Dark Side Of The Ring's Bash At The Beach Episode Details What Hulk Hogan Wanted To Happen
James Stevens
Published Mar 27, 2026
This week's episode of Dark Side of the Ring covered WCW's infamous Bash at the Beach 2000 PPV. In case you didn't already know, that show was the one where Jeff Jarrett, who was World Champion at the time, led down in the ring when the bell rang so Hulk Hogan could pin him to win the belt. The bulk of the Dark Side episode covering that show, and more specifically that match, revolved around Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo giving their versions of the story.
What Happened
Russo claims he asked the WCW writers who should be the one to beat Jarrett for the title and they unanimously agreed it should be Booker T. Hogan apparently disagreed, and since he had creative control of his own path, and Bischoff had the final say, it was his plan, the one intended to blur the lines where Jarrett throws himself to the mat, that WCW ended up having to go with.
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That alone isn't why Bash at the Beach was such a controversial show. It's what came next, the Russo promo and the off-the-cuff main event that all happened after Hogan and Bischoff had left the show. Russo returned to the ring and told fans they would never see Hogan again after what he pulled. Russo then booked a second World Title match between Jarrett and Booker with Booker winning, exactly what Russo wanted to happen on the show all along.
What Should Have Happened (Apparently)
What Russo denies is the plan Bischoff claims he and Hogan laid out where The Hulkster would have been stripped of the title shortly after storming out of Bash at the Beach. Bischoff explained on Dark Side of the Ring that the blurred lines would have come when WCW revealed executives were annoyed at Hogan for holding the belt hostage and would have eventually stripped him of the title. That would have led to a tournament to crown a new champion.
The plan was for that tournament to come to an end at Halloween Havoc later that same year, at which point Hogan would have returned as the final was about to take place, or possibly right after it happened, claiming to still be the real champion. The winner of the tournament would have then had to beat Hogan in a match to crown the one true champion, but Bischoff didn't reveal who the planned winner of that match was. Perhaps they hadn't thought that far ahead since Russo prevented that plan from happening beyond Bash at the Beach.
