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Why Hulk Hogan Matters
A fitting tribute to the most popular and provocative professional wrestler of all time.
Step into the ring as David Shoemaker wrestles with the legacy of the iconic Hulk Hogan. Why Hulk Hogan Matters traces the explosive heat and heel turns of how Hulk Hogan because a true cultural phenomenon.
Whether you’re a lifelong Hulkamanic or fascinated by the Hulk’s truly unique, larger-than-life celebrity, Why Hulk Hogan Matters is the ultimate homage to a legend of the ring.
David Shoemaker has been writing about wrestling since 2009. He is the host of the podcast The Masked Man Show With Kaz and the author of The Squared Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling.
Step into the ring as David Shoemaker wrestles with the legacy of the iconic Hulk Hogan. Why Hulk Hogan Matters traces the explosive heat and heel turns of how Hulk Hogan because a true cultural phenomenon.
Whether you’re a lifelong Hulkamanic or fascinated by the Hulk’s truly unique, larger-than-life celebrity, Why Hulk Hogan Matters is the ultimate homage to a legend of the ring.
David Shoemaker has been writing about wrestling since 2009. He is the host of the podcast The Masked Man Show With Kaz and the author of The Squared Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling.
- GenresSports
176 pages, Hardcover
Published July 28, 2026
About the author
David Shoemaker
19 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 8, 2026
Shoemaker is my favorite wrestling writer and there is an interesting angle at the core of the book. However, between the constant repetition of ideas/phrases and the factual errors, this didn’t land for me. It just didn’t add enough to the conversation.
July 30, 2026
Read the book in one sitting. Shoemaker does a great job painting a picture of Hogan. There are a number of factual errors in the book which led me to rate it lower.
Read
April 17, 2026(This is out in July, it kicks ass, preorder it ASAP, here's an excerpt.)
Inside the Silverdome, the enormous crowd booed André’s entrance in such indignant unison that it sounds like static. André and Heenan enter standing in a parade float that looks like a miniature wrestling ring. They used them for most of the entrances that night, but they were created specifically for André—he was too worn down to even make the long walk from the back into the ring. Hogan eschewed the cart; he marched into the ring under his own power to the strains of “Real American,” his official theme song that had replaced “Eye of the Tiger.” (“Real American” was written by Rick Derringer, known for “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo,” for the WWF’s 1985 The Wrestling Album. It had actually been written for the tag team The U.S. Express, but the team left the company and Hogan took possession of the song—and the sentiment—in December of that year.) This is the most iconic Hogan entrance ever. Whereas a normal person would seem smaller in an arena that size, Hogan somehow grows to fill it. Even in a venue that huge, he has charisma and energy to spare.
The match itself unfolds like a story that knows its ending but refuses to rush there. André dominates early, leaning on Hogan, chopping him, using his mass as a weapon. Hogan sells the weight, collapsing under it, making each step look like an argument with his own legs. This is important, because selling is the art of making the audience complicit. Hogan’s pain gives the crowd permission to worry, and worry is the currency of drama. If Hogan looks invulnerable, the slam means nothing. If he looks breakable, the slam becomes a miracle.
When Hogan finally begins to rally, the crowd noise shifts from roar to chant, from awe to encouragement. This is the moment wrestling does what it does best: it turns spectators into participants without ever breaking the fourth wall. The chant is not for Hogan to win; it is for Hogan to try. The crowd wants to see the attempt, the honest confrontation with gravity. This is a moral struggle, and victory is almost beside the point.
The slam comes almost out of nowhere. André charges, Hogan sidesteps, and suddenly the giant is horizontal, if only for a heartbeat. Hogan scoops him up, muscles straining, the camera cutting just enough to hide the mechanics while preserving the illusion. The Silverdome erupts, and for a second the building itself seems to lift. In Hogan’s retelling, he tore a biceps and hurt his back performing the slam. The move is not elegant; it is desperate, ugly, human. That’s why it works. Perfection would have cheapened it. Effort sanctifies it.
After the slam, the leg drop is almost an afterthought, a procedural necessity. Hogan pins André, the referee counts, and history is declared. But the pin is not the climax. The climax was the lift, the moment when the rules of the universe appeared to bend. Everything after that is paperwork.
