[This review was originally — and coincidentally — published on the day Hogan was fired by WWE after the emergence of recordings of him making racist comments.)

Hardys, Hart, Hart, Heenan, Heenan… what’s up next? Well, that’s interesting timing…

If this were the type of blog which bigged up the positive every book to try to boost revenues from affiliate links, today would be a very awkward day. Fortunately it’s not and I can tell you that only the most dedicated Hulk Hogan fan should read this book (which may be a better option that reading anything else Hogan-related today.)

The most obvious problem with the book is that Hogan is generally full of it and ghost writer Michael Jan Friedman — whose regular gig is writing Star Trek novels — appeared to have neither the ability nor the will to press Hogan on the accuracy of his recollections or check up the facts.

To be fair, the book isn’t home to the worst of Hogan’s fibs, which are collated by Frantic Planet author Stuart Millard on his website. Instead the book is more a collection of his greatest hits, BS-wise. We’ve got Vince McMahon Sr firing Hogan for taking the Rocky 3 acting gig (the timeline of which is questionable at best), Hogan going against the booking instructions of a 20-minute draw to pin Riki Choshu in a couple of minutes in his New Japan debut, and the Hogan-Andre WrestleMania III finish not being booked until the night before.

There’s also a few exclusive tall tales such as the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Cartoon having to be rewritten because “We had four or five guys who were major players in the cartoon who couldn’t beat the drug test, or quit, or died” which makes you wonder how Rick McGraw was in the original line-up.

And did you know that “almost immediately” after Hogan’s debut, WCW’s house show attendance rose ten-fold. (Poor Mookieghana, the dean of wrestling stats, did not.)

The sad thing is that the book itself is a breezy enough read with some fun stories and plenty of places where Hogan gives his thoughts on both behind the scenes stuff and memorable matches such as against the Ultimate Warrior or Rock where he most definitely kept himself over with the crowd.

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