes, old school gangster entertainment attorney, he was the president of the Malibu Surf Club. I don't know where the wall was. I kept a home in Thousand Oaks and in Westlake for 23 years during my first marriage, because my first wife's family was from there.
So during the summer, I'd spend a lot of time out there when the kids were out of school. And Henry being my attorney, I was always hanging out with him and he took me down to the wall and taught me how to surf. You know, those little baby two, three foot breakers, real consistent right there. So that's where I learned, you know, and did it for years. I mean, you know, whenever we'd stop in Hawaii, you know, we'd grab a longboard, one of the rental boards, and go out and paddle as far as we could to Diamond Head and catch that thing.
I wouldn't ride it all the way back in. I always had a jet ski to pull me out. It was about a mile to get out there, you know? So, yeah, I did it for a long time.
It's the only sport where you have a real possibility of interacting with monsters.
Like, you're literally like doing a sport where monsters live.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's frightening. Oh, yeah.
Did you see the shark in the L.A. River that was raised from Hurricane Hillary? What?
That's not real.
Oh, it's not? No. Oh, you're such an idiot.
Bro, I live on the beach, right? In Clearwater Beach, Florida, Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. And we have friends come over, you know, because especially when the sun's going down, they come in and they just kind of like, there's a Clearwater Channel. And I live up the beach, but you can see them come down, you know, the coast and they're going to the Clearwater Channel.
because all the fishing boats, all the chum and the fish heads in there. And they're just, you know, from like seven to eight at night before the sun goes down. They're just cruising along, you know, taking their time. They'll hit something if it's in the water. So, when our friends come over, they have young kids or stuff.
I don't want them in the water. Fuck that. Even, you know, waist deep, just in there. So, it's kind of like.
It happens. It's a real thing.
Yeah.
They just found a shark in Idaho. They found a shark 500 miles from the ocean. I believe it was a salmon shark. It is very rare. There it is.
Idaho officials find strange shark on river bank in the landlocked state.
Jeez.
That is insane. That's crazy. They suspect someone left the creature by the Salmon River as a prank. I wonder if someone like let it go, like someone had it as a pet, and let it go into the water. But they know that there's certain sharks, like bull sharks, they can live in fresh water.
You know that whole movie Jaws is based on what happened in a river? It's based on bull sharks in New Jersey. Bull sharks.
Those are the worst, bro.
There's something about them. They're very aggressive. But there's also something about their metabolism, where they can breathe fresh water. And they just urinate way more. It's like they have like some different system.
So, they can survive and thrive in fresh water. They just piss all the time.
Well, they're the only ones in Florida that keep coming back and love the taste of humans. They'll come back and keep hitting you. You know, you'll get hit by a lemon shark or a tiger shark or a hammerhead. They may just bite you just to see what you are. And they could keep moving if you're lucky.
But those bull sharks, they don't go away. They're full of testosterone. Man, they just finish the job.
What kind of shark was it that killed that dude in Egypt? That horrific Internet video that everybody's seeing now. You've seen that video, right? Where the guy's screaming for his father. Yeah.
Tiger shark. Tiger shark. Yeah. Those are highly aggressive, too. A lot of those would bite people in Hawaii.
Yeah. We've dealt with a few of those. Woo!
Fuck that! Yeah.
Fuck that! Back in the day, I was filming a show with Carl Weathers and Chris Lennon. Both two different shows. One was Thunder in Paradise. The other one was Assault on Devil's Island.
Some two-hour TNT movies, you know. And we went down and had to do the whole Navy SEAL thing.
The shark wrangler. I don't know if you've ever heard of him.
No, I haven't.
But if you go to the Bahamas, you can go to his place. He'll take you on a shark dive, and he'll put the mesh on you, and you can sit around the big metal can where he's got all the chum. You just sit there and keep your arms in with the metal mesh on, and you can have all the sharks circle you, and you get the shark dive experience. Oh, wow. Yeah.