It is tempting to read the match as a simple allegory of American optimism, the triumph of will over circumstance, the small guy beating the big guy, even though Hogan was never the small guy in any meaningful sense. But that reading misses the sadness baked into the spectacle. André’s loss was not just the end of a streak; it was the end of a way of being. André was an icon of a bygone era, the territorial era in pro wrestling when there were twenty different pro wrestling “realities” around the country at any given time. An era in which fantastical creatures like André the Giant roamed the earth, moving from territory to territory to find the next willing audience, and where the only notion a fan might have of André was from word of mouth or a photo in a black-and-white wrestling magazine. It felt like a permanent way of being at the time, until there came cable television and Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan. André was the invulnerable, unknowable old school, and that establishment was being hoisted high in the sky in the Silverdome. The mountain had been moved, and in doing so, admitted it could be moved. There is a melancholy to that admission, a recognition that even the most protected myth eventually pays rent to reality.
WrestleMania III also marked a turning point in how wrestling understood itself. The event proved that wrestling could sell moments as effectively as matches, that a single image could anchor an entire industry. It validated the idea that wrestling’s greatest currency was shared memory. People remember where they were when Hogan slammed André the way people remember where they were for moon landings or title-clinching home runs. Wrestling, often derided as fake, had found a way to make itself feel permanent.
In the years that followed, wrestling would chase that feeling with diminishing returns. Bigger stadiums, louder pyrotechnics, more elaborate stunts. Everyone wanted their own Silverdome moment, their own photograph that could stand in for an era. For its part, the WWF tried to repeat the moment between Hogan and André again and again in the following eighteen months. But moments are not scalable. They depend on timing, on bodies being in the right place at the right moment, on audiences being ready to believe. Hogan and André met at the exact intersection of need and possibility. Move the match a year earlier or later, and it loses some of its voltage.
There is also the uncomfortable truth that the match’s power is inseparable from its artifice. The slam was possible because André allowed it, because wrestling is a collaboration disguised as conflict. But that does not diminish the moment so much as it clarifies it. Wrestling’s magic lies in its honesty about effort even when the outcome is predetermined. Hogan still had to lift André. André still had to endure the fall. The pain was real, even if the story was scripted.
Watching the match now, with decades of context and a more skeptical eye, you can see the seams. You can see André’s limitations, Hogan’s theatrics, the camera angles doing their part. You can also see something else: two men giving their bodies to a story larger than themselves. André’s body, failing and finite, becomes a vessel for a !nal act of wonder. Hogan’s body, honed and heroic, pushed beyond its limitations, becomes a bridge between possibility and fulfillment.
On that night, maybe more than any other, Hulk Hogan mattered because he could sell the dream and embody the dreams of a population. WrestleMania III is less about who won than about what was proven. Wrestling proved it could create a communal myth that transcended its own mechanics. It proved that belief is not about ignorance but about consent. The crowd knew, on some level, that this was a show. They also knew, on a deeper level, that shows can matter.
The photographs endure because they capture that contradiction. Hogan’s face is a mask of strain; André’s body is a testament to trust. The image says: This is hard, and it is meaningful. That might be the most honest thing wrestling has ever said.
Inside the Silverdome, the enormous crowd booed André’s entrance in such indignant unison that it sounds like static. André and Heenan enter standing in a parade float that looks like a miniature wrestling ring. They used them for most of the entrances that night, but they were created specifically for André—he was too worn down to even make the long walk from the back into the ring. Hogan eschewed the cart; he marched into the ring under his own power to the strains of “Real American,” his official theme song that had replaced “Eye of the Tiger.” (“Real American” was written by Rick Derringer, known for “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo,” for the WWF’s 1985 The Wrestling Album. It had actually been written for the tag team The U.S. Express, but the team left the company and Hogan took possession of the song—and the sentiment—in December of that year.) This is the most iconic Hogan entrance ever. Whereas a normal person would seem smaller in an arena that size, Hogan somehow grows to fill it. Even in a venue that huge, he has charisma and energy to spare.
The match itself unfolds like a story that knows its ending but refuses to rush there. André dominates early, leaning on Hogan, chopping him, using his mass as a weapon. Hogan sells the weight, collapsing under it, making each step look like an argument with his own legs. This is important, because selling is the art of making the audience complicit. Hogan’s pain gives the crowd permission to worry, and worry is the currency of drama. If Hogan looks invulnerable, the slam means nothing. If he looks breakable, the slam becomes a miracle.
