Hulk Hogan was not just Eric Bischoff’s “best friend,” he was also his business partner in Real American Freestyle. That’s why, when the upstart professional amateur-style wrestling promotion held its first big event, RAF01 on Fox Nation on Saturday, pulling off a good show was “bittersweet,” Bischoff told The Hollywood Reporter.

The news of Hogan’s passing and the timing was “really, really tough” for Bischoff and his remaining business partner in the league, Chad Bronstein, Bischoff said.

“We woke up and said, ‘You know what? What would Hulk want us to do? He wants to keep going. This is an opportunity for us to build on to an already large legacy and to do something positive,’” Bischoff said. “And from that point forward, it’s just, you know, we’re just like ‘Powered by Hogan.’ We just driving through and trying to make him proud, and I think we are. I know we did on Saturday, and I think he’d be very proud of the progress that we’re making and what we’re doing.”

Officially, Hogan died from a heart attack. Family and friends believe the WWF/E legend was a victim of malpractice during a recent neck operation.

“Look, it’s not like any of us were surprised that he had undergone another surgery. This was probably his 21st major surgery, the neck surgery, which ultimately ended up being his last one. Over the last 15 years, Hulk has had so many of these surgeries, and all of them have been very serious surgeries where he was under anesthesia for three hours, four hours, six hours — they’re not just little procedures. But he always kicked out,” Bischoff said. “He was always able to kick out of it and be optimistic and look forward to doing whatever it is he was excited about. So when he went in the hospital this last time, it was serious, and we all knew it was serious, but we’ve been so accustomed to him being able to kick out and overcome it — and just this time, he couldn’t. And in that sense, it shouldn’t have been shocking or surprising, but it really was.”

Even more tragically, it was Hogan’s own finishing move — the atomic leg drop — that led to all of those corrective procedures.

“You don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to be a physiologist. All you have to do is go look at a video of Hulk going up and coming down with that big— and look where he lands. He lands on his hip whenever he did that leg drop. So all 300 pounds of him, night after night after night,” Bischoff said. “Stand up on your bed and jump off your bed and land on your hip on the floor, and just do that, oh, I don’t know, 400-500 times a year for 20 years, OK? And then let’s talk about where it hurts. That leg drop was it. All of his issues started in his lower back and his spine, and it just progressed from there.”

Not all progression is progress, of course, but Bischoff sees nothing but blue skies ahead for the league he, Hogan and Bronstein put together just four-and-a-half months ago. An RAF01 recap meeting with Fox on Thursday only added to their optimism.

“Certainly can’t speak for [Fox], but I do know that Real American Freestyle this past Saturday night, I think it would be OK for me to say, is one of — if not the — most successful events that they’ve done so far in 2025 in terms of the launch of a new event,” Bischoff said, actually kinda-sorta speaking for them. “But I certainly can’t speak to it from their perspective, because I don’t have any insight into it. I just know they were really happy to see Chad and I yesterday.”

It wasn’t just Fox executives who Bischoff says extended their congratulations on a job well done — post-show, he also heard from old WCW friends Ernest “The Cat” Miller, Sonny Onoo and “Diamond” Dallas Page.

Nick Khan, the president of WWE, also reached out.

“He just said, ‘Hey, man, solid event — awesome, great job,” Bischoff summed up.

TKO, the WWE and UFC parent company on which Khan is a board member, isn’t buying Real American Freestyle up — not yet, at least.

“There’s been no no discussions beyond that. I think it’s a little early, a little bit,” Bischoff said with a smile. “Maybe we got a couple of years before we start having those conversations.”

When THR spoke with Bischoff, Bronstein and Hogan in late April, the Hulkster already had a potential sale to TKO on his mind.

”Well, for me, that’s always an option down the road,” Hogan said then. “We need to turn this into a monster first.”

It’s no monster after one big event, but RAF01 has accelerated Bischoff’s and Bronstein’s plans to create a live, weekly, two-hour Real American Freestyle show — a “scaled-down version” of what fans saw last weekend. Bischoff says they’re currently is in discussions with Fox (which now includes new streamer Fox One) and “also with other networks” on the potential weekly episodic series.

“I really think there’s a market for it,” Bischoff said, “and it’s a big part of our future.”

The weekly TV schedule is already pretty packed with wrestling, though we’re talking about the kind that Bischoff and Hogan used to do. Still, the former head of WCW creative sees a hole he likes.

“You know, I don’t mind Saturday nights. I’ll be honest with you, it’s not the greatest night for television in terms of HUT — households using television — and so forth, but it works for me,” Bischoff said. “We gotta stay away from Monday night because you’re gonna have football. Thursday you’ve got football. There’s a lot of wrestling on Monday night (WWE) and Friday night (WWE) and Wednesday night with AEW…”

(Saturdays are actually relatively busy wrestling nights as well: All Elite Wrestling has its secondary program AEW Collision on Max and Peacock has new WWE premium live event Saturday Night’s Main Event.)

The business has certainly expanded even from Bischoff’s “Monday Night Wars” heyday. The business models have also changed — in Bischoff’s WCW days, pay-per-view buys represented (at least) a quarter of the company’s revenue.

These days, WWE’s many annual premium live events can be accessed by simply having a subscription to the streaming service that owns the rights — ESPN here and Netflix internationally. Real American Freestyle and Fox Nation have the same setup. AEW’s PLEs are still PPVs (pay-per-views): $40 for HBO Max subscribers (on top of their HBO Max subscription price) and $50 to access without an HBO Max subscription.

It’s pricey for a wrestling promotion that, for all its growth, is not WWE.

“Now, you take streaming and look, it’s the Wild, Wild West. It’s still evolving,” Bischoff said. “But it’s putting pressure on the traditional pay-per-view model.”

Bischoff says it will be “interesting to see” how HBO Max consumers react to the perceived double-dip. The $40 upcharge is “a big number for a lot of people,” he said, and not “a good look.”

“It’s like going to going to a restaurant, ordering a hamburger, and saying, ‘Can I get some ketchup?’” Bischoff continued. “‘That’ll be $20.’”