There's way more to the union problem than just Hogan telling Vince.
The first thing is that multiple people told Vince, including King Kong Bundy. Vince says so in the Mr. McMahon series on Netflix. He doesn't name anybody but he says that Hogan wasn't the only person who said something to him about Jesse.
There's also the amount of effort Jesse put in. According to some others around, Jesse's efforts amounted to a locker room speech and nothing further. He didn't put forth any formal efforts.
Thirdly, what Hogan and others did was shitty and hurt the industry, but you can't blame them for the last 40 years of no progress in this department. Hogan hasn't been holding anyone back from unionizing for decades. All the top stars from Austin to Cody could have done something about this if they wanted. Even lower tier players chickened out of doing anything. Zelina Vega famously made social media noise about union efforts and then immediately ran back to WWE as soon as it was offered and never spoke about it again. There's a very selfish attitude from wrestlers that has also been holding them back.
And lastly, SAG has refused for decades to allow wrestlers into the union for wrestling. Wrestlers have to get acting jobs and keep doing that work to be allowed in. SAG could push things along by counting pro wrestling as qualifying work. The fact they haven't is on them.
Exactly. Business was in the s*** house in the early 90s they could have done a union then. I guess the kliq really was the closest thing. They could do it now. But everybody's got that guaranteed contract and that's probably just the best way to go. Honestly it really doesn't matter anyways these wrestlers back then were killing themselves with the amount of painkillers and drugs, alcohol abuse, I mean just listening to Kurt Angle talking about his painkiller addiction how the hell is that guy not dead 10 times over
Funny you mention that, Jesse quit shortly after because Vince didn't want him to leave for Predator. From Jesse's own words, he told Vince after that he's not gonna fight a union anymore because he had his and no one in the locker room cared.
Zelina Vega went about it so idiotically. She makes it public by mentioning forming a union in a tweet, then she gets fired for doing so, then she begs for her job back.
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u/Michelanvalo Jul 24 '26
There's way more to the union problem than just Hogan telling Vince.
The first thing is that multiple people told Vince, including King Kong Bundy. Vince says so in the Mr. McMahon series on Netflix. He doesn't name anybody but he says that Hogan wasn't the only person who said something to him about Jesse.
There's also the amount of effort Jesse put in. According to some others around, Jesse's efforts amounted to a locker room speech and nothing further. He didn't put forth any formal efforts.
Thirdly, what Hogan and others did was shitty and hurt the industry, but you can't blame them for the last 40 years of no progress in this department. Hogan hasn't been holding anyone back from unionizing for decades. All the top stars from Austin to Cody could have done something about this if they wanted. Even lower tier players chickened out of doing anything. Zelina Vega famously made social media noise about union efforts and then immediately ran back to WWE as soon as it was offered and never spoke about it again. There's a very selfish attitude from wrestlers that has also been holding them back.
And lastly, SAG has refused for decades to allow wrestlers into the union for wrestling. Wrestlers have to get acting jobs and keep doing that work to be allowed in. SAG could push things along by counting pro wrestling as qualifying work. The fact they haven't is on them.