Hulk Hogan put away too many opponents to count with his fabled leg drop finishing maneuver, and he suspects he hurt himself with it as well.
Hogan, 69, appeared on “The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani” and was asked about the biggest regret from his professional wrestling career.
“Yes. After everybody says, ‘Would you do anything different in your wrestling career,’ everybody always says no. I would have done something completely different,” Hogan said, as covered by WrestleZone.
“When you’ve got the largest arms in the world, why are you dropping the leg every night for years and destroying your back? Why wouldn’t you put people in the sleeper with the largest arms in the world? Why wouldn’t you use the sleeper?”
Hogan recently underwent back surgery.
One of his biggest rivals, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, used the sleeper hold as his finishing move, which Hogan thought could be used to tell an interesting story between the two.
“It could have been me and Piper, sleeper versus sleeper, who knows? But yeah, that’s the only regret I have, that leg drop because back in the day, the ring, sometimes the concrete was easier to land on than these old-school rings. If you go to the Baltimore Civic Center, they had a boxing ring. If you fell down in the ring, you would be paralyzed,” Hogan continued.
“I was in the ring with Andre [the Giant] that first turn; he goes, ‘No bumps, boss.’ I said okay, if you say so.’ I had no idea if you fell down in the ring, you’d hurt yourself; it was so bad. That would be the only change would not to do that finish.”