When Hogan finally begins to rally, the crowd noise shifts from roar to chant, from awe to encouragement. This is the moment wrestling does what it does best: it turns spectators into participants without ever breaking the fourth wall. The chant is not for Hogan to win; it is for Hogan to try. The crowd wants to see the attempt, the honest confrontation with gravity. This is a moral struggle, and victory is almost beside the point.
The slam comes almost out of nowhere. André charges, Hogan sidesteps, and suddenly the giant is horizontal, if only for a heartbeat. Hogan scoops him up, muscles straining, the camera cutting just enough to hide the mechanics while preserving the illusion. The Silverdome erupts, and for a second the building itself seems to lift. In Hogan’s retelling, he tore a biceps and hurt his back performing the slam. The move is not elegant; it is desperate, ugly, human. That’s why it works. Perfection would have cheapened it. Effort sanctifies it.
After the slam, the leg drop is almost an afterthought, a procedural necessity. Hogan pins André, the referee counts, and history is declared. But the pin is not the climax. The climax was the lift, the moment when the rules of the universe appeared to bend. Everything after that is paperwork.
It is tempting to read the match as a simple allegory of American optimism, the triumph of will over circumstance, the small guy beating the big guy, even though Hogan was never the small guy in any meaningful sense. But that reading misses the sadness baked into the spectacle. André’s loss was not just the end of a streak; it was the end of a way of being. André was an icon of a bygone era, the territorial era in pro wrestling when there were twenty different pro wrestling “realities” around the country at any given time. An era in which fantastical creatures like André the Giant roamed the earth, moving from territory to territory to find the next willing audience, and where the only notion a fan might have of André was from word of mouth or a photo in a black-and-white wrestling magazine. It felt like a permanent way of being at the time, until there came cable television and Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan. André was the invulnerable, unknowable old school, and that establishment was being hoisted high in the sky in the Silverdome. The mountain had been moved, and in doing so, admitted it could be moved. There is a melancholy to that admission, a recognition that even the most protected myth eventually pays rent to reality.
WrestleMania III also marked a turning point in how wrestling understood itself. The event proved that wrestling could sell moments as effectively as matches, that a single image could anchor an entire industry. It validated the idea that wrestling’s greatest currency was shared memory. People remember where they were when Hogan slammed André the way people remember where they were for moon landings or title-clinching home runs. Wrestling, often derided as fake, had found a way to make itself feel permanent.
In the years that followed, wrestling would chase that feeling with diminishing returns. Bigger stadiums, louder pyrotechnics, more elaborate stunts. Everyone wanted their own Silverdome moment, their own photograph that could stand in for an era. For its part, the WWF tried to repeat the moment between Hogan and André again and again in the following eighteen months. But moments are not scalable. They depend on timing, on bodies being in the right place at the right moment, on audiences being ready to believe. Hogan and André met at the exact intersection of need and possibility. Move the match a year earlier or later, and it loses some of its voltage.
There is also the uncomfortable truth that the match’s power is inseparable from its artifice. The slam was possible because André allowed it, because wrestling is a collaboration disguised as conflict. But that does not diminish the moment so much as it clarifies it. Wrestling’s magic lies in its honesty about effort even when the outcome is predetermined. Hogan still had to lift André. André still had to endure the fall. The pain was real, even if the story was scripted.
Watching the match now, with decades of context and a more skeptical eye, you can see the seams. You can see André’s limitations, Hogan’s theatrics, the camera angles doing their part. You can also see something else: two men giving their bodies to a story larger than themselves. André’s body, failing and finite, becomes a vessel for a !nal act of wonder. Hogan’s body, honed and heroic, pushed beyond its limitations, becomes a bridge between possibility and fulfillment.
On that night, maybe more than any other, Hulk Hogan mattered because he could sell the dream and embody the dreams of a population. WrestleMania III is less about who won than about what was proven. Wrestling proved it could create a communal myth that transcended its own mechanics. It proved that belief is not about ignorance but about consent. The crowd knew, on some level, that this was a show. They also knew, on a deeper level, that shows can matter.
The photographs endure because they capture that contradiction. Hogan’s face is a mask of strain; André’s body is a testament to trust. The image says: This is hard, and it is meaningful. That might be the most honest thing wrestling has ever said.
August 2, 2026
Bought from evil empire.
