The late Hulk Hogan’s heel turn at WCW’s Bash at the Beach 1996 is one of the most consequential booking decisions in the history of pro wrestling. It turned a beloved all-American icon into a monochromatic jerk with a spayed-on beard. After the main event, the first words from the fallen hero who used to tell us to say our prayers and eat our vitamins were basically “shut up.” Tears were shed, curses were screamed, and garbage was thrown — and those are just the reasonable reactions. One fan in attendance on that pivotal evening took things, perhaps, even worse than most and seemingly wanted to do something about it, so he got in the ring with Hogan, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. We believe he probably regretted the decision to act shortly after and the late Scott Hall’s breakdown of the event — from a 2013 interview with Inside The Ropes — explains why.
“When Hulk did come out and turned heel at Bash At The Beach in Daytona, he gave his interview, you know: ‘Hey, screw all you kids…’ People were buying it as a full-on shoot!” Hall said. “People started throwing stuff in the ring, and if you watch the tape, you can see a fan hit the ring.”
Sure enough, as Sting is helping Macho Man Randy Savage to the back with referee Randy Anderson, with Hogan and Hall jeering them, a large man in a white shirt and dark shorts can be seen climbing into the ring, with Nash getting ready to square up with this new, unexpected element.
‘Kev knocked this cat out!’
“Me and Hulk are on one side; this dude gets over the railing, past security, inside the ring, and there’s big Kev’ waiting,” Hall said, adding that the dude was out of luck and couldn’t imagine what he might have been thinking. “He probably thinks security’s going to stop him, so he can tell all his buddies, ‘Well, I tried to, man…'”
Regardless of his unknown intentions, the results are without dispute: “Kev knocked this cat out!” Nash dropped the man with a stiff righ hand and then began kicking him, as the gentleman — now wracked with regret — was rolling out of the ring to contemplate his life choices. “Now the dude’s down, and me being the prick that I am, I hear this commotion behind me. I look over and go, ‘Kev, is that a mark?'” Hall said, before putting his own boots to the guy “full shoot.”
“What do we got here? We’ve got a fan coming in.” Tony Schiavone said on the broadcast. “He didn’t last long,” added Bobby Heenan on commentary.
Hall said fans can yell and cheer and boo all they want but they’re not allowed to touch the wrestlers or throw stuff at them, let alone jump the barricade and get in the ring. “Once you come into the ring, we don’t know if you got a gun, a knife, or whatever. And guess what: that’s what I do for a living, man. Yeah, it might be fake, but all I gotta do is turn the volume up a little bit, and it starts becoming real.”
Hall also addressed the unknown assailant during the interview, thanking him. “It was fun stomping on your face. I hope you learned your lesson.”
