Hulk Hogan claims he expected to get booed at WWE Raw Netflix premiere

Hulk Hogan claims that he was not surprised by the negative reception he received from the crowd at WWE Raw’s Netflix premiere last month.

One of the biggest stories to come out of the January 6 Raw episode was Hogan getting booed by the Los Angeles fans. The show was held at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California and included a segment where Hogan promoted his Real American Beer brand that WWE is now a minority owner of.

While appearing as a guest on Monday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show, Hogan said he expected the LA crowd to boo him. Hogan — who was a prominent supporter of Donald Trump’s election campaign — believes politics are one of the reasons he was booed. He also thinks playing a heel in Los Angeles in the past played a part.

“Oh, I did [expect to get booed],” Hogan said. “You’ve got to realize, the last time I ran hard in LA, I was a bad guy. I was Hollywood Hogan, man. I was riding dirty with the boys — you know, [Kevin] Nash and [Scott] Hall. And we’re spray painting people and we’re crotch chopping everybody. Started out with the Too Sweet stuff. So last time I was there, I was a heel. But I think the politics had a whole lot to do with it, like you said.”

McAfee brought up that there was some “other stuff” that may have led to Hogan getting booed, referencing his past personal transgressions.

“Yeah, of course,” Hogan responded. “You do slip and fall a couple times.”

Hogan said that, at the end of the day, the video of him getting booed got more social media impressions than anything else at Raw’s Netflix premiere. If Hogan didn’t have to be a babyface on the Raw episode because he was representing his beer brand, he would have liked to switch into his Hollywood Hogan character and cut a heel promo on the LA crowd.

The Netflix premiere was Hogan’s first live appearance on WWE programming in two years. He said on The Pat McAfee Show that he’s proud of the success everyone in WWE is having, and working with the new management regime of Nick Khan and Paul “Triple H” Levesque has been “smooth as butter” for him.

Hogan was prominently featured in the advertising for the January 25 episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event but did not appear due to a family commitment, which was his son Nick’s wedding.