Meanwhile, Rip's younger brother Randy and his friend, Craig, decide to check out Zeus for themselves, attending a fight being held in a warehouse.

On the night of the match, Brell has Samantha kidnapped and orders Rip to go ten minutes with Zeus before losing the fight to save her life.

As the battle begins, Samantha escapes, but just as Brell's goons corner her, Charlie and Craig rescue her and defeat the bad guys.

Back in the arena, Zeus has the upper hand at the start of the fight, ruthlessly pummeling Rip, even attempting to impale him through the chest with one of the steel ring posts.

Rip is re-energized by Randy's words and once he sees Samantha is safe, gains a second wind and starts to turn the tides on Zeus.

[1] During the October 13, 1997 episode of Monday Night Raw, Vince McMahon joked, "Hogan promised me that if the movie lost money he was gonna return his salary.

This was during the Monday Night War and was part of a number of digs at Hogan's then-new movie project Assault on Devil's Island.

"[6] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review and wrote: "The movie never takes itself seriously and director Tom Wright (TV's Beauty and the Beast) has fun with the wrestling montages.

"[7] The Philadelphia Inquirer's Desmond Ryan remarked: For months now, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro have been sitting in their dens and nervously clutching their Oscars.

They knew that an unprecedented challenge was looming to their pre-eminent standing among American actors—the arrival of Hulk Hogan in his first starring role in a movie.

Rumor had it—and No Holds Barred confirms—that the great man would do a love scene and even essay an emotional breakdown at the hospital bed of his crippled brother.

Cretins and people who take professional wrestling seriously—and I'm bound to say the distinction between the two groups is lost on me—will flock to No Holds Barred and they will not be disappointed.

Hulk Hogan popped up in Rocky III, and in No Holds Barred he achieves the rare feat of making Sylvester Stallone seem sophisticated.

[8]The Chicago Tribune's Gene Siskel remarked, simply, that No Holds Barred "is utterly lacking in the campy quality of the World Wrestling Federation telecasts.

"[9] In his 1991 review of Suburban Commando, Roger Ebert recalled that "despite the fact that [Hulk Hogan's] public image is often aimed at children [...] his first film, 'No Holds Barred' (1989) was surprisingly violent, sexist and blood-soaked.

[11][12] Richard Harrington of The Washington Post said that "[Hogan's] performance is as dreadful as one might expect from a man with such limited skills outside the ring, made worse by a story that is at once more obvious and less inspired than your average Wrestlemania script.

Wrote Stephen Holden of The New York Times: In No Holds Barred, Hulk Hogan's first feature film, the blond, mustachioed wrestling idol plays a professional gladiator who is so ferocious he can reduce a gymnasium to rubble in five minutes flat and so sensitive that he spontaneously bursts into tears after his little brother is beaten up.

[14]Reviewing the Blu-ray in 2014, Felix Vasquez Jr. of Cinema Crazed wrote: "Hogan as The Ripper is a force of nature here, and he makes "No Holds Barred" in to a fun action cartoon.

The program consisted of the film in its entirety, followed by a match previously recorded at a Wrestling Challenge taping on December 12 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Zeus had made several appearances at WWF events and cut promos stating that he, and not Hogan, should have received top billing in No Holds Barred.