I'm ambivalent about this. Maybe like a 3.7? Shoemaker knows the history, and the mythology, and the inside stories, and the locker-room gossip, and he's been thinking about this topic for decades. He's full of excellent, cogent epigrams about the collision/collusion between fantasy and reality that wrestling has been both staging and experiencing over the past forty years, and his larger argument about the various battles in which the Hulkster has engaged (we get a narrative of his rise, ascension to global megastardom, stagnation, and eventual reinvention via the famous heel turn), though oddly not a mention of his death. The best lines are worth clipping, such as the note in the last chapter that "he once felt less like a wrestler than a federally mandated mascot."
But phrasings and ideas are repeated, the number of "these people mistook x for y" formulations is off the charts, and it feels like we get stuck not in a conceptual loop, but in about three of them--lies and truth, and inadvertent reveals of lies that uncover a truth; Hogan as billboard for a simpler vision of America; Hogan as an unrepentant liar and self-mythologizer even for a wrestler. It's engaging and smart, but it also feels somehow hermetic, as if the point is to tie Hogan to narratives and meta-narratives and changes within the organization and structure of wrestling itself and just to nod to the things that go on in the culture more generally that at various times abet and challenge his self-presentation. Also the second consecutive book I've read that contains weird Trump connections, since Raftery's book about Hannibal Lecter opens and closes with Trump's addled, random mentions of "the late, great" cannibal on the campaign trail. Once the stain of him is gone, cultural historians are going to have a field day unpacking, if that's the word, the latent content of his free-associative rants.
I'm ambivalent about this. Maybe like a 3.7? Shoemaker knows the history, and the mythology, and the inside stories, and the locker-room gossip, and he's been thinking about this topic for decades. He's full of excellent, cogent epigrams about the collision/collusion between fantasy and reality that wrestling has been both staging and experiencing over the past forty years, and his larger argument about the various battles in which the Hulkster has engaged (we get a narrative of his rise, ascension to global megastardom, stagnation, and eventual reinvention via the famous heel turn), though oddly not a mention of his death. The best lines are worth clipping, such as the note in the last chapter that "he once felt less like a wrestler than a federally mandated mascot."
But phrasings and ideas are repeated, the number of "these people mistook x for y" formulations is off the charts, and it feels like we get stuck not in a conceptual loop, but in about three of them--lies and truth, and inadvertent reveals of lies that uncover a truth; Hogan as billboard for a simpler vision of America; Hogan as an unrepentant liar and self-mythologizer even for a wrestler. It's engaging and smart, but it also feels somehow hermetic, as if the point is to tie Hogan to narratives and meta-narratives and changes within the organization and structure of wrestling itself and just to nod to the things that go on in the culture more generally that at various times abet and challenge his self-presentation. Also the second consecutive book I've read that contains weird Trump connections, since Raftery's book about Hannibal Lecter opens and closes with Trump's addled, random mentions of "the late, great" cannibal on the campaign trail. Once the stain of him is gone, cultural historians are going to have a field day unpacking, if that's the word, the latent content of his free-associative rants.
August 5, 2026
David Shoemaker is an exceptional writer. He possesses a remarkable talent for using words to paint a vivid and engaging story. As a wrestling enthusiast, I’ve witnessed the events retold in the book many times, but Shoemaker’s writing style sets him apart from other authors. Despite not gaining any new insights or knowledge, I found myself captivated throughout the book.
My biggest gripe is why was the book so small? It was only 153 pages. It felt more like a pamphlet than a book. This book could have easily been 300 plus pages. I’m not sure why he decided to make such a short book about such a legendary figure in the wrestling industry.
Shoemaker makes his points and makes them quickly, and I was never bored while reading this book. I just wish he would’ve taken the time to write a proper book with more details and more depth. Make no mistake about it, Hulk Hogan made a lot of mistakes in his wrestling career and in his personal life. I would never defend what he’s done, especially outside the ring. However, I’ve always been a firm believer in separating the art from the artist. Professional wrestling probably doesn’t exist in the way it does today without Hulk Hogan.
As stated previously, my biggest gripe with the book was its length. My second biggest gripe is the errors: Hulk Hogan did NOT win the 1992 Royal Rumble, Flair/Hogan did happen in the WWF, but it was on house shows and it didn’t perform well, which is why the WWF never had it on their television programs, and Shoemaker also claimed Hogan debuted on a WCW Nitro in 1994, even though Nitro didn’t debut until 1995.
I’m giving it four stars because of the writing style and because the author tied all of his pieces together very eloquently.
