Bruce Prichard Recounts Pitch For Hulk Hogan To Face Dusty Rhodes At WWF/E WrestleMania 9

Prichard breaks down the entire pitch.

Bruce Prichard returned to his Something to Wrestle podcast, and the focus was on the life and career of Terry Bollea a.k.a. Hulk Hogan, who passed away during the summer of 2025.

While discussing Bollea’s in-ring career, Prichard was asked if there were pitches to turn Bollea heel in the WWF. He responded yes, but said those ideas never got far because former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon thought it would turn the audience against the company.

Prichard recounted one pitch for Dusty Rhodes and Hulk Hogan to go one-on-one at WrestleMania 9 in 1993. Prichard said the pitch was thrown out there to hopefully keep Hogan from taking a hiatus from the company. He added that both Hogan and Rhodes felt they should be the heels in the scenario. Prichard said they planned to have Dustin Rhodes do the heavy lifting leading up to the Dusty-Hogan bout.

“About Hulk (Hogan) turning heel? Oh God, yes. It never got far. It never got far at all. Because Vince (McMahon) didn’t like it. Vince did not want to turn Hulk heel, held Hulk in the highest of esteem, and felt that the audience would turn on us as a company if we had Hulk Hogan be a bad guy… Pat (Patterson) and I throughout the years pitched different ways to turn Hulk heel. I know Hulk wanted to turn heel. There was a pitch going into WrestleMania 9 and it was debatable who would be the heel of having Dusty (Rhodes) back and do, ‘… Me and Hulk Hogan, who is the best?…’ Before Hulk left. This was a pitch to, hey, don’t go away and on your sabbatical. What if we did this? And it was kind of like the battle of the legends. The battle of the two megastars. The two biggest heroes. Dusty being from WCW and obviously Hulk being from WWE, and it was a story of Dusty, ‘We ain’t never touch, baby. I just wanna touch you one time. That you can feel The Dream…’ Dusty and Hulk both felt each one of them should be heel — felt that they would be the heel in that scenario, which I loved.

I’m talking huge pie in the sky. What I thought would be a pitch that could hook Hulk into going — I knew he always wanted to work with Dusty, I knew he loved Dusty and I thought, okay, if I can get him to buy into this, how we get there is we get there with Dustin (Rhodes). He does the heavy lifting, and yeah, it just didn’t work. It just didn’t do it…”

Hogan passed away on July 24th, 2025, and Dusty Rhodes passed on June 11th, 2015.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Something to Wrestle with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.