WWE Hall of Famer and the Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle who has been a six times World Champion in WWE and a former six times TNA Heavyweight Champion of the World recently talked about the decision of TNA of pushing Hulk Hogan and Sting over younger talents.
The decision of pushing Hulk Hogan and Sting in 2011 was quite a strange decision. No matter how big is two names were, They were quite old by the time and totally past their Prime. One of the biggest reasons why WWE has been the supreme promotion for professional wrestling is there mindset of pushing younger wrestlers. Of course, there are some exceptional cases like Hulk Hogan winning the WWE World Championship in 2002. But you would not see such things anymore in WWE.
Kurt Angle Reflects On TNA Pushing Hulk Hogan And Sting In 2011 Over Young Talents
This is one the biggest reasons why WCW failed to compete with WWE back in the late 90s and early 2000s. While WWE kept on creating new faces during their famous Attitude Era, WCW relied more on older talent search has Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.
Of course there was a time when they tried to push young talents like Goldberg and Booker T but it is known to all that Hulk Hogan used his creative freedom to push himself only. The incident between Hulk Hogan, Vince Russo and Jeff Jarrett at Bash at the Beach pay per view event of 2000 showed the picture of the collapse of WCW.
Similar thing happened in TNA Wrestling as well. When Hulk Hogan was getting pushed in 2011 he was already 58 year old, and Sting was 55. Of course it was a bad decision to push these two individuals at that stage of their career while there were plenty of young talents who could have the future faces of the promotion.
This is considered as one of the biggest reasons behind the downfall of TNA Wrestling. Thankfully the promotion is still alive, and we hope they will starts to compete with the promotions like WWE and AEW once again.
Kurt Angle who has been a six times World Champion in WWE and a former six times TNA Heavyweight Champion of the World recently on a current episode of The Kurt Angle Show where he talked about the decision of TNA of pushing Hulk Hogan and Sting over younger talents. He said;
“That’s a tough question because we were the workhorses, myself and Bobby Roode. Guys like us, AJ Styles and Samoa Joe, but Hulk Hogan and Sting are two of the biggest names in the history of the business. You want them on your team. You want them in your company.
“They’re going to help promote the company. They’re going to draw ratings. They’re going to draw money. It doesn’t matter how old they get. People still want to see them. Sting was still going pretty hard at that particular time, and Hulk Hogan wasn’t doing too bad as well. I wasn’t upset about that. I did understand, but we are the workhorses. We deserve more of the attention, but understandably, they got more of the attention.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription