The movie was produced by star Hulk Hogan and his boss, World Wrestling Federation head honcho Vince McMahon, only to be distributed by New Line Cinema after completion. When the first draft of the script was turned in, Hogan and McMahon disapproved of it, so they checked into a hotel in Redington Beach, Florida, and stayed up for 72 hours rewriting the script together.
To promote the movie, Tom Lister Jr. was brought in to the WWF as Zeus. Lister Jr. said he was angry about losing in the movie and that he could beat Hogan in real life. However, Lister was not a real wrestler. He wrestled only three matches. The first was a tag match with Randy Savage vs. Hulk Hogan & Brutus Beefcake at Summerslam. The second was an eight-man tag in which he was eliminated by DQ. Finally, since Vince knew that the movie was a bust and wouldn't sell on PPV by itself, he sold the PPV No Holds Barred: The Match/The Movie (1989), which included a steel cage match between Hogan & Beefcake vs. Savage & Zeus. Rumor has it that had the movie No Holds Barred had been a success, the main event for WrestleMania VI (1990) would have been Hulk Hogan vs. Zeus.
During the filming, there were a few accidents on the set: Hulk Hogan accidentally broke Zeus's nose, and on another occasion cut his hand open on the glass shards from the broken mirrors.
During the "Monday Night Wars" between the WWF and WCW, when the movie was mentioned on an episode of Monday Night Raw, Jim Ross quipped that the movie had done so poorly that it should have been called "No Profit Allowed".
As this film was executive produced by WWF owner Vince McMahon and WWF Superstar Hulk Hogan, many actual WWF wrestling personalities make appearances in the film. The opening match scene features ring announcer Howard Finkel; color commentator and former wrestler Jessie "The Body" Ventura; interviewer "Mean" Gene Okerlund; referee Joe Marella; and Rip's opponent for the match, "Jake Bullet", was portrayed by real life wrestler Bill Eadie, better known as Ax of the popular tag team Demolition.