People love Hulk Hogan. It’s just fun to think about him, and his long pro-wrestling career, and his red head scarf, and his huge size, and the way he points his forefinger and shouts “You!” at opponents to intimidate them. The fans crowding into the Garden for “Hulk Hogan Appreciation Night” on a recent Friday were doing that a lot—saying “You!” and pointing. No other passion in the city draws a crowd as diverse as pro wrestling’s. It makes the patrons of moma look like close relatives of one another by comparison. Latinos, Asians, white people, blacks, little kids, old ladies with their hair in buns, women in hijabs, dads with sons, office pals in sober suits, and eager young date-night couples poured in, quickly scoped out the gift kiosks, and whooped up the ramps and escalators to their seats. If you were searching among them for a unifying feature, besides the red head scarves, you would have to settle for this: facial hair. Across ethnic and racial lines, many of the guys sported neat beard-mustache combos of the Ming the Merciless variety.

Hands of all kinds went over hearts for the national anthem. Then the wrestling began, each match more slam-bang and scream-worthy than the last. A deeply hateable wrestler named Bad News Barrett came out, commandeered the microphone, and offered some comments in a sneering English accent—something about an American wrestler named Dean Ambrose having stolen his Intercontinental Championship Belt. The bell rang and Barrett had to do battle, then and there, with the aforementioned Ambrose, plus Dolph Ziggler, who together would’ve stood a better chance if they’d made common cause instead of turning on each other whenever they had the Englishman down.

Evil was rewarded, as often occurs. Barrett won and skedaddled up the aisle with the coveted belt, to cascading boos. Similarly, in a later match, a black-bearded giant named Rusev, “currently residing in Moscow,” according to the announcer, beat mercilessly on a clean-cut American hero, John Cena, whose thing is that he salutes all the time. The image of Vladimir Putin flashed regularly from the Jumbotron to encourage Rusev, who cheatingly put two successive referees out of commission and paused now and then to wave a large Russian flag. In Section 117, Row 20, Seat 5, a man named Darren Quick said to his son, “Watch—Rusev is going to win in two minutes.” When, exactly two minutes later, Rusev did pin Cena to the mat, the boy asked his father how he had known. “Because it’s what I do, it’s my job,” Quick said. Throughout the evening, he made predictions that were always right.

Intermission, but still no Hulk Hogan. “We want Ho-gan! We want Ho-gan!” the crowd chanted, after returning from the long bathroom lines. An oiled and tattooed wrestler named Randy Orton, “the Apex Predator,” won a match against a beard-and-hat opponent who resembled one of the guys from ZZ Top. Then, finally—Hogan time! Officials of different ilks and stripes appeared in the ring and made introductory speeches. Spotlights hit a far entry, and Hulk Hogan stepped through it into roars of devotion. He wore dark glasses with bright-yellow frames above his drooping yellow mustache, and a sleeveless red body shirt. Everything about him was red or yellow. He walked in spotlights up the aisle and climbed through the ropes as if opening his front door.

Then there were hugs between him and Ric (Nature Boy) Flair, a former nemesis (now devoted friend), and the presentation to Hogan of a nearly life-size photo of himself, and the pronouncement by someone that Hulk Hogan was the Garden’s greatest star of all time, and the elevation of a Hulk Hogan banner into the rafters next to the retired jersey numbers of Knicks and Rangers stars. A short, sometimes slow-motion film played on the Garden screen: Hulk Hogan whaling the tar out of opponents, to the music of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” The crowd chanted, over and over, “Thank you, Ho-gan! Thank you, Ho-gan!” Then the screen showed the honoree live, his bright-blue eyes filled with tears and a transcendent expression on his steroid-ravaged face.

When people stood up to go, a spectator in Section 117, Row 19, Seat 5, directly below Darren Quick, repeated the question Quick’s son had asked: How had he known? “I’m an independent pro wrestler,” Quick replied. “I’ve wrestled since I was fourteen, and I’m now thirty-three. I go to a lot of tryouts, hoping to break in to a big-time event like this. My wrestling name is DVS, pronounced Devious. From my experience, I can usually tell what the script has to be for a match. In my (I guess you could say) ‘real’ job, I’m a security guard. I start my shift in a building in midtown in fifty-five minutes, at midnight.” ♦