Online Reporter
FLORIDA. — Hulk Hogan wasn’t just a wrestler to young wrestling fans in the early 1990s. He was a role model. He was a hero.
He also had a very dark past.
In 2016, a Florida jury awarded Hogan over US$115 million against Gawker Media, after Hogan sued them for posting a video of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife.
The litigation led to the discovery that Hogan had used racial slurs in 2007 to describe his daughter’s black ex-boyfriend.
“I am a racist, to a point,” Hogan said, before adding the slur against black people, according to a transcript.
Hogan apologised at the time and called the language “unacceptable.”
Around the same time, some outlets reported that Hogan used the same slur on a recorded phone call with his son.
In the wake of the tapes being released, Hulk Hogan was ex-communicated by WWE and the wider professional wrestling world.
It was a little bizarre — how does arguably the biggest, most important star in wrestling’s history simply get deleted from its annals?
Turns out, he doesn’t.
In 2018, Hulk Hogan was reinstated to WWE’s Hall of Fame — to the chagrin of some of the black wrestlers in the company.
In 2019, he was back on its programming.
While he apologised to the locker room, he also included a piece of advice that rubbed some members of the roster the wrong way.
“Now, I want to let you guys know that this is the biggest spotlight in the world,” Hulk Hogan said on ‘The Apter Chat’ podcast, recounting his speech. The WWE’s the biggest spotlight in the world. And if you’re a little, teeny star, don’t even slip on a banana peel when you’re a little star here because you’re in the spotlight. Try not to make any mistakes like I made.
“But when you’re a big star here and you make a mistake, the whole world is gonna know. You’ll be on the front page of every newspaper, of every magazine — just like it happened to me.
“I made a mistake, and this machine was so big and the WWE’s made me such a big star that everybody knows what’s going on. So please be careful because people have cell phones and cameras and just be careful.”
Thaddeus Bullard, also known as Titus O’Neill in the WWE, was among the members of the company who weren’t happy with how Hulk Hogan conveyed his message, construing it as Hulk Hogan saying he was upset he got caught, rather than apologising for his words.
“What I don’t support was the apology that was given in regards to the words and the actions that he exhibited years ago,” Bullard said in 2019.
“When you have true remorse for being sorry about doing something, it’s pretty simple. You don’t have to be prepped to say certain things and you definitely don’t want to make excuses. I just feel like the inconsistencies to the time that it came out to last week were so across the board were just like – sitting there, it was uncomfortable for me. I want to give the character, Hulk Hogan, a chance and the man, Terry Bollea, a chance to redeem himself.”
Hulk Hogan was all that was good – until he became “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan and became all that was evil.
That’s why Hulk Hogan worked and what made the character arguably the most successful, most influential and most iconic in wrestling history. He told Logan Paul on his “IMPAULSIVE” podcast last year that he had 25 surgeries in the last 10 years.
He admitted to using steroids to be able to look like the massive owner of the “24-inch pythons” for arms that he promoted himself to be. — AP/CNN.
