Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992 TAG: 9203240158
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN CHERWA AND HOUSTON MITCHELL LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan - 6-foot-6 and 290 pounds of muscle - bounds to the screen and urges his little Hulksters to say their prayers, take their vitamins and believe in themselves.
Hogan is a Saturday morning cartoon come to life - and the star of a merchandising empire that grossed $1.7 billion last year. Unquestionably the greatest draw in the history of professional wrestling, his status as a role model goes beyond what he does in the wrestling ring.
The Make-a-Wish Foundation, a group that grants wishes to dying children, says that he is their most requested personality, and he reportedly visits as many as 20 sick children a week. He has starred in two movies, both aimed at children, and played "Thunderlips" in "Rocky III."
Hogan is in demand as a celebrity spokesman, doing commercials for Right Guard, Honey Nut Cheerios and Hasbro wrestling figures. There are almost 300 official Hulk Hogan products, all aimed at children, from dolls to vitamins and pillowcases.
But Hulk Hogan's image is in peril, and so is that of all of professional wrestling. Hogan is accused of having abused steroids and cocaine. And professional wrestling is said to be rife with steroid abuse, at the very least.
For Hogan, whose size and rise seem to personify what professional wrestling has become in America, troubles mounted when he turned up on Arsenio Hall's television show to quash reports that he was a heavy steroid user. He declared that he has only used steroids on three occasions, all under doctor's care to rehabilitate muscle injuries.
The outcry was immediate. Former wrestlers came forward to say that Hogan was lying. They say they have personal knowledge of his drug abuse. They say you can't make it big in professional wrestling without drugs.
The need to be massive and muscular is now de rigueur for professional wrestlers and, with the constant travel, that can require some extra help. Not to mention the relief many seek for the pain from the sport's bumps and falls.
"Valiums, placidyls, acid, pot, steroids, cocaine, alcohol are all a major part of professional wrestling," said Billy Jack Haynes, a former World Wrestling Federation wrestler who now competes independently. "It's all brought on by the promoter because he asks too much out of you. You're only a human being, but you're just a number to him."
Ivan "Polish Power" Putski (real name Joseph Bednarski), a former wrestler, says of steroids: "It's something you have to do. I didn't want to take them but I had to because I didn't want the other guy to look better than me. . . . It's a vicious circle until you retire." Out of the dark arenas
Professional wrestling for years was a backwater form of entertainment concocted by television in the 1950s. The country was divided into regions, all with local promotions.
The setting was usually small, smoky arenas usually before a few thousand people.
Everything changed in the early 1980s, compliments of Vince McMahon Jr. The son of a longtime promoter in the Northeast, McMahon took advantage of cable television and went national with his World Wrestling Federation. He signed a deal with the USA cable network and syndicated his show through the country.
In 1984, McMahon tied wrestling to rock music, using MTV and rock stars such as Cyndi Lauper, and cultivated a new and predominantly young audience. What he needed was a star bigger than life. And so began the rise of Hulk Hogan.
It was in 1985 that McMahon broke open the sport with a risky closed-circuit venture called Wrestlemania. He brought in television actor Mr. T to tag team with Hogan against two bad guys. He engineered the pair onto "Saturday Night Live" and David Letterman's show, and suddenly wrestling was the campy new entertainment of yuppies.
According to industry magazines, the WWF did more in gross merchandising last year ($1.7 billion) than the NFL. Today, the company is said to worth somewhere between $150 million and $500 million. Losing with drugs
But the WWF's claim to presenting "family entertainment" has been tarnished by several embarrassing incidents.
This year, the WWF has suspended two of its best-known wrestlers. Kerry Von Erich (the so-called Texas Tornado whose real name is Kerry Adkisson) was arrested in Richardson, Texas, for allegedly forging drug prescriptions. He has entered a drug rehabilitation program, and his case is pending. Marty Janetty (half of the tag team The Rockers) was arrested in Tampa, Fla., for allegedly possessing cocaine, drug paraphernalia and resisting arrest; the case is pending, and he is wrestling in Japan.
Perhaps the most damaging blow for the WWF came during the June 1991 trial of George Zahorian, a Harrisburg, Pa., urologist who was convicted on 12 counts of selling steroids for non-medical purposes.
