Hulk Hogan talks "Hulk Hogan's Micro Championship Wrestling"

Hulk Hogan is one of my favorite people to interview, for multiple reasons.

For one, he calls me “dear” and sounds like he genuinely means it, which is utterly heartwarming. For two, I am a lifelong wrestling fan and have alternately loved, loathed and feared his grappling character literally for as long as I can remember.

And for three, everything Hogan does, he seems to do with his whole heart and soul — and usually to benefit others as much, if not more, than himself (remember him bringing James Durbin to his knees with joy on last season’s American Idol?)

Off-camera, the larger-than-life person who hollers you out of your chair from the TV is a warm, gracious, intelligent businessman who is completely in love with his art form in all it’s incarnations. And it’s that drive to preserve and advance the sport of wrestling and embrace its legions of devoted fans — and the people who rely on it to make a living — that led Hogan to create his newest TV enterprise, Hulk Hogan’s Micro Championship Wrestling, which debuts Wednesday night on truTV.

If you’re tempted to write it off as <gulp> “midget wrestling” gone out of the barroom and onto TV, you may want to listen to what Hogan himself has to say about his motivations for championing the Micro Championship wrestlers — inside the ring and out.

Channel Guide Magazine: How did you become associated with the MCW?
Hulk Hogan: Oh my gosh, this story is so crazy!

The guy who actually promotes the little people and helps them earn a living and drives them around the country, his name is Johnny Green. And he used to run a gym around here in the Clearwater/Tampa area, and we were friends. I used to work out at his gym.

Out of nowhere, I get this call from him — “Hey man, I gotta talk to you for a minute.” And I said, “Sure! What’s up?” And he said, “Well, I hate to bother you, but I’m caught in a tough situation. I’ve got these little guys on the road and they’re wrestling… .” And he told me all about the MCW, the organization.

He needed some guidance. They were doing the same old thing over and over again, doing the same little venues and doing the same little circuit. And he said, “What can I do to really get this up and running?”

So I said, “Well, Johnny let me take a look at what you’ve got.” And he told me to go to the Internet and Google MCW Micro Championship wrestling — and as soon as I did, I fell in love with these guys. I saw how hard they were working in the ring, and I called Johnny back and I said, “Johnny, I think this could be a TV show. The wrestling’s great, but what I’d like to focus on is not the Jackass spin on the small wrestlers. I’d like to focus on not only how tough it is to wrestle, but how hard their daily grind is – trying to open a door, get up in a normal sized chair, get a rental car. To function in a normal-sized world.”

Then I found out all these little guys and little girls have normal-sized boyfriends and normal-sized wives and normal-sized problems with homework and money and taxes, and I went “Oh my God, there’s the show there.”

Every aspect of their lives is a main event.

CGM: So how did the idea for the show take shape into the real deal?
HH: I called Eric Bischoff and Jason Hervey, my partners, and told them about the show and they were in.

I know some other networks were doing shows with little people, but they were going in a different direction than we were. And I’m not saying that those antics going on, but it doesn’t come from the producers or the storyline. Part of their normal demeanor is to pull jokes on each other. I mean, if one guy is climbing up on a counter to open a cabinet, don’t be surprised if someone else pulls the chair out from under him, but that’s not coming from us. They have fun with each other and joke with each other and tease each other in ways that I would never do to them.

They can be pretty tough on each other — and there’s a lot of that going on on the road — but we’re trying to focus on the real life issues of what it takes to make it not only in the ring, but also in real life. That’s the direction we decided to go in.

CGM: Are there extra precautions you take with your wrestlers because of the health issues associated with being a little person.
HH: No, we really don’t. They live their lives as normally as possible. When they jump in the car or the van, they put their seatbelts on just like everybody else.

Some of them I’m a little upset with; they’re a little rougher on their bodies than they need to be. There’s a couple that smoke constantly. And there’s one or two of them, at ten o’clock in the morning, they’re walking around with a beer in their hand. I try to tell them, “If you’re going to make it in this business, you have to be a great athlete. You need to be doing your dumbbell curls with weights, not with beer cans.”

Some of this stuff is the just lifestyle they’ve chosen and we capture all of that, but we don’t exploit it. We just show it like it is and I think that is going to be the appeal of the show.

CGM: What would you say to people who would instantly dismiss this as “Hulk Hogan’s Midget Wrestling League”— and not even consider with the very real human element of the show?
HH: Well first of all, I’m not the star of the show — the wrestlers are. For business reasons, my name is attached to the show, but I’m not going to say that was my preference at all. To make this work for them, there was a compromise made and I put my name on the show — because it was something that needed to be done. It wasn’t my first choice, but it made sense business-wise to help these boys and girls.

But I am NOT the star of the show by any means — and I’m not attached to show to exploit their careers or their lifestyles. I’m heavily involved with them.

And I think that once you watch the show, you’ll see a couple spots there that it’s me and my trainer Brian Knobs and about six little people crying like there is waterfalls coming out of our eyeballs. We were so happy at certain times that things were going well and we finally had a perfect show and everyone had performed greatly and I couldn’t stop crying. And everybody around me was the same. We were like a bunch of crybabies. It was like an Abbott and Costello movie with fake tears we were crying so much that we just couldn’t shut it off; we were so overjoyed that we finally made it. That they finally did what they were supposed to do. The performance. The verbiage. The show. They finally made it. And I had serious doubts along the way that these guys really had it in their blood and then when they finally proved it to me, it was very overwhelming.

