Move Over, Boss Baby!

Baby Hulk Hogan Made My Halloween 

When my oldest son was 2 or 3 years old, my wife surprised me by dressing him up in the best Halloween costume ever. No, I’m not talking about Batman, Superman, or a character from “Family Guy.” I’m talking about the legendary Hulk Hogan! 

The costume was freaking phenomenal, right down to the long blond hair. But what made it really special and hilarious is that I’ve loved Hulk Hogan since I was a kid. He was one of my favorite ‘80s wrestlers on the WWF (now the WWE) along with Randy “Macho Man” Savage, André the Giant, and Ultimate Warrior. 

The 1980s wrestling scene is what got me through my childhood. We lived in the middle of nowhere and only had four TV stations, but every Saturday morning, WWF was on one of them. I loved the drama, the crazy friendships and rivalries, and the signature moves every wrestler did in the ring. Of course, I also thought the whole thing was real. I was convinced Junkyard Dog and André the Giant were mortal enemies off-screen, too, and every time a wrestling team broke up, I was heartbroken for weeks about the betrayal. 

Luckily, all of my friends felt the same way. To this day, some of our best memories are of watching Wrestlemania on pay-per-view and reenacting all of the best moments in the living room. We stuck to the script right down to the signal each character made before their finishing move. It was awesome! 

If I pretended to be Jake the Snake Roberts, for example, I’d get my buddy in a headlock and then twirl my finger in the air (what Jake called “doing the DDT”). In the show, that’s the moment when the crowd goes wild because it means Jake is about to knock his opponent out cold! After I did it, my friends would cheer me on as I KOed my buddy on the living room floor. The network had me eating out of their hands. 

My favorite parts of the wrestling experience were the promos, which I never stopped loving even after I “outgrew” wrestling and went off to college. If you haven’t seen Randy “Macho Man” Savage’s “The Cream of the Crop” promotion, you NEED to look it up on YouTube. I’ve probably seen it a hundred times, but it still cracks me up when this giant wrestler — wearing a bandanna, huge sunglasses, and a lavender T-shirt — starts pulling little cups of coffee creamer out of thin air and ranting about the WWF higher-ups. 

I put “outgrew” in quotes before because I never really outgrew wrestling. In my 20s, the network hooked me again with WWF Raw Saturday Nights and the “Attitude Era” — a rougher, tougher, more risqué kind of wrestling aimed at people my age (and that I’d never let my kids watch today.) I loved the heck out of it, and that combined with my childhood nostalgia has made me a lifelong fan. 

If you want to make my Halloween this year, feel free to swing by the office costumed up as Hulk Hogan or one of the other ‘80s wrestling greats. I’ll give you a high-five as soon as I can stop laughing!