We used him for a couple of the shows, you know. We caught a tiger shark about 7 in the morning, and he was very irritated. So all the stunt guys anchored him to the bottom, tied a rope around his tail, a couple of ropes on him, which was kind of like crazy. And Stuart Coke goes, Oh, we'll come back later in the day, and you won't be able to oxygenate his gills, and he'll be real docile. So me and Carl Weathers drunk.
good, you know. And so right, when we popped up about 7.30 in the morning, because we were all diving, of course, and we loved being in the water. We were playing Navy SEALs and having fun with it. We were all certified. So whenever we could dive, we could.
And we watched them catch the shark, and then we came back up. And when we did, there was this, like, 100-foot-plus Coast Guard car that pulled up on us. Said, What are you guys doing? And we were all making excuses. And if they would have known what we were doing, we would have been in a lot of trouble.
And so we took off. Came back later that day, dove down to where the shark was. He was pissed. I mean, he was pissed from being tied down all day. They needed one shot.
They needed me swimming underwater with what was supposed to be a dead Navy SEAL on my back. And the stunt guys drilled holes in the shark's tail and put monofilament line in the tail. And as I had one of those little scooters, and as the shot came into frame, I had a guy off to my right that was going to give me the thumbs-up, wanted to turn around and bump him with a scooter.
And we got the guy on my back, the stunt guy, who had shark bites all over him because he works with sharks all the time anyway. And he put chum in his BC, right? Oh, God. So I'm swimming underwater with these crazies. I've never done this before, so I'm listening to what they're telling me to do.
And all of a sudden, a guy gives me the thumbs-up. And when I turn, I couldn't even get the scooter under the shark's mouth. When I turned, I bumped him in the nose. He was so close to our heads. And those stunt guys jerked him with that monofilament line, and that shark disappeared like a magic trick.
Jerked him like 10 yards away from me. Stuart Cove goes, he's got the camera. He goes, that was fucking great. Let's do one more. I went, fuck you.
I'm going up. I'm glad that was so great, because I won't do that ever again.
I'll never forget when that helicopter crashed on the Twilight Zone movie. Remember that? That was the first time it put in my, oh, people die when people do stupid shit. Like if someone does something that's not wise or too dangerous, like that can happen. That can happen in a movie set.
That can happen on a TV show. It can happen. People take, they take chances. And they take chances with you. And that's a big fucking chance, man.
You got a shark. I mean, most likely the shark probably would have just tried to get away. You know, because it had been, I don't think sharks fight, right? They probably just eat and kill. And it probably would think it's in danger.
And now that it has freedom, it would probably just take off. But still, it's a fucking wild shark. It's a killing machine.
And things just happen anyway.
Things just happen and you can't move out of the way. It's like you don't have, oh, Jesus, that's so insane. That's so insane. That's it. Is that it?
Yeah.
Oh, cool.
Dude.
Well, there you go. How do you do this, man? How do you get this done? Jamie's the man. Unbelievable.
Jamie's the fucking man. This is, uh.
That's it, yeah. I can't believe you got it.
This is so dumb.
Yeah, tell me about it. And then you wanted to do it again.
Oh, my God. This freaks me out just watching it.
Dude, it was crazy.
People get killed. This is, it happens. There was one time, there's been two times when I was filming Fear Factor that I told the producers, like, don't do this. And one of them was riding bulls.
Oh, I forgot about that show. I love that show. Yeah, it was fun. Oh, wow. I forgot you did that.
Yeah, they rolled some dice. That was my favorite show. They rolled some dice when they made people ride bulls. Because I was like, you can't control this thing.
You know what's so weird? Even when you don't expect it. Like, I went and did a couple episodes with Walker, Texas Ranger. And he's sitting in there at 5.30 in the morning in the makeup trailer telling me about one of those Delta movies he made. Yeah.
Well, the last shot of the day, the helicopter's taking off. And I guess he wanted to get home to his wife and kids and his body double. Says, Chuck, go ahead, man. Just go ahead and go on home. I'll get in the helicopter and we'll fly off in the sunset.
Just needed to get the lift off. Chuck's telling me he's in the car with his driver. He looks at the helicopter. It takes off. He watches it fall out of the sky and everybody gets killed.
Oh, my God.
Yeah. I was like, yeah, that's how. So I'm scared to death of helicopters. Helicopters and horses.
I'm scared to death. Helicopters are freaky. I went up in the helicopter with Bill Burr, though. It was fun. Yeah.
