Flashback: Hulk Hogans Rock N Wrestling!

With the Road to WrestleMania 23 in full swing. I've been thinking about some great old school moments from the glory days of wrestling in the 80, and will be doing a series of blogs on some events that had a great impact on my own experience as a young wrestling fan. In the next few days I'll be taking a look at the first Saturday Nights Main Event that I watched on TV back in 1986 and how exciting the event was for me as a 6 year old experiencing the wrestling explosion in the 80's, and HulkaMania.

Speaking of Hulkamania, one of the coolest things for me as a kid who was just getting big into wrestling, was to find out that Hulk Hogan had his own cartoon! Hulk Hogans Rock N Wrestling was definitely one of my favorite cartoons in the Saturday Morning line up. It basically followed the basic formula that most of the 80's cartoons followed. Hulk Hogan led the good guy group of Andre the Giant, Jimmy Snuka, Tito Santana, Junkyard Dog, Hillbilly Jim, Captain Lou Albano and Wendi Richter against Roddy Pipers bad guy group of Big John Studd, Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, Mr. Fuji, Bobby Heenan, and the Fabulous Moolah. Very little actual wrestling took place, it was more about the good guys solving a mystery about stolen jewels or a some sort of competition between the good and bad guys. I've read some reviews online, and most are not good, saying that the voice acting is bad (the wrestles did not use their actual voices), and that the storylines were generic (hey maybe they were). But at age 5-7, I wasn't critiquing cartoons on their voice acting, I was just all about fun, and this cartoon provided plenty of it. But personally, I like Retroland.com's look at Rock N Wrestling

In between cartoons, they would have live segments usually hosted by Mean Gene. Sometimes they provided an interview with the actual wrestlers, and sometimes there were some antics like going car shopping with Andre. I seem to remember Andre finally picking a car and having to cut a hole in the roof so his head would fit....can't beat that for entertainment. I was sure to catch this every Saturday morning, and even the commercials for the big rubber LJN WWF action figures were awesome, they sure had some of us in the stores buying away!

I read about a year ago that a company had bought the rights to release Hulk Hogans Rock N Wrestling on DVD, and I sure hope its true. No matter what the reviews say, I loved seeing the WWF superstars in cartoon form, and the cartoon gave me some great memories. There are some Rock N Wrestling video tapes out there for sale still if you just can't wait for the DVD's to come out. I'll even provide you the awesome intro to this cartoon, which is the same music Hulk Hogan used as entrance music for a while in 84/85. This song got me pumped up every Saturday and ready for some Rock N Wrestling.