A recent episode of Talk Is Jericho paid tribute to the late Hulk Hogan and featured a discussion with Chris Jericho, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer and former WCW announcer Mark Madden. Jericho worked alongside Hogan during their time together in WCW, and the pair would go on to wrestle several matches against one another later on when they were both in the WWE.
Jericho recalled a story from his WCW run and how he continuously tried to convince Eric Bischoff and Hogan on his ideas for his then-angle with Goldberg. “Bottom line was, I wanted to work with Goldberg at a pay-per-view,” Jericho said. “I wanted to do … the greatest squash of all time. It never got to that point. What it got to was we were in Nassau Coliseum. The idea was for Goldberg to beat me, and they kept wanting him to beat me over and over again. I was like, ‘Why doesn’t he beat me on a pay-per-view? Let’s make people pay to see it. This is an over angle.’ And no one wanted to do it. They just wanted him to beat me — 30 seconds, spear, jackhammer, spear, jackhammer. We’d already gone through this whole thing for like 10 weeks. And I was like ‘Let’s do it on pay-per-view.’ (We kept going) back and forth.”
Jericho continued: “Finally we get to Nassau Coliseum, they want (Goldberg) to beat me again. I said, ‘No, let’s do a pay-per-view.’ And it was me and Hogan and Bischoff in a room debating this. I’m like, ‘F*ck it. I’m going all the way. I’m standing my ground. Beat me on pay-per-view, not just on a random Nitro.’”
That’s when Hogan chimed in. “And Hogan was like, ‘What do you suggest we do tonight?’” Jericho recalled. “And I said, ‘Let me go to the ring. I’ll talk a bunch of sh*t with Mean Gene (Okerlund), Goldberg can show up at the arena, and he can spear me in the aisle. And then we do the pay-per-view. We go back and forth, and finally they’re just like, ‘Go do it.’ So I’m doing this promo in the ring with Mean Gene. We’re talking, and backstage Goldberg shows up, and I don’t see that he showed up. ‘Thank you so much, I love you guys,’ and people are booing me. I walk down the aisle, I turn around, and there’s Goldberg. Goldberg runs down the aisle and gives me this crazy spear where he must’ve taken me off my feet for 3 or 4 feet in the aisle. Bam. People go nuts, and then we’re gonna have the pay-per-view that week. Of course it never happened. Doesn’t matter.”
Afterwards, Hogan made a huge goodwill gesture to the then-rising star in Jericho. “I go to the dressing room with all the guys,” Jericho continued. “You have to understand, this is WCW in the ‘90s. The main stars have their own dressing room on the other side of the arena, and we’re all Irish peasants on the Titanic. We’re on the bottom floor.”
“I’m in the locker room with all the guys, and in walks Hogan. And Hogan never, ever walked into the dressing room of the guys, of the plebeians as Bobby Heenan would say. I heard Hogan say, ‘Is Jericho in here?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s over there.’ I thought, ‘Oh sh*t, what did I do? Hogan’s in the dressing room looking for me.’ And he walks across the dressing room, and he goes, ‘Brother, that worked out great. Let me shake your hand. You’re a smart guy.’ And he shook my hand in front of (everyone), and all the guys see Hulk Hogan come in and shake my hand. I just thought, ’That was really f*cking cool. He did not have to do that.’ But he made a point to come over and say, ‘You did a good job. You were right. We were wrong.’ And I’ll never forget that. As a young guy, that meant the world to me.’”
Listen to the full Talk Is Jericho episode here.