We went. all flew around downtown LA. It's like, the thing is, it's not like a plane. You can kind of go anywhere. It's really pretty amazing.
You could just kind of float around downtown and it's legal. I'm like, we could just do this. He's like, yeah, you could just fly over buildings. I'm like, that seems insane that you're just allowed to go wherever you want because nobody's up there. Right.
It's like you have an open road, but you have a thing that moves very different than an airplane. But Bill, does, you know, he takes like serious lessons and he's very good at it. And I knew what to expect and it was fucking great. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I'd want to be in a lot of those.
No. No,
if stuff goes out, it's not where you want to be.
Yeah, that happened recently in Hawaii.
Yeah, you can glide for a long time in a plane and a lot of other things. You can survive on a boat if the engine fails for a while.
Yeah, for helicopter, they have some sort of, I think it's called auto rotating. Yeah, but. But you're hitting hard still, no matter what. You're coming down. Yeah.
We did the thing in Hawaii where you go over the volcanoes. It's pretty fucking wild. It's pretty wild. And you have to do that by helicopter. But one of those just crashed.
That'd have to be something really special to get me in a helicopter. I can't think of anything that would get me to go up again.
Seeing the volcanoes is pretty special. It's pretty wild. You're literally watching the island grow. Because I think it grows like a foot a year. You're watching all the lava pour out into the ocean.
I might have made up that foot a year. How much does Hawaii grow every year because of volcanoes? But it's just insane to watch, because we know it's real. We know that's how it was created. But to actually see the process, you're just like, whoa.
That's the center of the earth. That's the lava. Hot, molten rock is coming out and creating the island.
Every year, it's lava expands Hawaii by 40 acres. Wow.
Wow.
Incredible. Speaking of rock, you mentioned WrestleMania 18.. What's crazy is that it's one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time.
If I was going to show you, literally, because I've thought about this a decade ago, when we would have our crazy wrestling arguments,
I had to think to myself, what would I show Joe first? And it would be probably that.
It was definitely a moment. I know The Rock says he's never experienced anything like that before. I don't think anyone's seen anything like that. It was crazy, man. It was much different than I expected.
I'll put it to you that way.
How so? What did you expect?
Well, I'd been working for Ted Turner for like 10 years, and I started that NWO thing with Eric Bischoff and Kevin Nash at Skyfall. Which was WCW, the competitor to WCW. Yeah, so we've been trying to put Vince out of business for 10 years. And we were killing him in the ratings for like 83 or 88 weeks. We were just killing him.
Then there was a turnaround. He brought Tyson on, and we made a bunch of mistakes. Programming-wise, we were live, live, live. And their stuff was all taped. And we'd go, don't watch Monday Night Raw tonight, because Mick Foley's going to beat The Rock.
So we'd give them the finish as just dirty pool. So you don't need to watch the show, because we're going to tell you he's already going to win. And so, after 10 years of this craziness, I was pretty much done. You know, this was Hollywood Hogan, the bad guy, and I had this crazy run. It was just as big as the red and yellow run as Hulkamania was.
It was just as big, bigger. Huge. And so, at the end of the day, I was done. You know, and Ted Turner merged with American Online. And where his office was, they kicked him to the curb.
So Ted wasn't in charge. You know, Ted's the one I made the deal with, and Eric Bischoff and Harvey Schiller and all these guys.
And so I wasn't really going to do anything. I got a call from Vince, you know. He goes, you know, we'd like you to come up and work with The Rock at WrestleMania. I said, well, yeah, I can still go. You know, if you need me to come up there, we can make it work.
And he goes, well, you know, he used to call me Monster.
I said, what do you mean different? He goes, well, you know, if you're going to come up here, you've got to really bring it. Because you know The Rock, he goes, The Rock does this thing in the ring, like bring it. And so I didn't say anything. as a smartass.
I'm thinking, if you want me to bring it, you're going to be asking me to take it back when I'm done with this bullshit. So anyway, you know, we went up there, had the match. There was a bunch of stuff that happened before the match. that was a little bit different the weeks before. But when I went up there, what we did on TV was I did everything I could to be a bad guy.
