Hello and welcome to the best match ever series where we delve into the anatomy of a classic wrestling match.

Michael Hamfleet, let's get straight into it.

What have you chosen for us to analyze today?

Coming in Hot S hot, Sidge,

WrestleMania 18, The Rock versus Hollywood Hogan. I think there's only one real

place to start with this, and this is the, of course, return of Hogan as part of the NWO to

WWE. A little recap that gets us to WrestleMania, although it was all kind of condensed

within the No Way Out period. It was an early WrestleMania in 2002, taking place in March.

So Hogan and Rock had about three to four weeks of TV to get to what is ultimately one of the

biggest matches the company ever promoted. The New World War, of course, controversially,

returned to WWE in February 2002. And following their return, having had a testy interaction with the Rock, Hulk Hogan comes out on Raw and basically refers to the Rock as the flavour of the month. He's Hollywood Hogan, he is Hulk Hogan forever. He does a bit of an all you people promo on the Chicago crowd that night saying that like, I built all of this and then you turned on me, You went for guys like the rock, guys like Steve Austin.

Rock comes out, kind of resents that a bit, but then says, well, look, if you really believe that, let's have a challenge. Icon versus icon, Hollywood Hogan going one on one with the great one, going one on one with the rock. There's that famous face off of the two of them, looking left, looking right, capturing and the imagination of the fans, and the match is set,

even with a handshake that leads to a rock bottom,

and it's effectively a gentleman's agreement.

Until Hulk Hogan smashes the rock in the back of the head with a hammer, traps him in an

ambulance, and drives in an ambulance with a truck.

He then pins him on television in the frankly remarkable NWO versus Steve Austin and rock throwaway tag match on the Go Home Edition of Raw because it was 2002 what was happening.

They did everything in 2002.

Every conceivable pairing dynamic between big stars, they just did it on TV for minimal returns.

Minimal returns is right.

You had the pinfall of The Rock by Hulk Hogan

as your go-home segment.

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