Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff team up to launch Real American Freestyle, bring competitive wrestling to mainstream

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Pro wrestling greats Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff teamed up with legendary coach Izzy Martinez to launch Real American Freestyle in hopes of bringing the sport to a mainstream audience as its popularity continues to grow in the United States.

Hogan and Bischoff are longtime friends who helped set the sports entertainment world on fire when they created the New World Order in World Championship Wrestling and overtook the then-World Wrestling Federation in the ratings war for more than 80 weeks. The two are bringing their storytelling approach to the center of the mat for this one-of-a-kind opportunity.

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Hulk Hogan attends the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Upfront at The Jacob Javits Center on May 14, 2015, in New York. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

"The Hulkster" explained to Fox News Digital that as he and his business partner Chad Bronstein began to explore the idea of creating a bigger venue for freestyle wrestling, they realized there was "more meat on the bone" and the broadcast landscape was hungry for more live sports.

"As we started digging around, we found the athletes (were) very interested. We found a partner that really had influence in that arena of NCAA champions, a gold medalist who has trained almost everybody in the world that is somebody and we decided to start moving forward with that idea," Hogan said. "And once Chad and I started to get into really deep water, I said, ‘Boy, we need to call Eric Bischoff' because production and television stuff and him knowing the amateur wrestling world himself, he just became the perfect partner to jump in there with