Hulk Hogan's Death Has Made Me Nostalgic For My 10th Birthday Party And The Chaos That Happened At A WWE Event In The 1980s

Hulk Hogan's death last week was met with both sadness and derision. The former WWE superstar (and let’s be honest, “superstar” is putting it lightly) became a lightning rod later in his life for some very controversial moments and behavior. That’s not what this story is about, though. This is about how I felt when I turned 10 years old and my mom took some of my friends and me to see the “wrasslin’” matches at the old Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

At 10, I Was A Huge Wrestling Fan

This was back in the mid-’80s, and I was a consumer of all things pro wrestling. I stopped following wrestling a long time ago – sometime around the end of the Monday Night War in the late ‘90s – but I still have fond memories of getting home from church on Sunday and turning on WWF Superstars of Wrestling. That show marked the end of a week full of wrestling content for me. N.W.A. on TBS and WCCW on a local UHF station were favorites of mine (and featured many of the same wrestlers at different times), but in the end, like most kids my age, it was all about the WWF (as it was known then).

The first time I ever got to go to a wrestling match live was in Kansas City, maybe a year before my birthday party. My older cousin took me to see a WWF card that featured Brutus Beefcake (before he added “The Barber” to his moniker) and other superstars like Barry Windham and Paul Orndorf. That card was missing the biggest name in the business, even then: Hulk Hogan. I still loved it.

My Tenth Birthday Party Was All About Hulk Hogan

When Hogan died, I went back through my old photos and found some from that night, and a flood of memories came to me. One friend was shaking a fist, with a look of pure adrenaline on his face. Another was standing on a chair, trying to get a better view. There were a bunch of blurry photos of the ring off in the distance at the house show with wrestlers that I idolized at the time. George “The Animal” Steele, Corporal Kirchner and Junkyard Dog all had matches that night against villains like The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff.

Then, as I flipped through the pages of the photo album, I saw the one I was looking for. It was just an arm and a bit of the famous WWF championship belt, but it was easy to know who it was: the mighty Hulk Hogan, the guy we came to see, hopefully, take apart “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in the main event. I remember taking the picture and then giving Hogan “five” as he walked to the ring. It was one of those “I’m never washing my hands again” moments.

It Ended In Mayhem, But Not In A Scripted Way

In the mid-’80s, the company that would eventually become the WWE was still trying to nationalize the wrestling business, and there was, if I’m honest, still a pretty seedy element at the events. This was still long before I knew about the dark side of the business. The crowd was a mixture of kids like me and grown men who were smoking cigarettes and getting very drunk.

One of those men ended up throwing a glass beer bottle into the ring, and it crashed on Hogan’s head. I didn’t see the bottle, but everyone else did. I remember the match suddenly ending and then watching Hogan walk out of the venue, his long blonde hair dyed red where the bottle made impact. I swear I saw him getting carried away on a stretcher when we exited, but that is almost certainly something my overactive imagination invented.

Still, though I was a little freaked out by the blood and the chaos that ended the match, that night sealed the deal for me. I loved it, and from that moment on, until I was in my mid-20s, I was a fanatic. I still appreciate the WWE and other wrestling operations like it, but my interest waned, I found other ways to spend money and time, and drifted away from the WWE.

I was disappointed by Hulk Hogan’s actions later in life, but for me, that night will always be special in large part because of that larger-than-life Hulk of a man. I'm sure I'll tune into a few upcoming WWE events just to relive that moment in the near future.