WWE Hall of Famer Sting On Not Knowing Who Hulk Hogan Was

Sting is a WWE Hall of Famer, but that doesn’t mean he grew up watching pro wrestling. He didn’t know much about it at all, including names of the biggest players.

The Icon grew up in an area of California that didn’t get sports entertainment on their channel guide. He had to learn a lot of the names as he met them along the way, including Hulk Hogan.

During AEW Unrestricted, Sting told a rather humorous story about not knowing who the biggest pro wrestling star in the world was. The Stinger ran a gym at the time that Hulk Hogan would visit. Everyone freaked out over The Hulkster, but Sting had no idea who that blonde guy was. It wasn’t until someone mentioned the Thunderlips role from Rocky 3 that Sting finally made the connection.

“This big blonde guy would come to the gym all the time and people would freak out and they’d say, ‘Don’t you know who that is?’ I’d say ‘I don’t know who he is.’ — ‘He’s Hulk Hogan!’ – ‘Who’s Hulk Hogan?’ — ‘He’s the guy from the Rocky Movie!’ — ‘Oh, I know that guy!’ — that’s the only way I knew him. See, I didn’t know anything about pro wrestling.”

Sting said he grew up in a place that didn’t have pro wrestling on television north of the San Fernando Valley in California. He didn’t watch pro wrestling, but that certainly changed along the way.

The story Sting told isn’t uncommon. A lot of fans didn’t realize who Hulk Hogan was until they saw him as Thunderlips. The rest, and the Hulkamania that followed, is history.