Hulk Hogan’s cameo at WWE RAW’s Netflix debut did not get a warm reception

Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan was mercilessly booed during World Wrestling Entertainment’s inaugural episode of “Monday Night Raw” on Netflix. 

Monday’s Netflix debut was billed as historic for the WWE, which has ridden a wave of renewed hype about professional wrestling to a popularity arguably unseen since the “Attitude Era” in the 1990s. All kinds of stars, from The Rock to John Cena, showed up to get in on the action — and that included Hogan, who can credibly claim to be the company’s biggest star ever. But Hogan received a rude reception as he tried to deliver a promo hyping Netflix and hawking his new brand of beer. And in the video, he almost seems taken aback by the reaction. 

While no one can know for certain why any individual fan was booing, some social media users suggested the boos were related to the fact that Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bollea) frequently used his wrestling persona to promote Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last year. Beforehand, Hogan donned a MAGA shirt for a promotional video for Monday’s show, so it’s certainly possible that some in the crowd at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, rained boos on him for political reasons. But other Trump-friendly stars at the event, like Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway and the WWE’s head of creative Paul Levesque (who wrestles as Triple H), didn’t receive the same reaction that Hogan did. 

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Hogan has also come in for criticism for his repeated expressions of racism (he apologized in 2015 for using a racial slur in a 2006 conversation that was caught on tape). The fact that he was shamelessly hawking his latest product to a captive audience couldn’t have helped, or perhaps the boos were due to any combination of these or other objections.

As a longtime wresting fan, I’m attentive to the ways WWE in particular has infused conservative politics into their storylines. It’s a point WWE executive Bruce Prichard essentially owned up to in Netflix’s recent docuseries on Vince McMahon. So the presence of other Trump-friendly WWE wrestlers — especially those like The Undertaker and Hogan, who used their characters to boost Trump — at Monday’s event piqued my interest because of professional wrestling’s historical role in sending political messages.

The WWE is the same brand that created heel stables (i.e., groups of “bad guys”) modeled after the Nation of Islam and more recently after antifascist protesters. So I’ll be keeping close watch on the WWE to see if and how the company (which has historically aligned with Trump) works to promote his movement or its ideals after Trump returns to the White House.