The dream match with Hulk Hogan and HBK was solid, but Dave Meltzer was right
in his prediction; it was in the *** range.  I had figured it would be
better because Shawn Michaels is so great, but the reality is that Hogan is,
indeed, a 52-year-old man with a fake hip and two bad knees and no cardio, and
that reality could not be overcome even by HBK.  I would have loved to
have been privy to all the maneuvering surrounding this match.  Suffice to
say, it was not a case of both guys shaking hands and agreeing from day one
what they were going to do.  Shawn wanted two matches, the first of which
he would win and the second of which Hogan would win.  Hogan said no, one
match only.  Eventually, he said he would be open to two matches —
if he won both.  Shawn was not down with that.  In the end, Hogan had
creative control in his contract, so when he said he wanted to win clean with
the legdrop of doom, well, that’s what
happened.

face=Arial>
It was an intriguing match.  I knew Shawn was going to bump his ass off
for the guy, but he took it to a level I could not even have imagined.  In
fact, he took it to such an extreme (seriously, he was not only bumping huge,
but adding whacky flips to the end of his bumps for good measure) that I sat
there and thought to myself:  “He is sending a message to all of
us.  He is saying, ‘Look how hard I have to work to get a passable
match out of this old, broken-down immobile prick.’  He is going to
try to expose Hogan by having the very definition of a one-man
show.”  And, sure enough, my thoughts were confirmed the next night
on Raw where he basically said that very thing (see Raw Report).  I truly
believe that you could make the argument that after Hogan put his foot down
about not losing to Michaels under any circumstances, Michaels found the best
way, in the end, to outmaneuver the master himself.