Friedrich Nietzsche (and Rust Cohle) seems to be right that time is a flat circle, as we've seen with how WWE has circled back to the days of Hulkamania in many ways.
It's been 30 years since Hulk Hogan first won the WWE world title and launched the sports-entertainment giant into a new orbit. Even with all the changes fans have witnessed WWE go through since then, one can't help but notice what remains the same, what feels like an echo of the past.
WWE's central hero, its nationalistic dynamic and the family-friendly nature of the product all remind one of 1984.
Perhaps those parallels speak to how much wrestling relies on tropes and what has worked in the past. Maybe it's a testament to how little things change, how we continue to tell the same stories.
Either way, to watch a crowd erupt for John Cena is to flash back to when Hogan was king.
Reprise of a Hero
The biggest babyface in today's WWE is most certainly Hoganesque.
The Hulkster was a straight-laced, infallible hero with bulging muscles. He told kids to say their prayers and eat their vitamins. His charisma made up for subpar ring skills.
That description could just as well be about Cena. Replace the prayers and vitamins with a mantra of hustle, loyalty and respect, switch out abandana for a ball cap and the similarities are even more obvious.
Hogan often infused a touch of goofiness in his intense promos
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