Dr. Darin Davis

Breaking news today: Hulk Hogan signs with TNA wrestling.

The Hogan deal with TNA was brokered by my favorite wrestling personality in the world, Eric Bischoff.

On top of that, Bischoff and my other buddy Jason Hervey have a production company that signed an agreement with TNA to “...to develop new programming extensions of the TNA brand.”

Gee, that sounds great. I’m sure those two jabronies have some outstanding ideas they’d like to sucker someone into.

I guess the good news is that it will free up two hours a week of my time, since I won’t need to turn on TNA anymore. How could this not cause TNA to go down faster than the Titanic?

It can’t be overstated that Hogan has no wrestling ability, has a huge ego, and along with Nash and some of the other “vets” he will control the direction of the programming. So much for the X division. Now we get Hogan TV every Thursday.

How did this ever get signed? The P.R. nightmare alone seemed like it would be a deal breaker.

Since TNA apparently doesn’t seem to know what they’ve gotten themselves into, I thought I would give a quick little recap of the darker side of Mr. Hogan’s career.

The first “chink in the armor” happened with his involvement in the steroid scandal of the early 1990′s. The then WWF, and chairman Vince McMahon, was being charged with illegally providing anabolic steroids to his employees. Hogan was subpoenaed and had to provide testimony during the trial. Vince was not convicted, but Hogan ended up revealing what he really meant when he told kids to “…eat your vitamins.”

In 1994, Hogan signed with WWF rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Two years later, he would turn heel and join the New World Order (nWo), leaving long-time Hulkamaniacs crying in their “do rags”. For as many fans as he turned against him, there were probably more that had grown sick of his gimmick over the last decade that liked the new Hogan. For this reason, I think I would call this whole period a positive, rather than focus on the fans that may have been disappointed.  I think he was able to successfully win back his original fans after going back to the “good” side in 1999.

In 2005, VH1 aired the first episode of Hogan Knows Best, a “reality” show featuring Hogan, his wife, and his two children (along with a couple of his cronies). While it might not be fair to say that Hogan’s personal problems were not directly caused by being part of this production, history has shown that “reality” shows and relationships don’t mix (Jessica Simpson & Nick Lachey, Carmen Electra & Dave Navarro, Britney Spears & Kevin Federline, Bobby Brown & Whitney Houston, Jon & Kate, etc., etc. [did I miss any?]).

So what’s happened with Hogan since the first episode aired? You can follow the link above for details, but here’s a quick summary:

• Nick, Hogan’s son, gets into a drunken, high-speed car crash causing his passenger serious brain injuries. The 22 year old passenger, John Graziano, will likely spend the rest of his life in a nursing home. Nick Hogan is sentenced to 8 months in jail. Some unsubstantiated reports claimed that not only did daddy Hogan know about the high speed driving, but that he was actually racing along side his son when the accident happened.
• During Nick’s incarceration, audio tapes of his conversations with his family were released (middle of article has links to the MP3 files). The tapes included Hulk’s wife Linda saying that “[the crash victim's mother] didn’t care about him, she just wants the money“. Hulk can also be heard saying “…for some reason, God laid some heavy sh*t on the kid..I don’t know what he was into…“, followed by Nick saying that John was a “negative person“. They also discussed how to make some $$ on a reality show for Nick once he got out.
• Hogan cheats on his wife with a female friend of his daughter
• Linda files for divorce, then starts dating a 19 year old that graduated high school a year after her daughter.
• Since the divorce filing, Hogan tells Rolling Stone magazine, “I could have turned everything into a crime scene like O.J., cutting everybody’s throat” and “I totally understand O.J. I get it.“
• Linda and new boyfriend file a restraining order against her ex.
• Linda slams daughter Brooke in the press, claiming she got breast implants.
• Both Hulk and Linda claim the other was on drugs

Having learned nothing (or possibly just needing money to cover the messy divorce), a new “reality” show starts up on VH1 called Brooke Knows Best. Daddy Hogan is a co-star.

I sort of lost track after that, but apparently he has a new book out he needs to plug, so he’s making it around the talk show circuit.

Probably safe to say he won’t be a guest host on WWE Monday Night Raw.

Hey, TNA locker room– Head for the lifeboats, boys!

The site has been recently moved to a different host. You might notice a slight change in appearance, but I think everything else is the same.

A few things came together where it seemed like the right time to make the move. Some renewals were coming due, I wanted to get past using the “training wheels” of WordPress.com, and Yahoo! will be shutting down all of the sites hosted on Geocities in the next couple of weeks.

Geocities had been the host of my old, old site for about 10 years. For nostalgia purposes I wanted to preserve it in all its dusty, moldy, Web 0.5 glory. So I moved it along with my current blog over to a new location. Ended up being a little trickier than I thought, but we got here in one piece.

If you subscribe via RSS feed, it may take a little while before your feedreader catches up. The feed is at the same location, but it was broken for a while during the move and sometimes it takes a bit to refresh.

For those that still reference the Upper Midwest Wrestling Newsletters from time to time, you’ll be happy to know that they also made the transition just fine. They can be found in the usual spot through the UMWN Archive tab at the top.

As some of you may have seen around the net, Ric Flair is an official spokesman of the North Carolina Education Lottery. He’s more than a spokesman, really. They designed a scratch-off game based on his character.

Ric Flair Wooooooo! Scratch-off Game

The “Ric Flair Wooooooo! Scratch-off Game” (at least now we know the correct number of ‘o’s is exactly seven) went on sale Sept 22nd 2009. You can win up to 16 times on one ticket, which is in reference to Flair winning a World Heavyweight Championship belt that many times. There has already been a $100,000 winner as of last week.

Take a look at the snapshot of the lottery poster, and the commercial airing in North Carolina at this site.

The tagline is “More Fun Than a Figure-Four Leglock“. Of course, Flair’s signature hold for the 35+ years that he wrestled was the figure-four leglock, so that part makes sense. The part that confuses me, however, is that there are a long list of things that are more fun than a figure-four leglock. They haven’t exactly cornered that market. In fact, anything that doesn’t cause you pain is probably more fun than the figure-four leglock.

In the nearly five years that I was in professional wrestling (and even if you count my battle royal participation earlier this year), I remember being in a figure-four exactly once. I wrestled Dan Burdick, Jr. in a VFW or American Legion in Coon Rapids, MN, and he put me in one. Even though I’m not a fan of scratch-offs, I’m guessing it would be more fun than that.

During that same time period, I never put an opponent in a figure-four leglock that I recall. Probably in wrestling camp, but not in a public match as far as I know.

I used to like to use a figure-four headlock, though. It was something that not many people were using and I thought it was more interesting than just the standard reverse chinlock. It also didn’t trigger the “smart” marks to chant “rest hold”, like they would whenever they saw someone apply the chinlock.

Outside of professional wrestling matches, I have put several people in the figure-four leglock on several occasions. The last one I can think of was after a wedding reception. My friend Tim was the best man in the wedding and was wearing a white tux. I put him in a figure-four leglock in the parking lot outside a bar in Superior, WI. Good thing he paid the two bucks for the extra tux insurance– though he would have needed it anyway with all the barbecue sauce he got on the front of it.

Come to think of it, that was pretty fun. I think I might have changed my mind about scratch-offs after all. Wooooooo!