Why Hulk Hogan refused to lose to Shawn Michaels in WWE dream match at SummerSlam 2005
There are plenty of dream matches in professional wrestling; some we’ve been lucky to see, and some we weren’t so lucky to get.
Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan was one that felt like it needed to happen.
Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels had been a dream match almost 15 years in the making
Hulk Hogan was the biggest star wrestling had in the 1980s and was still a huge star in the 1990s, but Shawn Michaels was almost his successor in the WWE.
At SummerSlam 2005, they finally met. But the match isn’t remembered in the same way legendary generational clashes should be.
Instead, it’s for Michaels over-selling during the encounter and cutting a scathing promo about Hogan the very next night.
But why did that happen?
Michaels and Hogan had agreed to work with each other and HBK pitched for them to have three matches that culminated in a cage match.
Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan would tag together twice before Michaels turned on him
They exchanged wins over each other – starting with SummerSlam – before Hogan got the decisive victory. It was meant to be good guy vs good guy where the premise of the feud was Michaels finding out if he defeat the Immortal Hulk Hogan?
That was the plan until Michaels cut a promo after their first SummerSlam match and according to Michaels, Hogan rejected the face vs face premise and wanted HBK to turn heel, which he ultimately did.
During the match, Michaels bumped all over the place – way, way over the top – because he was furious with Hogan changing the plans of their feud.
Hogan disagrees. “If you really go behind the scenes on the Shawn Michaels thing, I just sat back. I mean, this is Vince’s show, Vince’s thing, and when we went to the dressing room, Vince came in and said, ‘Okay, I want Hogan to go over.’ No big deal.
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“And those were Vince’s wishes. If he had told me to take the superkick and do the one, two, three, even though everybody says I’ve never done a job, if you go back and look at my career, I’ve pretty much lost more matches [in the last 15 years of my career] than I’ve won, trying to get guys over from Triple H to The Undertaker to The Rock, you name it.
“I’m trying to help these guys. So you know, when Vince wanted Shawn to do the job, we went out and had the match and everybody said, ‘Oh Shawn oversold and he was making fun of ya!’
“If Shawn was really doing that, you’d have to ask him because I’ve seen him go to take the turnbuckle, he jumps on the bottom rope and does the triple flip which is, you know, okay… whatever. You know, and he’s done it several times, not just with me.
A bloodied Hulk Hogan defeated Shawn Michaels in their one and only encounter
“But what really [happened]… The reason it didn’t go any longer was because I shut it down. Because the next day, I was expecting to, you know, return the favour and then, ‘Okay, now you beat me and I beat you, let’s build to the third [match] and then go to the cage and keep it going.’
“Because he was such a great worker, I thought we were gonna have a great run, but it could be my fault, or maybe I had my feelings too much involved but I thought the interview was going to be [acting out a Shawn Michaels promo]: ‘You know what, I gotta give it to Hogan, he was better than me on that one night but it’ll never happen again. You know what, I’m quicker and faster than him, he just had that moment, he had the crowd with him, he had the momentum but it’ll never happen again. I’m asking you Hulk Hogan [for another match].’”
Hogan continued. “I thought this was going to be the business interview, but when he came out, [Shawn said sarcastically], ‘Oooooh, he was too fast, he was too young.’”
Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels were meant to face each other three times, but they only managed once
Hogan did do a few jobs upon his return to WWE. He lost to The Rock twice – once cleanly at WrestleMania – and he lost to Brock Lesnar.
Still, the fact he went over Randy Orton in 2006 begs a lot of questions and it shows Hogan was hardly committed to the idea of putting people over.
He actually took the Undisputed title from Triple H in 2002, too.
But, Michaels’ promo was extremely sarcastic. Here is the excerpt Hogan was referring to: “Here I am,” Michaels started on RAW.
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“And as much as it hurts me to have to admit this, last night, Hulk Hogan was the better man. But you had to be there to appreciate it, it was amazing, it was incredible… He was catlike, he was agile, he was nimble, he had a catch-as-catch can style that even yours truly, The Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels, quite honestly couldn’t figure out.
“I mean, his ring prowess was in so many ways and on so many levels, superior to mine that I simply could not compete and when it was over, even I, the evil Shawn Michaels, found myself falling victim like so many before me, to the viscous leg drop… One, two, three.”
Chris Masters confronted Michaels to kick off a new feud at the climax of his promo, so that was clearly the next step for WWE. It’s hard to believe Hogan cancelled it there and then and it still doesn’t explain why Michaels sold it the way he did.
Speaking during a Q&A in the UK a few years ago, Michaels opened up on the matter.
“We were going to do a best of three and in the last minute, [Hogan] backed out. So that day, and I will admit this… I poked the bear all day.
“I already knew what I was gonna do — I was gonna go out there and do business, but I was gonna make him earn it, just to be a pain in the butt all day. And that was something I did just for my own enjoyment. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t professional.”
Michaels’ version of events make a lot more sense than Hogan’s when we look at what transpired, but longtime on-and-off WWE backstage producer Bruce Prichard couldn’t have summed it up better on Michaels’ DVD.
“Shawn was ready to do business. He was there to do business. But, Hulk is who he is because of the way he does business.”
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