As someone who didn’t know Hulk Hogan personally it would be easy to sit and only tear him down. He never did himself any favours, be they through his supposed politics, his racially-charged and ignorant comments and simply through how he allegedly treated some and undermined them professionally.
That’s part of who he was, and we can’t look away from that simply because it’s tidier to do so. He was potentially not the best person in the world, and certainly struggled at times to live up to the portrayal of “Hulk Hogan” and what he represented to ’80s kids. When his sex tape leaked and the contents of a private conversation were revealed where he detailed his thoughts about his daughter dating an African American man, his response during an ABC interview was more deflection than apology:
“No, I’m not. I’m not a racist,” he said. “I never should have said what I said. It was wrong. I’m embarrassed by it. But a lot of people need to realize that you inherit things from your environment.”
There are good things in that statement, but it isn’t the same as outlining why you think it’s wrong, why it doesn’t have a place in contemporary society, and honestly apologizing for those comments. It’s more ego than empathy and focused on how it had an effect on him versus understanding why it was wrong and how that affected others at that time. Even if it was never meant to be leaked. That was partially the problem people had with it, and it was certainly enough for WWE to blacklist him for years, remove him from the Hall, and remove him from the downloadable content (at least his modern and nWo edit styles not connected to the Ultimate Warrior’s showcase mode story) from WWE 2K15.
This is all fair commentary, and if we accept the notion of afterlife then what he did in terms of keeping his scales weighed in this plane affects the next and bigger assessment of the entirety of Bollea. If we assume that, then how he lived and any conversations of atonement held make a difference, even if it doesn’t erase everything he’s alleged to have said or done throughout his career.
One positive example, aside from personal steps to make peace with old rivals prior to their own deaths, was with Titus O’Neil at a recent WrestleMania. Local Tampa Bay media spoke to O’Neil following Hulk Hogan’s passing and he detailed a conversation they had in the recent past. He was quoted in the article as saying:
“Thinking back on it, the significance of it, I mean, he was there from the beginning and helped build WrestleMania to what it is today,” he said.
It was years after an audio leaked in 2015 of Hogan using a racial slur. O’Neil says they had a chance to make peace.
“I did walk out with somewhat more of a level of respect for the fact that he would even be willing to sit down with me individually and talk about it,” he said of the conversation, which happened before WrestleMania 37.
But he wants this week to be about an icon, now gone.
“It’s about the loss of a life that was very significant to not only my childhood, but many people’s childhood in the area of sports and entertainment,” he said.
You can argue this isn’t the time or place, and perhaps you can also argue in light of his passing that we should at least for now put the negatives aside. But for someone like O’Neil who was directly impacted by those leaked comments, his opinion carries more weight than the common commentator, as does someone like Dwayne Johnson and Lio Rush who are both people of colour and have weighed in on social media. You absolutely cannot discount the good he did do as Hulk Hogan and the impact he had on professional wrestling and pop culture, but you also have to accept the negatives as aspects of who he was. The two are not mutually exclusive and are components of the whole.
That’s a very important distinction to consider when looking at Terry Bollea, Hulk Hogan and the whole of his effects on his immediate environment. While he may not be the best person in the world, he was hardly the worst person to ever set foot in a ring, and I’ve read plenty of positive comments about how well he treated strangers in the last few days. While he made some very unproductive, racist comments in the past, we don’t know what else he ever did behind closed doors privately to rectify it since those 2021 chats with O’Neil, and we have to acknowledge that in the wake of his passing — notwithstanding all of his baggage — that the wrestling community, composed of all ethnicities and backgrounds is first acknowledging the complexity of his legacy in most cases, and secondly appreciating his role in bringing wrestling to where it is today.
Understanding his life as a complex conversation humanizes him. He was a person who made mistakes and who excelled in entertainment. And while people can be very nice publicly and privately, they can also be awful publicly and privately. We can’t rewrite history, nor should anyone expect people to. And while it’s fine to show respect for his accomplishments, we also need to accept his shortcomings, because in doing that we can begin to accept that it seemed like he was trying to improve as a human being. Even if it’s just the baby steps of an aging man. And if that’s so, even a little bit, then that’s a positive and more important than any world title he ever held.
It’s OK to acknowledge his impacts while acknowledging he wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue. That’s just a healthy perspective on a complicated issue and legacy that seriously affected people of colour across the wrestling space. To shirk that off is to meet ignorance with more ignorance; that’s counter-productive and doesn’t lead to the kind of conversations we need to have with each other, about him and what he left behind.
I’ll give you another example from D’Von Dudley that I came across this weekend.
“We all are guilty in one way, shape, or form of saying something or doing something that wouldn’t be considered appropriate. If it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, there would be no WWE, there would be no AEW, there would be no TNA. We wouldn’t even be having this platform right now.
“He apologized to me. He pulled me aside and said, ‘Devon, I’m not that type of person. I’m not.’ He said, ‘They’re killing me on social media. They’re making me feel like I am. Brother, I love you.’”
In the article D’Von goes on to outline the importance of forgiveness while also acknowledging the impact of Hogan’s comments as an African American man, before outlining the importance of understanding and redemption.
We’re entitled to feel how we’re going to feel, and that’s valid. What’s equally valid is it’s clear he was trying to be better. The weight that carries is up to you, but I think that’s commendable.
Hulkamania Running Wild
I grew up in the middle of the mania, and at the time I loved Hulk Hogan. I had posters, two LJN figures, two of his Hasbro figures, went out for Halloween in a Hogan costume one year, and I think I had pajamas(?). He was the good guy taking out the bad guys, no matter if they were giants, Piper, Savage, the Iron Sheik, Earthquake, Slaughter or the 500-pound Yokozuna. He was my guy before I understood workrate or what “technical wrestling” was.
