Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling


Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling is an American animated television series that originally aired on CBS Saturday mornings from September 14, 1985 to October 18, 1986, with reruns airing until June 27, 1987.

History

Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling was animated and produced by DIC Animation City. It featured animated adventures of popular WWF stars from the time, including its title character Hulk Hogan and his group of wrestlers fighting against a group of rogue wrestlers led by Rowdy Roddy Piper. The show followed cartoon archetypes concerning good characters triumphing over evil-doers in wacky situations, typical of children's cartoons in the 1980s.
Rarely referenced, wrestling was simply a device to determine the good guys from the bad guys. The wrestlers themselves appeared in the live-action segments of the show; however, due to their busy travel schedule, they did not provide the voices for their animated counterparts. These were instead performed by professional voice actors. One recurring live-action segment was the music video for the cover of "Land of a Thousand Dances" recorded by several WWF wrestlers for The Wrestling Album.
Due to the show being animated and the longer production times that resulted, it often failed to keep pace with the events of the WWF at the time. This resulted in certain wrestlers turning heel in regular WWF programming but remaining good guys on the cartoon and vice versa; examples include Rowdy Roddy Piper and André the Giant. Additionally, the characters of Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka and Wendi Richter remained throughout the series' run, despite both having left the WWF in late 1985.
WWE currently own the rights to the program.
In April 2015, WWE announced that the program would be added to the WWE Network, making its premiere following the April 20 episode of WWE Raw. On July 24, 2015, Hulk Hogan was fired by the WWE and references to Hulk Hogan including Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling were removed from the WWE network.

Characters

Hulk Hogan was the leader of the faces, or good guys; consisting of Junkyard Dog, Captain Lou Albano, André the Giant, Wendi Richter, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, Hillbilly Jim, and Tito Santana. Rowdy Roddy Piper was the leader of the heels, or bad guys; consisting of The Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, The Fabulous Moolah, Big John Studd, and Mr. Fuji. Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and "Mean" Gene Okerlund appeared animated in a few episodes as well.

Music

The opening theme to Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling is "Hulk Hogan's Theme", composed by Jim Steinman. It was also used as Hogan's ring entrance theme, before being replaced with "Real American" by Rick Derringer. Steinman later reworked "Hulk Hogan's Theme" into "Ravishing", performed by Bonnie Tyler and featured on her 1986 album Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire.

Episode list

Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling aired for 2 seasons beginning in 1985. Each episode was 30 minutes in length Some episodes contained one 30 minute cartoon while other episodes contained two 15 minute cartoons. Over the two seasons, there were a total of 26 episodes with 39 cartoons.

Season 1 (1985)

Season 2 (1986)

Voices