Hulk Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bollea) was subpoenaed because he was one of the five wrestlers to whom Zahorian was accused of selling steroids. But the U.S. attorney agreed to waive Bollea's testimony because his "private and personal" matters outweighed any possible contribution to the trial. Wrestlers Roddy Piper (real name Roderick Toombs), Brian Blair (his real name), Rick Martel (Richard Vignault) and Dan Spivey (his real name) all admitted to buying steroids from Zahorian. In addition, Zahorian testified that he treated Bollea as a serious steroid abuser and successfully got him off steroids.
Damaging evidence
Federal Express records obtained by the grand jury in the case show that Zahorian sent packages to Bollea on eight occasions during a nine-month period in 1988. Thirty-four packages were sent during the same period to the WWF's headquarters - which has an unlisted phone number - in Stamford, Conn.
McMahon, who also heads the World Bodybuilding Federation, acknowledges he experimented with steroids for a short time and received them by Federal Express from Zahorian. However, he says that they were legal at the time and he does not condone their use. Possession of steroids for non-medical purposes has since been made illegal; the Food and Drug Administration reclassified the drugs under the Controlled Substance Act in 1991.
Bollea started wrestling in 1978 in smaller cities in the South under the name Terry "the Hulk" Boulder and met up with David "Dr. D" Shults in Pensacola, Fla. Shults, currently a bounty hunter and private investigator in Connecticut, says that he let Hogan stay at his house and, in exchange, Hogan gave him steroids. Shults says Hogan would also sell steroids to other wrestlers.
"I personally gave him shots hundreds of times, not a few times, hundreds of times," Shults said. `Hulk Hogan' is born
Hogan continued to wrestle in the South as a heel (the bad guy) but changed his name to Sterling Golden. He got a major break in late 1979 when he went to New York and Vince McMahon Sr., father of WWF's founder, renamed him The Incredible Hulk Hogan. He made it to main-event status but, as the villain, always lost.
In 1980, he was arrested in New Jersey for possession of a firearm. He entered into a pretrial intervention program, served six months probation, and the felony charge was dropped.
Hogan moved to the American Wrestling Association in the fall of 1981 and after a few months was turned into a babyface (the good guy). In 1983, as his popularity was on the rise, he appeared in "Rocky III."
Hogan was never more popular than at Wrestlemania III in March 1987, when 90,817 filled the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich., to watch Hogan defeat his last great adversary, Andre the Giant. That year, said Superstar Billy Graham (whose real name is Wayne Coleman), the one-time villainous heavyweight champion of the WWF, on three occasions - in Detroit, St. Louis and San Francisco - he injected Hogan with steroids.
In 1988, Hogan started to cut back on his wrestling schedule, generally working weekends and major pay-per-view cards. As the biggest name in the prospering professional wrestling world, he was reportedly able to dictate when he wanted to work.
Today, Hogan's income is closely guarded. But estimates range between $2 million and $6 million a year, including merchandising fees. But his career in the United States may be over after next month's Wrestlemania VIII pay-per-view event. Promoter McMahon said Hogan is taking an indefinite hiatus.
"It might be for six months, it might be for a year, it might be forever, we don't know," McMahon said, denying that adverse publicity had any bearing on Hogan's decision.
No more commercials?
Hogan is said to be negotiating several appearances to wrestle in Japan for as much as $100,000 a match. But his career as a commercial spokesman appears at risk of collapsing.
Allegations of drug abuse "will end his career as a spokesperson for any product," said Nova Lanktree, one of the country's leading experts on sports merchandising. "If it is true that he is on steroids and other drugs and has denied taking steroids publicly, then no company or advertiser will touch him."
McMahon argues that he is cleaning up his organization. Testing for street drugs, he says, began in 1987. In November, four months after the Zahorian trial, steroid testing was instituted. Initially, McMahon says, half the WWF wrestlers tested positive for an anabolic steroid metabolite but that number is now down to 15 percent.
Mike Tenay, host of the nationally syndicated radio show "The Wrestling Insiders" that broke some of the stories about drug use, sees things differently: "Hulk Hogan and the WWF didn't come clean with the public, and that's why they're in this problem. . . ."
Keywords:
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by CNB