Back in June — roughly a month before racist audio from his sex tape leaked and the bottom fell out on his wrestling career — Hulk Hogan praised Kevin Owens in an interview with Rolling Stone, saying Owens had made him “believe again.”
Five months later, Hogan is clinging to that analysis of Owens, claiming he was the “first” to notice KO’s potential. From an interview with Radio Yorkshire:
“Well, I hate to brag about it, but I’m the first one to point the finger at Kevin Owens. I saw him on NXT, like his second match, and saw him just chop and beat and grind and beating his guy down and doing it the old school way and really understanding how to get heat, doing it the old school way and I said, ‘that’s the guy’. I said, ‘that’s the guy. I don’t care if he looks like a wrestler [or] looks like an ice cream salesman. I don’t care. That’s the guy.’”
Keep in mind that by the time Hogan had seen him, Owens had already made a name for himself for over a decade on the independent circuit and in Ring Of Honor — not exactly a difficult promotion to watch — and had, you know, signed an NXT deal and been immediately inserted into an NXT Championship feud with Sami Zayn. It’s not like Owens was enhancement talent in rural Quebec or whatever when the Hulkster breathed life into him, but I guess in Hogan Speak “noticing someone when WWE’s started pushing them” is the closest you get to “discovering” someone. You were the first, Hulk, except for everybody else.
Join us tomorrow when Hulk Hogan says he watched Raw and “really sees something” in that Cesaro.
