The legendary career of Hulk Hogan featured his WCW run becoming as important as WWE due to the popularity of the New World Order. There were both plenty of great and disappointing moments that featured Hogan’s time in the group coming into play. WCW trusted Hogan and his new act to lead the company to their highest heights, which did happen as planned.
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However, there were plenty of negative moments from the other end to warrant such an up and down reputation. Hogan had to be in the NWO for it to work, but he contributed to the positive and negative times of the heel act. Each of the following moments were the best and worst from Hogan as the NWO leader.
10 Best: Debuting As Mystery Man In First NWO Match
Time stood still to wrestling fans at Bash at the Beach 1996 when Hulk Hogan turned out to be the mystery third member of the New World Order. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash hyped up having a huge name in their corner, and they managed to have the biggest name in the industry as the reveal.
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Hogan making his way to the ring and shocking the world by turning heel instantly made WCW must-watch TV. WCW witnessed the NWO becoming the hottest act from that first night of Hogan’s drastic character change.
9 Worst: Losing Match To Jay Leno
One of the most embarrassing visuals from WCW featured Hulk Hogan selling a wrist lock from Jay Leno as being quite painful. WCW booked a huge attraction match for Road Wild 1998 when Tonight Showtalk show host Jay Leno teamed with Diamond Dallas Page against Hogan and Eric Bischoff.
This was a rare instance where Hogan’s team took the loss, but he looked worse when in the ring with Leno. Hogan usually cared about looking strong in every aspect of the booking. However, this was the rare instance where he didn’t care about that since footage of Leno putting him in a wrestling move would get national media attention.
8 Best: Inducting Dennis Rodman Into Group
Dennis Rodman was one of the five most famous basketball players in the world when WCW started to work with the NBA legend. The popularity of Rodman stemmed from his off-court news stories and his presence on Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls team competing for an NBA Championship every year.
Hulk Hogan utilized his connections to form a friendship with Rodman and induct him into the New World Order. Rodman appearing with Hogan and the other NWO members made the group feel even more important since he was a household celebrity.
7 Worst: Announcing He Was Running For POTUS
WCW ran into a bad string of trying to create attention with publicity stunts after WWE took back the lead in the Monday Night Wars ratings battle. One of the worst ideas came when Hulk Hogan teased making the biggest announcement of his career with teases towards retirement.
Hogan then claimed that he was running for President of the United States with the goal of getting elected in the 2000 battle between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The segment was embarrassing and just made Hogan look bad stepping away for a silly reason since no one bought him being President.
6 Best: Revealing Eric Bischoff Was On His Side All Along
The biggest game changer for the dynamic of the New World Order was to have Eric Bischoff turn heel. WCW had already referenced Bischoff’s status as WCW President since he was representing the company against the threats of the NWO members at first.
Hulk Hogan revealed that Bischoff was working with him all along to explain how the NWO getting away with their actions and kept gaining power. The tandem of Hogan and Bischoff became a great act together as well within the NWO with their careers still linked together today.
5 Worst: Letting Jealousy Force Randy Savage & Kevin Nash Out Of Group
Hulk Hogan’s biggest kayfabe mistake in the New World Order was alienating members to start the civil war storyline. Both Kevin Nash and Randy Savage felt disrespected when Hogan started to make it clear he didn’t want anyone else in the NWO to be the top dog when Savage won the WCW Championship from Sting.
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The ego of Hogan made it impossible for him to accept someone else representing the group and getting revenge on Sting. WCW saw the Wolfpac forming when the NWO split in two after Hogan alienated Savage and Nash. The Wolfpac clearly passed Hogan's NWO Hollywood heel faction as a terrible aftermath of Hulk's decisions.
4 Best: Convincing Bret Hart & Scott Hall To Join NWO Hollywood
Hulk Hogan did make some moves to try to combat the Wolfpac from completely taking over WCW more than the Hollywood version of the New World Order did. There were two major moves of new members picking surprising sides when forced.
Scott Hall betrayed Kevin Nash to stay with the Hollywood side since Hogan tempted him to ditch his best friend. Bret Hart also became an NWO Hollywood ally as the most credible name after Hogan. WCW portrayed Hogan as making some pivotal decisions while still leading his version of the NWO.
3 Worst: Letting NWO Elite End Without A Conclusion
The New World Order: Elite saw Hulk Hogan back in the leadership role of everyone when the two sides merged. However, fans were confused more than anything else during the next four months as the NWO slowly started to fall apart to end in the strangest fashion.
Hogan was off television in the spring of 1999 due to an injury after dropping the WCW Championship. The other NWO members stopped working together to have an end without a proper explanation. Hogan looked the worst here since he was the leader to have an all-time group finish without a conclusion.
2 Best: Spray Painting WCW Championship With NWO Letters
The first move of Hulk Hogan after forming the New World Order was to challenge The Giant for the WCW Championship. Hogan winning the top world title meant that he would have power again to boost his new movement leading the NWO to a hostile takeover.
The big moment of Hogan defeating Giant came one month into the NWO starting. Hogan spray-painting the NWO letters on the big gold belt made it clear the group was against tradition and made the title their own. This helped gained more interest for the NWO to build momentum with Hogan as champ.
1 Worst: Burning Himself Trying To Throw Fireball At Ultimate Warrior
Halloween Havoc 1998 featured the highly anticipated rematch between Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior over eight years after their huge WWE match. Unfortunately, everything about their WCW feud and match felt like a much worse version of what fans got to see from the WWE days.
The match was considered an all-time bad one that hurt the company’s reputation. Hogan suffered the lowest point of the match by accidentally burning his own face with flash paper designed to throw a fireball at Warrior. The blood on Hogan’s face after burning his own forehead in a trainwreck match is a visual that will work against him forever.