Time passed and tastes changed, but I think we all hung on to the early moments of the nWo with captivation because we knew we were watching something groundbreaking, something that was changing the landscape. Apparently his barometer for riding the wave was quite good and he understood he needed to reinvent himself. With that historic heel turn, the business flipped and redefined the heel in wrestling. At the time there wasn’t one any bigger nor on the scale of Hogan turning his back on his fans and the Hulk Hogan commandments.
I’ve seen some commentary the last few days stating there’s a generational divide among wrestling fans and the younger generation may not fully grasp the impact of Hogan on this little thing we watch week to week in the alphabet soup of the wrestling space. Summarily he was Cena before Cena touched a chain or microphone. He was Austin and Rock when Stone Cold was barely Stunning and Dwayne was trying his hand in college ball and the Canadian Football League. He ran the game before HHH even graduated from Sorry! to Checkers, and where the Roman Empire was far off in the future, he ran the ’80s with a 1,400 day world title reign that culminated at Main Event I watched by 33 million people. He was wrestling and he ran wild on pop culture on a global scale.
It isn’t hyperbole to say he was one of wrestling’s greatest attractions, if not the greatest of all time from a box office perspective. You can say modern day wrestling’s foundation was poured by Hogan, and moreover his impact was the most critical. You can also make a slightly hyperbolic argument that his aura, dedication to the business and importance to wrestling supersedes Vince McMahon’s. The facts are there — McMahon’s WWF boom was built off the back of Hogan’s main event run at the top, but without him the company faltered as WCW hit its highest high with Hogan at the top of their cards. Obviously the company rebounded, but there was a moment where Hogan was the only guarantee in wrestling, whereas McMahon lay exposed as someone who profited off other people’s work, labour and physical suffering.
Without Hogan the WWF never gets as big as it became, the business arguably never hits the mainstream, and without him, even if WWF endures, WCW would have faded into obscurity sooner. That would have left us with a wrestling monopoly much sooner than we got it when WCW finally did fold. When you measure Hogan’s box office impact, those are the things you need to understand when you’re judging his career — how different does everything play out without him being in the right places at the right times? I think the cause and effect of his absence is less money for the wrestlers annually. Less endorsements. That amounts to less opportunities in Hollywood, which directly affects how comfortably wrestlers can live post-wrestling in the absence of pensions, retirement plans, or even what we now know as Legends Contracts in WWE.
While you can validly criticize him for so many things, there’s a net positive with him blazing the trail he did because it’s financially secured the futures of so many of today’s performers. No house is built without laying the foundation, and in wrestling that foundation is built off the people who sacrifice their health for fans’ enjoyment and the financial backers who own a given company.
That’s the reality of wrestling, so without Hulk Hogan showing up-and-coming grapplers — male and female — what was possible, we would not see something like MJF and Becky Lynch appearing in Happy Gilmore 2. He stumbled in Suburban Commando and Mr. Nanny so they could run as Adam Sandler’s running buddies in Hollywood. That’s evolution, and with that alone today’s business owes Hogan a great deal. I don’t think that’s deniable, and further to that when you look at the wide swathe of people who now make a living off wrestling it transcends background and nationality. That’s the gravity of his impact.
The Commandments
We’re going to wrap this up on a more grounded note.
Much of his character in ’80s WWF was built off his credo, which really when you think about it was a precursor to Cena’s “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect.” In almost every promo Hogan delivered he would invoke his three keys to success: train hard, say your prayers, and eat your vitamins. It’s really very simplistic messaging aimed at kids to sell his youth training set in WWF Magazine, but when you think about it a foundation of consciousness is formed out of that.
What he’s basically saying is work hard, believe in something more than yourself and uh… take your Flintstones vitamins? I think? You don’t need to be religious or subscribe to a faith to follow the basis of those principles, but that credo helped define a movement of the moment. It inspired people to believe, work hard, train and aspire to something more, and above all make sure you got the Dino vitamins every day so your siblings couldn’t.
It wasn’t something that could be measured, but if you watch interviews of wrestlers from the generation that followed Hogan’s they all point to him and that creed. But I’d take it a step further than the core three. What some people might not remember, and I only do because I owned the Summerslam ’90 VHS tape and watched the PPV a million times, was that in the wake of his clash with Earthquake he introduced a fourth commandment. He maintained that you still needed to work hard in training, take your vitamins and say your prayers, but beyond those you also needed to believe in yourself. That together made you unstoppable. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve literally watched that show top to bottom so many times, but it’s a core wrestling memory.
The impact of that moment is defining, and while you can interpret the concept of praying and faith multiple ways, the other three in conjunction with it round out a basic way to live your life. If you want something, work for it. If you want it bad enough, make sure you take care of yourself so you can meet your goal, and if you’re ever caught questioning yourself and stuck inside your own head, look to others for guidance and input because at times we are our own worst enemies. Above all, no matter what it is, believe you can meet the pinnacle you’re aspiring toward. It doesn’t matter what it is, but run wild on it unapologetically.
Those are small things I carry with me 35 years later because I think they’re important, and I think they’re important to talk about because sometimes I think we lack that perspective — especially about ourselves. In no small way without realizing it as I grew older, that directed my outlook on life. Nothing comes without working for it, and above all you need to believe you can do it. Do the work, put the time in, work hard, and believe in yourself.
That was Hulkamania in a nutshell.