CGM: Did you find that some of the talent was content to be part of a barroom spectacle and not necessarily open to your input?
HH: They all had accepted that.

They had all accepted that they were just going to live and die in this barroom brawling atmosphere and I said, “Guys, that is not what you’re here. You’re here to raise the bar on your lives and go to this higher level.” And once I tried to show them this higher level, I said, “That’s where you need to function at all times.” Once they saw this moment of greatness, I said, “That’s where you need to be all the time. You need to be proud of who you are and what you are and what you’re doing with your lives.”

All I had to do was bring their families to one of the events and that changed the game. I talked the families into coming, and it really changed their attitudes about performing and being professionals in front of their wives and kids.

CGM: Can you give me an idea of what a typical episode entails — will there be wrestling matches?
HH: There will be wrestling action each episode, but it will be minimal compared to the rest of the storyline of the show.

The show opens with where we are now, what issues we have to deal with good and bad. It could be something like, “OK guys, we’re just starting out and …” Or, “OK, it’s week three now and I’ve got some problems with the girls …” Or I’ve got some problems with Justice, one of my top wrestlers. Or I’ve got some problems with Meatball — you can’t keep pulling your pants down in front of the crowd.

These are some professional issues we need to address.

We’re in Nashville tonight and I kind of lay out what to expect: “This is what I want to see tonight, you just passed the last test and we’ve got these obstacles tonight. And I need the girls to step up, because if they don’t I’m going to have to get rid of somebody.”

Because it’s the truth. I can’t be pulling dead weight around here. We’re on a budget. We have to make things happen. “I’m excited for some of you guys — a couple of the guys, I’m really disappointed. Turn things around for me, make this work. OK, guys? Get ready!”

And then there’s a whole week of traveling and preparing and getting to the venue. I’ve got Brian Knobs on the road in a very small Winnebago with all the wrestlers and all the comedy and the craziness that happens there. And then we get to the event, like in Nashville, I’m there for the pre-show talk. I’m there for part of the live event — I’m sitting there at the table helping judge the situations and commentate.

And then when the show’s over, there’s the wrap-up, which can be a very very positive ending. Or it can be a bit of a mystery — we’ve had some situations, there’s some good and some bad, but you know what? This is where we’re at and this is where we’re going to next. I kind of wrap things around to the next event — or the next journey. Or the next adventure.

CGM: So you actually hit the road as a member of the MCW team…
HH: We went everywhere with these guys. And I haven’t seen the finals on everything, but I’ve seen some of the rough stuff and we’re trying to keep all the organic stuff that really comes across as being spot on.

We don’t want to do a bunch of contrived stuff on the show. The most contrived stuff will be the action in the ring, because sometimes they get into a little routine of what they do out there. And I’m really not an expert at small people wrestling — I just try to give them pointers and most of it is going to be real emotional, heartfelt stuff.

CGM: The last time we spoke, you were helming Celebrity Championship Wrestling. You, more than pretty much any other pro-wrestling talent, seem to have a knack for branching out into new projects away from the televised wrestling leagues. To what do you attribute that?
HH: I stay close to home base. I’m still running a wrestling show for Spike TV — TNA Impact Wrestling that’s on Thursday nights from 9-11 — so I don’t venture too far away.

Sometimes I’ll do a TV series, and I’m in negotiations now to do a TV series that’s not wrestling related at all, with myself working with kids and families. It’s a reality, docu-soap type thing to help troubled families and troubled kids. Actually right before I talked to you, I was in a business meeting with the head of the network talking about the deal.

I just keep trying to reinvent myself — and the easiest way to reinvent myself is to keep the logical extension of the wrestling world. Whether it’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling or Hulk Hogan’s Micro Championship Wrestling, these are safe steps for me. They show other sides of me and they show how involved I am with people and how much I care. And how much I want to keep the art form alive. It’s kind of like reinventing myself without really jumping out of the nest too far. Plus, I’ve just had a couple of really rough years with all these back surgeries kind of slowing me down. I had two years worth of back surgeries.

CGM: Well, it seems as though you found a way to maximize on that downtime. So if this does take off, can you see the possible development of another televised pro-wrestling league?
HH: Well, what you don’t realize is that as we’re speaking now, the MCW wrestlers are out there somewhere wrestling. They’re on the road now. And they stay on the road. They just filmed a TV show with me — five or six little episodes — and then they left.

They are working wrestlers on the road and they travel around the country and they work four or five nights a week. The only thing that would change for them is if this Micro Championship TV show takes off. Then there is a chance that this little league that they have going now could turn into a monster.

Because the TV can turn this into a big company if the people love what they see and they want more programming and if we do another set of shows and all of a sudden it parlays into a weekly episodic show, this could become the little people’s WWE or the little people’s TNA. Or the little people’s WCW.

It could become its own entity with the power of TV. It’s going to be a wild one — hang on for the ride!

Hulk Hogan’s Micro Championship Wrestling premieres tomorrow night, Sept. 14, at 10pm ET/PT.