Two famous WWE wrestlers have played Santa Claus in two unrelated Christmas movies, and only one of these was a critical disaster. While Dwayne Johnson made the transition to movie stardom look easy, not every WWE wrestler who wanted to become a mainstream Hollywood actor has been so lucky. For every John Cena and Dave Bautista, there are many stars like Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin who couldn’t make the jump from the ring to the big screen. Part of what made this transition so hard was wrestling’s strange cultural cache in the ‘90s before the Attitude Era began in 1997.
Wrestling was caught in an unenviable no man’s land between family-friendly entertainment and hardcore stunt work, prompting many wrestlers who wanted screen careers to pursue children’s movies. While some wrestlers with great acting careers started in kid’s movies, the notoriously saccharine genre wasn’t a great fit for former WWE stars. This resulted in misjudged PG-rated comedies like Mr. Nanny that sanitized these personalities beyond recognition. It was during this era that one famous wrestler played Santa Claus, and it was a little later that another WWE star fared significantly better with another, more subversive take on Saint Nick.
Hulk Hogan & Bill Goldberg Both Played Santa
The two former WWE stars turned their talents toward Christmas movies.
Hulk Hogan and Bill Goldberg played Santa Claus in 1996’s Santa with Muscles and 2005’s Santa’s Slay, respectively, and the reception of these two movies was very different. Santa with Muscles came after Hogan had posited himself as a family-friendly leading man in the vein of Arnold Schwarzenegger in movies like Suburban Commando and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. Santa with Muscles was intended to be another hit for the wrestler-turned-actor, but its disastrous failure ensured that one of WWE’s most recognizable faces was no longer seen as a profitable leading man.
While Santa with Muscles is the worst Christmas movie ever made, Santa’s Slay is nowhere near as bad. For a start, the R-rated horror comedy is a gleefully bad-taste affair, with Bill Goldberg’s Santa murdering dozens of people and cackling maniacally in the process. This allowed Goldberg to lean into his heel persona, while the movie’s adults-only rating meant that Santa’s Slay could borrow some of the tasteless comedy beats of the Attitude Era in its foul-mouthed script. It’s a movie that could easily appeal to Goldberg’s fans.
Hulk Hogan’s Santa Movie Was A Disaster
Santa with Muscles is an unfunny family comedy, and critics hated it.
Santa with Muscles is a family comedy so unfunny that it has been ranked among the worst movies of all time in the years since its release. It is not hard to see why, as the movie failed in its attempts to make Hulk Hogan’s millionaire playboy protagonist, Blake Thorn, likable or redeemable. When Blake experiences amnesia and begins to believe that he is Santa Claus, viewers have little reason to root for the spoiled, arrogant character. While Santa’s Slay is a killer Santa movie, the horror-comedy at least has heroes the viewer can root for.
The main mistake that Santa With Muscles made was casting Hulk Hogan as a heroic character. The WWE veteran’s hammy acting would have been perfectly suited to the role of a villain in a children’s movie, much like Goldberg’s trademark rasp was a perfect fit for the amoral antagonist of Santa’s Slay. Instead, by framing Hogan’s thoughtless Blake Thorn as a secretly sweet antihero who needed to learn the true meaning of Christmas, Santa with Muscles deprived itself of a killer villain and asked too much of Hogan’s broad, larger-than-life acting style.
Goldberg’s Santa’s Slay Outdid Hogan’s Flop
The 2005 horror-comedy was better received than Hogan’s disastrous kid’s movie.
While Santa with Muscles is a painfully saccharine children’s movie, Santa’s Slay is a gory, darkly funny horror film. However, the latter movie also had another trick up its festive sleeve. Santa’s Slay boasts a pretty impressive cast including Emilie de Ravin, Rebeca Gayheart, and even a cameo from James Caan. In contrast, Santa with Muscles relied heavily on Hulk Hogan drawing in viewers, with Ed Begley Jr. and a young, pre-fame Mila Kunis being the only other notable faces among the cast list.
That said, no amount of recasting Santa with Muscles could have saved the movie. What made it one of Hulk Hogan’s worst movies was its misguided attempt to marry wrestling’s edgy appeal with harmless children’s fare. Santa’s Slay was a comparative success because the horror movie leaned into the worst excesses of 2000s wrestling, with toilet humor, groan-inducing jokes, a reliance on juvenile profanity, and lots of bone-cracking violence. By staying true to what viewers wanted from a wrestling superstar’s Christmas movie, Bill Goldberg’s Santa managed to handily beat Hogan’s take on the mythical figure.
