According to his longtime friend Jimmy Hart, Hulk Hogan was left devastated by the overwhelmingly negative crowd reaction during his final appearance for WWE. The legendary manager revealed the WWE Hall of Famer’s feelings on a recent episode of the Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw Podcast.
The moment occurred during the debut of WWE RAW on Netflix, hosted at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. Instead of the thunderous ovation typically associated with Hogan, he was met with merciless boos from the audience, a reception that Hart said caught them by surprise and deeply affected the wrestling icon.
Hart attributed the unsparing reaction to political polarization. When a dejected Hogan asked for an explanation backstage, Hart suggested that his public support for Donald Trump was the primary reason for the hostility in a predominantly “Blue State” like California.
“So we go out, we kind of get a mixed reaction, you know. And you know this, you can have 500 people cheering you and one person booing you, but I’ll be darn if that one person boo outshine the 500 cheering for you. You know how that works, right? So we go out. So it’s kind of a mixed reaction, but it’s a little bit more boos than anything. But that devastated him. And we got in the back, and he said, ‘What do you think happened?’ I said, ‘Hulk, it’s simple. Blue State, red state, Trump fans.’ I said, ‘I mean, really?’ I said, ‘I’m okay with it.’ He goes, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘I’m okay. I felt like I was managing the Hart Foundation against the British Bulldogs or the Killer Bees or somebody.’ So, I didn’t, you know, I’m like, ‘Whoa, I’m waving more. They boo.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah!’ But that bothered him because of that. And I said, ‘Well, surely people are going to realize what that was for.’ Then the next week we’re in Texas and it’s all cheers, you know. But that always bothered him.”
Hart added that while a subsequent appearance in Texas was met with cheers, the negative reception in Los Angeles was something that always bothered Hogan, leaving a sour note on his final WWE showing.