Hulk Hogan’s death by heart attack at age 71 came as a shock to many fans of the larger-than-life wrestler who’d earned the nickname “The Immortal.”
But in many respects, the real surprise was that Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, lived as long a life as he did.
Despite the staged nature of its combat, professional wrestling is a notoriously dangerous career. Studies rank it among the riskiest professions. Wikipedia even maintains a comprehensive list of premature wrestler deaths.
The reasons for professional wrestling’s dangers are largely tied up in the industry’s working conditions. And part of Hogan’s legacy may be his complicity in those conditions. In 1986, he allegedly played a key role in undercutting a unionization effort – arguably the closest pro wrestling has come to unionizing.
‘The Body’ sticks his neck out
WWE’s first WrestleMania was held in 1985. The pay-per-view event was enormously successful and established the company – then known as WWF – as the nation’s preeminent wrestling promotion.
During the buildup to WrestleMania 2 the following year, wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura understood that performers had more leverage than they’d ever had. He began advocating behind the scenes for a wrestling union.
The story, as recounted by Ventura, goes like this: An acquaintance of Ventura’s in the NFL encouraged him to start organizing behind the scenes. WWE was behind the ball: In 1956, the NFL became the first American pro sports league to have its union recognized. It was followed by the NBA in 1957, MLB in 1966 and the NHL in 1967.
It helped that Ventura had little to lose. He’d be appearing in the forthcoming “Predator” film; should he get blackballed from wrestling for trying to form a union, he could probably earn a living as an actor. (Few could have predicted that he would go on to be elected governor of Minnesota in 1998.)
As Ventura brought together his peers to hash out the details of what a pro wrestling union might look like, he also included the promotion’s reigning champion, Hogan, with the thinking that the support of the WWF’s biggest star would boost the cause and insulate others from retaliation.
Instead, WWF owner Vince McMahon got wind of the effort and called his performers individually, threatening their jobs. The unionization effort sputtered, and McMahon eventually pushed Ventura out of wrestling.
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Ventura went on to sue the WWF over unpaid royalties. During the discovery process, Ventura testified that he had learned it was Hulk Hogan who snitched to McMahon and effectively sabotaged the union drive.
Hogan never publicly admitted to telling McMahon about the rumblings of a union. The WWE has never confirmed nor denied the series of events.
Either way, there have been no unionization campaigns in professional wrestling since then.
‘Do the job’
Today’s WWE performers are legally classified as “independent contractors.” They’re responsible for their own travel, training, costuming and insurance, even as their employer owns their likeness and is indemnified from liability due to injury or death.
One of pro wrestling’s paradoxes is that the top promotion’s wrestlers aren’t unionized, even as its audience has historically skewed low income and blue collar. Wrestling has long been a family business, and most wrestlers are part-timers working additional jobs – often in blue-collar, union positions. Many of them are truck drivers and warehouse employees, construction workers and bouncers.
Wrestler-turned-scholar Laurence de Garis has written about how the language of wrestling is rich with references to labor. A “work” in wrestling is a staged storyline; to “do the job” is to lose a match. The goal of many performers is to be considered a “good worker” by peers, and WWE performers wrestle as many as 300 nights per year. The company has no offseason.
The steroid, painkiller and alcohol abuse that has been endemic to the industry may well stem from pressures on wrestlers to perform night after night, even if they’re in pain, for fear of losing their position. In the 1990s, Hogan himself confessed to extensive steroid use, which is known to contribute to heart disease.
You’d think that these harsh working conditions would make wrestlers ripe for a union. Why that hasn’t happened is up for debate. WWE bought out its competition in the early 2000s; perhaps its status as the last remaining major wrestling promotion in the nation has weakened the leverage of wrestlers. Or maybe the testosterone-driven, masculine nature of the sport makes solidarity seem like weakness.
Workers left holding the bag
The story of Ventura’s failed unionization bid is a story of what could have been. But in some sense, I see the story of the WWE as part of a broader story of the U.S. economy.
After a period of relative stability after World War II, American work since the 1980s has become dominated by mergers, buyouts, deregulation and financialization. Profits are increasingly generated by financial means such as interest and capital gains instead of through offering genuine goods or services. Layoffs and precarious work have become the norm.
WWE’s profits exploded in the 1990s and 2000s. The company went public in 1999 – though the McMahon family retained majority control – and dipped its toes into film production, reality television and online streaming.
In 2023, WWE merged with UFC’s parent company Endeavor to form TKO Group Holdings. TKO’s revenue was more than US$2.8 billion in 2024.
Meanwhile, Endeavor has been spun off as a Hollywood talent agency and was acquired by a private equity firm. The fruits of these new revenue streams and mergers haven’t trickled down to its in-ring performers. So far in 2025, WWE has laid off or released more than 30 wrestlers and at least 10 employees from the company’s corporate wing.
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Much as professional wrestlers have remained independent contractors, this arrangement has become normalized in the broader American economy, with more than 36% of Americans participating in the gig economy. In 2022, Stanford researchers identified gig work as a “social determinant of health,” since most gig workers lack employer-sponsored health care, paid time off or sick days.
All for one and none for all
In today’s economy, luck or happenstance, rather than merit, seem more likely to influence who achieves financial security and who scrapes by, living paycheck to paycheck.
Hulk Hogan, as professional wrestling’s biggest star for 20 years, certainly believed he earned his place at the top of the industry. But without diminishing his talents, it’s worth noting he arrived at precisely the correct moment in history to become that star. For many years, a wrestler was expected to have “shoot” skills – that is, actual wrestling expertise – should an opponent ever go rogue and turn a staged performance into a real fight.
But as McMahon’s power and influence expanded, the look, the sound and the character of the wrestler became most important. How well could a wrestler perform for the camera? How well could he sell T-shirts to young fans?
Despite Hogan’s limitations as a technical in-ring performer, his mullet, mustache and “24-inch pythons” – the nickname given to his enormous biceps – made him the right person at the right time.
Hogan also succeeded because his opponents in the ring were willing to make him look like a star. They were able to “do the job” and do it safely.
Another paradox of professional wrestling is that it requires performers to appear as if they are hurting one another. But their primary goal, in fact, is keeping one another safe.
To me, that sounds a lot like solidarity.
Brian Jansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