My biggest gripe is why was the book so small? It was only 153 pages. It felt more like a pamphlet than a book. This book could have easily been 300 plus pages. I’m not sure why he decided to make such a short book about such a legendary figure in the wrestling industry.
Shoemaker makes his points and makes them quickly, and I was never bored while reading this book. I just wish he would’ve taken the time to write a proper book with more details and more depth. Make no mistake about it, Hulk Hogan made a lot of mistakes in his wrestling career and in his personal life. I would never defend what he’s done, especially outside the ring. However, I’ve always been a firm believer in separating the art from the artist. Professional wrestling probably doesn’t exist in the way it does today without Hulk Hogan.
As stated previously, my biggest gripe with the book was its length. My second biggest gripe is the errors: Hulk Hogan did NOT win the 1992 Royal Rumble, Flair/Hogan did happen in the WWF, but it was on house shows and it didn’t perform well, which is why the WWF never had it on their television programs, and Shoemaker also claimed Hogan debuted on a WCW Nitro in 1994, even though Nitro didn’t debut until 1995.
I’m giving it four stars because of the writing style and because the author tied all of his pieces together very eloquently.
July 29, 2026
From this book, it's pretty obvious that Hulk Hogan really matters to the author, who paints a generally interesting portrait of one of the primary figures in the evolution of professional wrestling from what it was to what it has become now.
In his time, Hogan did have his moments, but most of that career became clouded with his performances in the ring, his politicking outside the ring, and his generally obnoxious behavior outside the sport entirely.
It is possible to recognize his place in the history of wrestling, while decrying that place in moving the industry to what it is now... too much talk, and too much repetitive action without the storytelling abilities that drew so many people to watch it in the first place.
The writing of wrestling's history has resulted in some great books, and while this isn't a great book... it is a little too forgiving of Hogan for my taste... it is a worthy addition to the collection.
In his time, Hogan did have his moments, but most of that career became clouded with his performances in the ring, his politicking outside the ring, and his generally obnoxious behavior outside the sport entirely.
It is possible to recognize his place in the history of wrestling, while decrying that place in moving the industry to what it is now... too much talk, and too much repetitive action without the storytelling abilities that drew so many people to watch it in the first place.
The writing of wrestling's history has resulted in some great books, and while this isn't a great book... it is a little too forgiving of Hogan for my taste... it is a worthy addition to the collection.
August 9, 2026
While filled with editing issues out the wazoo, WHY HULK HOGAN MATTERS does provide an insightful history lesson about the how, when, where, and—most importantly—why. I knew most of this story, but Shoemaker’s writing style kept the book interesting. The book does culminate in what I found to be a very emotional final chapter. Hogan was about as flawed as it gets, but his story is a cautionary tale for any public figure on how not to handle the in-between stages of life and afterlife.
July 30, 2026
The book is excellently written and extremely fair, and I appreciate the author’s acknowledgment that Hulk Hogan was a terrible person.
I’m getting too old for a lot of stuff in my life and one theme keeps coming back to me… we need to stop celebrating terrible people. The less written about Hulk Hogan, especially now that he’s dead, the better.
I’m getting too old for a lot of stuff in my life and one theme keeps coming back to me… we need to stop celebrating terrible people. The less written about Hulk Hogan, especially now that he’s dead, the better.
August 5, 2026
A short read about the rise and fall of Hulk Hogan’s cultural relevancy. It’s hard to imagine a bigger fall from grace than Hogan’s. Even when he played the part of the heel in WCW he was still a compelling figure in pop culture. By the time he passed he become a shill for MAGA and the Trump Admin.
July 29, 2026
Shoemaker's insightful book on an 80's icon makes for surprisingly engaging reading, especially the chapters on Bollea's later years a "reality" TV star, his infamous sex tape that ended the media outfit Gawker, and his "to a point" racism. The book even has a Raging Bull-like coda.
August 3, 2026
A brief but insightful biography
Hogan's wrestling career spanned close to 40 years so it could be argued that this book could be longer. The writer though wisely avoids covering every feud he had and instead tries to note key moments in the characters' timeline. A good explanation of how and why he changed.
Hogan's wrestling career spanned close to 40 years so it could be argued that this book could be longer. The writer though wisely avoids covering every feud he had and instead tries to note key moments in the characters' timeline. A good explanation of how and why he changed.
August 2, 2026
No one writes about professional wrestling better than David Shoemaker.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews