Hulk Hogan appeared on The Bubba The Love Sponge radio show Tuesday morning and discussed the shock jock’s altercation with Awesome Kong the previous day. Courtesy of www.angrymarks.com, here is a transcript of the discussion:

BUBBA: She was wearing wrestling gear, and she came in on me and sucker punched me right on my left cheek, and I was like, what’s going on… then she came out me again, hit me again in the mouth, and she goes, “This if for Haiti! This is for Haiti!” and I’m like “What is going on?” Then she hits me again… Finally I put my left hand out and push her away from me, and she comes at me again and I just cover up, because I cannot fight back on a woman. Not only will I be fired from TNA, which I probably am, but my radio career is gone if I take a woman out!

HOGAN: I tell you what, though, after what happened, if you had clocked her you’d have got away with it.

BUBBA: Maybe on the streets I’d have gotten away with it, but, how would the media have spun that had I clocked her?

HOGAN: What nobody knows, and this is the real truth, that there were certain people there, y’know, and of course they have to run it by me and Dixie… she should get off the property, she should be fired immediately, that’s it. It was so violent. You could have actually lost an eye, you could have had your teeth knocked out. But, to give you your creedo, you are the one who said no, don’t fire her.

BUBBA: No, I don’t want you to fire her.

MANSON: Now, I’m confused. Does Hogan think that this is a funny incident?

BUBBA: No, no he’s not. He knows how serious it is. He was being a dick earlier… but I don’t think he agrees with it. And, you know what, they said we were going to fire her and I said no, don’t fire her. Now, if she’s done other stuff, I can’t help what happens to her on other situations, but don’t fire her for sucker punching me, I don’t want to cost anybody their job.

HOGAN: I think this is really just the beginning of a match made in heaven.

BUBBA: No, that’s fine… that’s fine. But I tell you one thing, Hogan. If you… you better not call it pro wrestling, you might as well put the cage up and make it MMA because I will not work, I promise you that. You’re not going to embarrass me like that, and be that much of a loose cannon in this industry…

MANSON: Oh now you’re gonna kick her ass? I don’t think you want a piece of her in the cage.

BUBBA: Let me ask you, you’re the only person who has a cool head. Had I defended myself, and not covered up, and just blocked what the remaining of what she put in. Had I actually fought her, and done well, what would I be facing right now?

HOGAN: Well, first off, you’d have killed her. She’s real good at throwing a sucker punch, but the way she was swinging at you, and everything, you could have shot right between her arms and knocked her out. It wouldn’t have been cool, y’know, there would be all kind of heat… You did the right thing, y’know, because you did not hit her back, and she was swinging wild and she’s out of her mind… you did the right thing, but at the end of the day it comes back to you and me hanging out together. You know you’re going to get heat, I told you this a long time ago. BUT, don’t put this one on me, because you stirred that up.

BUBBA: How did I? I’m not putting this on you, but you lead by example… I’m gonna be honest, man, nobody there likes me. And they think, hold on, Hogan, they think I’m in there… I’m not a wrestler, I’m not going to take anybody’s job, I’m not gonna take anybody’s backstage announcing gig. I’m there to help you and try to get the TNA product going and working. I’m not a boss, I’m not a agent, I’m not nothing there and everybody… a lot of the old dudes, but AJ Styles gives me dirty looks…

HOGAN: Well the word I got on the street last night was that Russo stirred this up, and Russo put her up to it.

BUBBA: I don’t agree with that.

HOGAN: It’s true! I heard it!

MANSON: Now, did she give you a finishing move, because she’s known for a body avalanche, a gorilla press slam…

BUBBA: No, no…

HOGAN: She shoulda pushed Bubba over her head, splashed Bubba, and then just bounced off the wall and done two or three belly splashes…

MANSON: Awesome Kong, she’s so awesome…

BUBBA: Wait until my lawyers call Dixie up today.

HOGAN: I just think you should get there early today, and just like she sucker punched you, I think because Russo set this up, you should just knock his assout.

BUBBA: Well, I dunno… I don’t think Russo did this…

HOGAN: He did it, I’m telling you as your friend! I wouldn’t lie to you!

BUBBA: Hogan, I love you to death, but you’re the biggest worker… hold on. You’re taking something that really did happen and trying to make it an angle And the bottom line is, y’know what? All the wrestling sheets, you should know this is real because I didn’t talk about it, and I was upset so bad last night. Hogan, I mean, God, Dixie cannot want to deal with all this Bubba drama…

HOGAN: No, this is just your chance to even the score, straighten this out. You just go right up to Russo when he’s not looking and you just sucker punch him like she sucker punched you.

BUBBA: It will be more of a fight between Russo and I, he’s a pretty big dude, than me and Kong, but that isn’t going to be fair.

HOGAN: You can beat Russo up! Especially if you sucker punch him!

BUBBA: Manson, let me tell you about this Awesome Kong chick. She put three of them on my right cheek that you wouldn’t believe. If you look at my forearms they’re all scratched up. And she’s all, like it’s Braveheart, “HAAAITIII! HAAAIIITI!” And I’m like what… and there’s a woman named Mandy who saw it all… and then she took a glass container and threw it down.

MANSON: That’s why a camera should be on you at all times. That’s priceless footage.

HOGAN: I thought it was great!

BUBBA: But, hey, Hogan, what you don’t realize that they have “eyes in the sky” there, did you know that? They have … that whole entire building has surveillance on it. I’m gonna go get that tape.

HOGAN: Well I can’t wait to see it because I can’t believe how quick she dropped your ass!

BUBBA: She happened to meet me right there, where you guys… just outside the door, you know where it happened, right? I was going to go talk to Val Venis about something, I was heading to Catering, and she met me just down that hallway a little bit before you go down to Eric’s office. She was by herself and she was coming to find me. Just minutes before that, I was in that little office area where you and Eric did that shoot, talking to Hall and Nash and Sixx-Pac. So she was coming to find me, regardless where I was. And what if she had done it right there? She’d have got an ass-whipping by the boys!

HOGAN: By the boys? There’d have been nobody around. The only reason you covered up is because everybody was watching, and you knew you had to behave. I think if you had been by herself you would have counter clocked her ass.

BUBBA: Yeah, but she happened to catch me kinda in a dead area. What if we were shooting and she came in and did that, I mean, she was going to find me regardless of where I was.

HOGAN: Oh, yeah, she was on the hunt! I’ve been around this business for a long time, and I’ve seen Dirty Dan Spivey just destroy Adrian Adonis to the point where we had to stop that. I’ve seen Paul Orndorff, naked, with a pair of shower shoes, kick Vader’s head in. But, without a doubt, when she hit you in your mouth, I thought she broke your jaw, I thought that was one of the hardest sucker punches I’ve ever seen thrown in this business, where it connected.

BUBBA: But it didn’t drop me!

HOGAN: All joking aside, I’m really proud of you for not knocking her out, bro, because that wouldn’t be cool.

BUBBA: I’m gonna be honest with you, Hogan. After her third punch to me, in my mind I’m like, do I take her down with a double-leg, and then just pummel her. Or do I try to bring my right around… and in my head in the quarter-second I had to think about I was like, “You’re done, you’re over! You’ll be off the radio!” Women’s right will get you, look what happened when I barbecued a hog…

HOGAN: If you had hit her, you might have killed her. I’m serious, because the way you were stiff-arming her, she was flailing, she was so out of her mind, if you had sucker punched her between the eyes you might have killed her. I’m proud of you for not doing it, BUT… but what happened, she deserved it.

BUBBA: Dixie has a nice work environment… don’t I, have a talent there, have a right to walk around and not get beat up?

HOGAN: You didn’t get beat up, you just got beat on!

BUBBA: And it was a triple Lindy, three of them connected boom-boom-boom. And then I was like, man… and then, on the third one, I got my left hand out, and I’m keeping her off, my hand’s on like her collarbone area, and at that point she was wailing around, and I was like, do I drop her, do I shoot a double or single leg, or do I get down on a knee and cover up…

HOGAN: Oh, she’d have kicked your brains in if you had got down on your knee.

BUBBA: I know… but, do I just … hopefully somebody gets her off me, so if I don’t defend myself I can’t get in trouble. I was worried about lawsuits, women’s activists and getting in trouble if I had fought back and dropped her, or tried, or even attempted to..

HOGAN: When you Hulked up… and you could see that your eyeballs were rolling back like a shark, and you were going to knock her out. .. but all the sudden you had presence of mind just to cover up and to do the rope-a-dope which was the way to go…

BUBBA: Which makes me look like a pussy…

HOGAN: No, it didn’t make you look like a pussy. If you had hurt that woman, it wouldn’t have been cool. Even though you could have gotten away with it, it still wouldn’t have been cool.

BUBBA: Brent, what’s your spin on it? By the way, I will tell you this, on the way home I called Brent, he’s my confidant, I’m like, Brent, I’m really tore up with this. Brent, you wern’t happy about it, were you?

BRENT: No, I’m still not happy about it. If I were you, and I’m shooting now, I’m being 100% serious, I’d never work another day in my life, and the only correspondence that they would get from me would be through Carlson and Wisner.

HOGAN: Oh, please!

BUBBA: Well, I’m just sayin’… to each their own.

BRENT: Hostile work environment. It’s all day…slam dunk!

BUBBA: Well, it is, it is all day, but… I dunno.

HOGAN: You did the right thing, it’s all good, man. It ain’t no big deal.

BUBBA: It’s no big deal to you, you’re not the one whose getting punked out when you go to work today.

HOGAN: I thought it was awesome. AWESOME KONG RULES!

BUBBA: Go ahead and put her over, Hogan. It’s called lack of leadership, my friend, she obviously has the mindset that you ain’t shit and you don’t care. She went after your number one guy, and what are you going to do about it, old timer? You’re all bark and no bite there, buddy!

HOGAN: I’m going to book you and Russo together, because he’s the one who set it up.

BUBBA: Or the fact that he set it up and you’re not doing anything.

HOGAN: I’m setting it up!

BUBBA: You’re not even sticking up for me on this.

HOGAN: Oh, Jesus Christ, it was a girl, a 350-pound girl, calm down!… I was just worried about your shoulder, I knew you had hurt your shoulder trying to hold that monster off.

BUBBA: Oh, my shoulder is amped…

source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

— In an update on Ken Anderson’s contract status with TNA, he is reportedly is working on a per-night deal.

He’s looking to do acting, but doesn’t want to have a contract where the company has first dibs on his services and he’d have to work around their taping schedule like everyone else has to do.

— Last week’s episode of iMPACT! scored a 1.26 cable rating with 1.8 million viewers. The show also drew 1.00 in Males 18-34 and 1.12 in Males 35-49.

While the numbers are higher than what the show has been doing as of late, it was also the first show in months that didn’t run either on a holiday or against major football competition. Before football, the company averaged a 1.22 in July and a 1.13 in August.

In the segment-by-segment numbers, Kurt Angle’s promo with AJ Styles and the arrival of “The Band” gained 159,000 viewers. A Knockouts tag match pitting “The Beautiful People” against Awesome Kong and Hamada with the return of Angelina Love gained 100,000 viewers and did a 1.34 quarter, making it the highest rated segment on the show. Bobby Lashley attacking Jay Lethal and Consequences Creed, Team 3D in a seven second match and subsequent promo lost 86,000 viewers. Sean Morley’s confrontation with Daniels and Beer Money vs. Matt Morgan and Hernandez, with the Hal and Nash beat down, lost 14,000 viewers. Samoa Joe vs. Desmond Wolfe lost 71,000 viewers. The backstage confrontation between Jeff Jarrett and Hulk Hogan gained 143,000 viewers and did a 1.32 rating, achieving the second best number for the evening. Even with Ric Flair on commentatry, the Styles vs. Tomko main event lost 186,000 viewers doing a 1.19 final quarter.

— The debut of TNA Epics immediately following last Thursday’s episode of iMPACT! did a 0.65 rating to be exact, rounding up to 0.7.

There are conflicting reports asn to Jeff Hardy’s status with TNA Wrestling.

Hardy made his return to TNA back on the live January 4th Monday night show but has not been featured prominently on television in recent weeks.

Read: Jeff Hardy Indicted – Drug Case Sent To Superior Court

Sources within TNA are saying that Hardy has signed a contract, while friends of Hardy have said he’s told them he’s working without a deal.

The fact Hardy hasn’t appeared with TNA since January 4th could indicate that he hasn’t signed or committed to any dates.

In related Jeff Hardy news, he was said to be upset at the recent segments on WWE’s SmackDown where CM Punk used his name in promos to get himself over when Hardy was Hardy is not even in WWE anymore to defend himself.

Despite Hardy’s legal problems and his appearances for TNA, WWE still wants him back down the road.

(Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter)

– As previously reported, the Undertaker is said to be in rough physical shape and is working through significant pain in recent months. However, talk of him retiring at WrestleMania 26 are premature. His physical limitations are already affecting how often he wrestles and what he’s able to do in the ring, but there’s been talk of Undertaking retiring for nearly a decade, so many expect him to continue working through the pain for months and years to come.

— Although Batista is currently advertised to be one of the 30 participants in the Royal rumble match, Rey Mysterio did a radio interview in Mexico last week stating that his match with the Undertaker at the Rumble will be a three-way.

– Speaking of the Royal Rumble, the Phillips Arena in Atlanta, GA, the site this year’s Rumble, is already sold out.

(Source: F4wonline.com)

On this week’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown, CM Punk converts a member of the WWE Universe to the Straightedge Society for the third week in a row, shaving his new recruit’s head as a symbol of his transformation from his “past transgressions” into a new way of life. In this case, the latest member of his society happens to be female and under contract to World Wrestling Entertainment.

WWE developmental wrestler Mia Mancini (a/k/a Serena Deeb) portrays a fan trying desperately to reach Punk, going as far to make it up the ramp before a security guard stops her. However, Punk tells the guard to let her go and allows her to enter the ring. Following his trademark long-winded speech, Punk proceeds to shave her head bald.

Given that she’s under contract to WWE, it would appear that this was Deeb’s official debut on the main roster, but that has not yet been confirmed. Although, Mickie James posted a note on Twitter this morning regarding her, writing: “Welcome 2 the dance!”

Here’s a picture of the lovely Mia Mancini after getting her head shaved by CM Punk:

– In a bit of great news for wrestling fans everywhere, WWE superstar Edge will be returning from injury well ahead of schedule. Edge is currently doing physical rehabilitation following foot surgery last year and WWE officials expect him to be healthy in time to appear at the Royal Rumble in 2 weeks. The plan is for Edge to wrestle his former tag team partner Chris Jericho and WrestleMania and there is talk of Edge showing up as a surprise entrant in the Rumble to eliminate Jericho. However it goes down, Edge will be back soon to start his program with Jericho.

– Many within WWE are very concerned about The Undertaker’s body and how much longer he can wrestle. WWE’s World Heavyweight champion is a shell of his former self these days, clearly in pain as he moves around and no longer possessing the agility that has made him such an impressive “big man” wrestler over the years. After the WrestleMania classic he and Shawn Michaels put on last year, its believed that Shawn Michaels will have to do a great deal of bumping around to save this year’s rematch from being a total letdown.

(Credit to PWInsider.com for the information used in this report)

WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon is taking full control over WWE Studios after ending distribution relationships with Lionsgate and 20th Century Fox, according to an article from entertainment industry publication Variety.  Will will now be able to “fully own and exploit” all aspects of its movies.

WWE has announced new partnerships with Samuel Goldwyn Films for theatrical releases and Vivendi Entertainment for DVD releases, but Vince McMahon says WWE has “learned a great deal” about the business to handle all aspects of movie making.

“This is an opportunity for us to completely control everything from the production all the way through to release,” McMahon said. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is.”

WWE plans to film nine movies by 2012. All filming will take place in the city of New Orleans, which will save WWE a bundle in production costs due to the city’s tremendous tax breaks. To crank out 9 movies by 2010, WWE plans to film the movies one after the other, with minimal down time in between.

McMahon also said one of main reasons they want to control the production and distribution of WWE movies is to better market each film toward their TV audience. He admits WWE hasn’t done a great job working with other distributors.

“There’s a much larger number that we’re not reaching,” McMahon said. “We have the resources, we just need to leverage all of it. There are so many different things that we can do.”

For more about the big changes at WWE Studios, visit Variety.com.

— It was recently reported that John Cena is suffering from back problems, but he is also having issues with his neck, both of which stem from his surgery a few years back. With Cena one of the guys who legitimately travels on the road about 300 days a year, it definitely lessens the time has to recover from any ring injuries.

– WWE developmental talent Johnny Curtis has been working RAW brand events as of late. Curtis is cutting promos saying to look out for him on RAW soon and that he’s going to make an impact in WWE. Curtis has been signed to a WWE developmental deal since 2006 and has held the FCW Tag Team Titles in the past with Tyler Reks.

— WWE announced the release of SmackDown superstar Eric Escobar  last Friday and it’ss expected that more releases will be announced heading into WrestleMania.

The UK’s Sun has a new interview up with Big Show to promote the WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view. Regarding Shane McMahon leaving WWE, Big Show had the following to say:

“Shane is a lot like his dad. Vince struck away from his dad and ended up buying him out. Shane is the type that wants to follow his own path and he is going to do fine. I don’t see Shane starting up a rival wrestling company, but he wanted to do some Mixed Martial Arts thing then maybe. If Shane wanted to work on a production company for movies then that can happen too. Shane is a very charismatic, intelligent man, a very driven person, so whatever avenue he chooses to go into he is going to be very successful at it. He cant ask for anymore than that.”

Despite the fact that Shane has been groomed his entire life to have an executive role in World Wrestling Entertainment, Show understands that Shane has to be his own man and do what’s right for him.

“We all work together and there are a lot of guys that really love him and he loves them too. But we are business men and grown men too. There comes a time where every man has to make a decision for himself and his family and everyone respects that.”

To read the full interview visit TheSun.co.uk.