I was in Chicago, place was just slammed. Chicago was just crazy. I mean, I had so many matches in Chicago, and the past accolades were so intense there, that when I came out as a bad guy, the people were like with me, you know. And so all of a sudden, The Rock comes out, gets in the middle of the ring, challenges me to WrestleMania. I go to shake his hand, he won't let my hand go.
You know, he pulls me back in. And right where his face is, The Rock bottoms me, you know, and dumps me in the middle of the ring, on the back of my head. So here come my guys.
I mean, you have to realize that these are the most electrical moments ever, like in pro wrestling history.
If you saw it on video, these things, this is the epitome of the entire, what makes the entire thing entertaining.
Because you're kind of rooting for both, both are kind of bad guys, but have such likable qualities. So it's a win-win, no matter what.
I mean, this stuff is beyond, like this is, that's, this here is like totally top shelf pro wrestling history.
I always loved the two-toned beard, mustache combo.
Yes, so anyway, after he dumps me on my head, my guys come down, Kevin and Scott, and we just crucify his ass. We just, we unload on him, and we just grind him. So I go out of the ring, and I got a toolbox, and I dump the toolbox out, and there's this ball-peen hammer, right? So they got him hooked. The other thing, I'm going to hit him from the front.
I go, and while they got him hooked, they thought I was going to blast him in the face with a hammer. I hit him from behind with a hammer, right? I catch him from behind. You know, I'm not killing him. I'm pretty good at what I do.
Is it an actual hammer?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Bro, I can put this thing between your forehead. I won't even hurt you.
Please not.
But anyway. He's a professional. No, but listen.
You're hitting him with a hammer?
Yeah.
Like, actually hit him with a hammer? Oh, yeah. But, it's, he's a professional.
Yeah, I'm pretty, believe me, I could hit you with a hammer, brother. You'd be good. You know, but. What? Yeah.
Yeah. No. It's a hammer. No, you know who first, since this guy's. so, he's so good at pulling stuff up.
Pull up Rocky III, where I get stoned in the corner. I throw that straight in punch to him. Oh, okay, yeah. Because he said, oh, I don't want to get hurt. I said, you just stand there and don't move.
With this straight in punch, he goes, I've never had anybody throw a punch. that looks like it was going to kill me.
Yeah, no, I think this is it right here. Look, look, look, look. That was straight into his forehead. Yeah. He goes, you didn't even hit me.
I said, well, I'm not supposed to. But I did make contact. So anyway, long story short, hit him with a hammer, drag him outside the building, put him in an ambulance, put chains around the ambulance, right? I go, get in a semi truck without the trailer on it, just the cab of the semi. And of course, as I'm getting in the cab of the semi, they pull Brock out of the ambulance.
And I run that ambulance over with a semi. Oh, my God. Vince goes, do it again, do it again.
Yeah, this is so hilarious.
The ambulance is chained up.
Yeah. So dude, so now the rocks in there, we just, we slide him out when they cut to me, here you go. And so at the end of the day, I did everything I could to be the worst, most evil person in the world, bad guy. And we go, we go, get in Toronto for WrestleMania after I've done all these horrible things.
Oh, my God.
Now I had to back up and run him over again. Now, after I do all these horrible things and I come out of the building at WrestleMania and the place is cheering me out of the building. Yeah. I'm going, oh my God, how are we going to fix this? Because the rock is splitting to go to the Scorpion King.
And I'm passing the torch, giving him the rub, everything I can to help him be the greatest wrestler ever, you know? And because that guy was so good in the ring, bro, and I never worked him before, but second, third generation wrestler, instinct, timing, placement, he had everything. It took us about seven or eight minutes. I got it all turned back around, you know? And he had certain input that we did.
And I said, well, if some of that stuff doesn't work, we're not doing it, you know? But it was just the craziest situation because- I mean, this, is it, dude. This is like the craziest shit of all time.
I mean, look, everybody's arms are up in the air.
Tony is aroused.
I mean, it's unbelievable. You have to realize that this is like it. The two entertainers.
It was so loud in there.
How old were you at this point?
I don't know. I was 53 or 54.. And I had a hip replacement and two knee replacements.
Another one.
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