Despite being on the short list of wrestlers that you could dub the biggest star in wrestling history, Hulk Hogan tends to be pretty disconnected from the wrestling business these days. He very occasionally does appearances with WWE, but for the most part, he’s off doing his own thing, usually at his memorabilia store in Florida. With that in mind, one would not expect him to watch much current wrestling, particularly outside of WWE — but according to Hogan in a Wednesday interview on “The MMA Hour,” he not only regularly watches AEW shows, but sees them as a potential legitimate competitor to WWE.

“I was talking to somebody and I equated it to NASCAR drivers: You need seat time,” Hogan explained. “You need to spend time in that seat until your start winning championships. It’s almost like AEW is on track, like ‘The Little Engine That Could.’ I just think they need more seat time. They just need to be around a little longer to be really, really, really competitive to where they could go head to head on Monday nights or something like that. But they’re moving forward quite quickly. They’re doing a great job over there.”

Asked by host Ariel Helwani if he was a regular viewer, Hogan replied, “I record everything, brother! I’m a wrestling fan, come on!”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “The MMA Hour” with Ariel Helwani and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.