WWE: Hulk Hogan's Unreleased Collector's Series - DVD Review - December 28, 2009

WWE recently released the Hulk Hogan’s Unreleased Collector’s Series DVD set. When I heard about another Hulk Hogan set coming out, my first thought was great but what more can they release that hasn’t been seen? Most of these DVD sets are PPV matches and matches that are more common. WWE promoted this set as something different though. They promoted it as unreleased material and lesser seen matches. The lineup was released for the DVD and I was definitely happy with it. It lived up to the promotion. I’m a Hogan for over 20 years and there were matches on this that I have never seen. Even the stuff I had seen, the matches aren’t commonly released. So, let’s get right into this.

Disc one covers his early WWWF and AWA days while also going into his early run as WWF champion. There are some rare matches to start this for sure including Hogan in a squash match against two guys from Championship Wrestling in 1979. It was really funny to just sit and watch this cause the crowd was so calm. Little did they know what Hogan would become. There is a WWWF championship match with Bob Backlund defending against Hulk Hogan from 1980. Fun match especially for history’s sake. Speaking of history, there is a match between Hogan and Andre The Giant from 1980 in Madison Square Garden. Interesting to watch a different style match between the two and nice to see them show this match instead of the more common Shea Stadium match. Yes, Hogan does bodyslam Andre in this match too much smaller fanfare. Amazing what a few years and an incredible match build will do!! The last thing on this set from before the WWF days is a AWA match with Hogan taking on Nick Bockwinkel and Bobby Heenan. This was such a fun match to watch and such an easily booked match. Heenan was entertaining teaming with Bockwinkle and Hogan was big time over with the fans. This gets us into the WWF days. I loved them digging into the vault and getting a Hogan vs. Savage match that I have not seen. I’ll say this again later as well. Hogan vs. Savage is one of my favorite rivalries of all time and their best matches were probably in the mid 80’s. The match on this set is from 1986 and taking place in Detroit. A fun Snake Pit segment is shown on this disc as well which shows Jake The Snake Roberts talking to Hulk Hogan which aired on the same day as WrestleMania III. What makes this segment even more fun is Jake showing the new larger WWF title. Jake kept pointing out that WWF had not made a bigger belt for any of Hogan’s other bigger challengers. I thought this segment really did good on building up the odds that Hogan was facing against Andre. The first disc finishes off with matches against Kamala and Killer Khan.

Disc two moves up into the end of Hogan’s WWF run covering matches from 1987 to 1991. A couple of matches here that I haven’t seen to start off with as Hogan defends against The One Man Gang. The match that really gets my attention is a rare title defense against Ravishing Rick Rude. This was a lot of fun to watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hogan and Rude go one on one so that was a big bonus with this DVD. As far as the rest of this disc, I’m just going to comment on some random matches. First, Hogan takes on King Haku from late 1988. I hadn't seen a match back when Hogan was wearing the helmet with the fist on it. I always remember seeing pictures of him in it in the Apter magazines. I still don’t seem to know why he was wearing it other than just some gimmick to do. A rarity on this set is a promo by Hogan talking about Savage and WrestleMania V. You may remember that Savage was dissecting the whole year leading up to WrestleMania of how Hogan had wronged him. They were long promos by Savage where he would fix the footage like he wanted to back up what he was saying. Well, Hogan would do rebuttals against them and this was one of them talking about Survivor Series 1988. I haven’t seen these in probably twenty years so that was a fun little addition to this DVD set. Speaking of Savage, this gets us to Boston Garden 1989 rematch for the WWF title. Another Hogan/Savage match that I had not seen. Add Sherri to the mix and it makes this match even more fun. The UK Rampage tour was the scene for a Hulk Hogan/Sgt. Slaughter WrestleMania VII rematch. Hogan still had the bandage on his head still selling the Slaughter attack from the month earlier. The disc closes with a MSG match between Hogan and Flair during their short WWF feud. One thing that was always a bummer and completely frustrating for me as a fan was that we didn’t get a nationally televised match between the two of them from this era. So, the two MSG one on one matches that occurred are definite treasures for fans.

Disc three moves on to Hogan’s career in WCW and his return to WWE in 2002. We get three matches from 1995 with Hogan teaming with Savage against Flair and Vader at Slamboree, against Vader at Bash At The Beach in the cage, and then a match against Sting on WCW Monday Nitro. The match with Sting is a really good pick for a rare match. This was when Hogan was coming out in all black. Even though there is a run in finish, it is a good pick of matches for so early in the Hogan/Sting rivalry. The nWo era picks up from here. The first match is Hogan defending the belt against The Giant at Souled Out 1997. Yeah, this match was not so good but it is a match of theirs that isn’t featured as much. Usually, Road Wild or Hog Wild (whatever the name of it was that year) in 1996 is shown with Hogan winning the belt. Yeah, that nWo PPV was a bad idea and it was not a good show all around. I’m all for the next match being on this set as we get Hogan and Bret Hart from Nitro in 1998. At the time, there was good news and bad news with this one. The good was that this match was happening. The bad was that this match was thrown away on a Nitro and the worst part was that It was just a setup for Bret to join the nWo. I’ve always felt that this was a bad turning point for WCW too. Bret should have been the guy on the other side that finally leveled things out for WCW in their battle with the nWo. Of course, you had the Wolfpack and nWo black and white at this point so it was out of hand. Hogan vs. Bret just seemed so thrown away. From here, the DVD goes back to Hogan’s comeback run in WWE. The segment is shown from the night after WrestleMania X-8 where Hogan got the incredible reaction from the fans in Montreal. Still so powerful to watch. The rest of the WWE matches on this set are good picks as they are TV matches and not as featured as the PPV matches. There is a match against Flair from Raw and a match against Triple H from Smackdown. The Edge/Hogan vs. Billy and Chuck tag team title win has been put on other DVD’s so this set features the rematch from the next week on Smackdown. The DVD closes with a match against Kurt Angle from Smackdown which led to the Hogan/Lesnar match the next week.

Overall thoughts. Good DVD and really well produced. As a Hogan fan, I was happy with getting to see a LOT of matches that I had never seen. Seeing them pick a lot of the house show matches from local broadcasts was really nice. When you get later in the TV era, it’s hard to pick out stuff that hasn’t been seen cause TV is so different now. When you get into the 80’s, there is all sorts of stuff that you can work with. There are some interview extras on the set as well covering all Hogan eras. Also, there are matches on this set that apparently don’t have original commentary so Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler recorded some new commentary over it. I thought they did a good job talking about history and talking about the differences in the product at the time. If you’re a Hogan fan, you’ll likely love the set. I really enjoyed it.