It’s such a stupidly pure way of settling a match. I would say that perhaps all games should be settled this way, but it wouldn’t be the same if the participants weren’t physically exhausted and their nerves utterly shredded.
Congratulations to the England women’s team. Commiserations to Spain’s. Football can be cruel.
Hulk Hogan died. He was, to say the least, a unique figure in popular culture. A balding, handlebar-moustached, bemuscled hot dog of a man. Wrestler, actor, union buster, fantasist of Baron Munchausen-level proportions, racist, MAGA spokesperson and a lot more besides. He seemed to spend his later years ‘living his gimmick’, which lead to the slightly surreal conversation when deposed as his ‘real’ self, Terry Bollea, where he attempted to explain to a befuddled lawyer that Hulk Hogan had a big dick, but Terry Bollea didn’t.
To those of us in the UK who first became aware of him in the 1990s Sky Sports WWF boom, he was brash, kind of appalling, but also sort of amazing. A mass of contradictions. Someone who clearly took steroids, but told kids to say their prayers and eat their vitamins. Like a lot of fairly cunty people, he did a lot of work for charity, but talk to anyone in the business and you’ll hear tales of him screwing people over left right and centre. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he ended up as a Trumper, as his version of the USA always seemed to be a star-spangled hamburger box. He was loud, he was brash, he was strong and heroic, but nonsensical and a cheat and weirdly petty.
In short, to us at the time, the song was right. He was a real American.