Sunday, May 23, 2010

If you can't take a joke......

Hulk Hogan can't buy a break these days.

In January, he debuted in TNA Wrestling, but his presence hasn't had the kind of impact (pun intended) the company was hoping for, but we've gone over that enough times already. Unfortunately, in addition to his declining mental faculties (how else to explain his changing the story on nearly every radio show he appears on to promote TNA?), Hogan now has a bit of a thin skin when it comes to satire.

It has been reported that Hogan has filed a lawsuit against Post Cereals, an arm of Kraft Foods and makers of the Pebbles family of cereals, alleging that an incidental character in the latest commercial for Cocoa Pebbles uses his likeness without his permission.

The ad has Fred Flintstone & Barney Rubble grappling with "Bulk Boulder", who's not a total Hulk-a-like, despite the former champ's claims to the contrary. Boulder is undone by Barney's adopted son, Bamm-Bamm, and the animated wrestler is reduced to a pile of---wait for it---pebbles (naturally). Seems Hogan thinks that Kraft and its ad agency should've at least asked for his permission, but when has Hogan ever set foot in a ring in green trunks? Never, at least to my knowledge. The ad is satirical in nature as it relates to the wrestler, and it may have had more of a genesis in the success a year and a half ago of Mickey Rourke's "The Wrestler" than anything Hogan-related.

I'd say Hogan's gotten quite paranoid in his old age, wouldn't you? I don't see the suit going very far, and will probably be thrown out due to lack of conclusive evidence. The internet is already rife with people joking about Hogan and his rep for backstage politics in wrestling, suggesting he'd try to apply that to this latest piece of litigation. Let's face it. If Hogan can't beat a cartoon character, then maybe he might as well finally read the handwriting on the wall, and, assuming he keeps his word and leaves TNA unable to finish his work there, hang 'em up once and for all.

No comments: