|
After hearing a few people joke about Hogan possibly becoming Dixie Carter's new TNA investor, a bizarre thought popped into my head: Could you ever envision Hogan starting up his own wrestling promotion?
How much money do you think a legitimate start-up for something would cost? Is there room in the market for it? Could Hogan viably go to Spike TV and say "Look, brothers -- I'm not going to have anything to do with the creative of this product, we've got this guy for that, but I'm going to lend it my credibility as the biggest star wrestling has ever had. Will you give us two hours on Thursday, brothers? Maybe just a one year tryout?"
Bring in Kevin Sullivan and a Kevin Sullivan team to book it. Lock down guys like Bobby Roode and Eric Young that are free. Bring in guys like Chris Masters and talk to Carlito about coming back over from Puerto Rico. Make sure Ken Anderson is sober and bring him in. Sign The LAX for the tag team side. Bring in great workers like Chris Hero and get them to choose guys they work really well with on the indy scene -- like "Speedball" Mike Bailey. Sign Kota Ibushi to be your cruiserweight sensation. Maybe even bring in a few women like Taya and Amazing Kong (if she's healthy and has her mind in the right place) and have them fight over the NWA Women's Championship to give it some attention.
Oh, and sign Kurt fucking Angle and Goldberg and hope that you can work something out with Lucha Underground where you can spotlight a select few of their talent during off-season, so you can have Rey Mysterio come in and or have a PPV kick off with a Fenix vs. Pentagon, Jr. match, or just have Johnny Mundo's abs on television.
Eventually more talent will come over from TNA. Bobby Lashley, James Storm, The American Wolves and The Hardys (imagine a Matt Hardy vs. Awesome Kong freak show clash on PPV) are probably your real targets. Maybe EC3. Hell, maybe you eventually dissolve TNA into your product and just quietly refresh a lot of the guys there that are really good but have TNA stink on them. Eventually you might even get a few people from the WWE side jump over -- Dolph Ziggler, Zack Ryder, Jack Swagger, Cesaro, The New Day (if they get fucked up and blamed for it), etc. Fuck, you might even be able to land a HUGE signing like Randy Orton, who sometimes seems to be frustrated by the WWE's general direction.
Hogan may or may not get the money, and he's probably done with anything ambitious in wrestling. He'd probably make mention of investing somewhere just to scare Vince into paying him even more money not to and just sit at home. But man, if there's a rich guy with some sort of connection to wrestling that might have something to prove to Vince? It's Hogan. It's my pipe-dream and I'm allowed to have it.
|