Hulk Hogan Joins The Outsiders (1996)

If you go to the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida–home of WCW’s 1996 Bash at the Beach–look closely. You can still see janitors cleaning up the debris that fans chucked at Hulk Hogan when he revealed himself to be the third Outsider nearly 30 years ago.

Hogan turned the (heel turn) tables on Randy Savage, hitting him with a leg drop after viewers assumed he was there to help WCW repel Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.

Not so.

He enacted revenge on the Macho Man, but more importantly, revealed his evil intentions to form the New World Order (NWO), which would change the wrestling world forever.

For wrestling fans in the ‘90s, a Hulkster heel turn was as imaginary as a unicorn. That’s why when it actually happened, it represented something far greater than a shocking swerve. It was a paradigm shift in how wrestling promotions and fans viewed even the godliest of characters. They too can have evil inside of them. More on this later.