It’s late July 2015: Hulk Hogan has returned to WWE in February 2014 and was involved in a couple of angles as well as promoting the WWE Network among other projects. Then the sex tape dropped and things went south for the Hulkster’s public persona.
Hulk Hogan Addresses His Racist Tirade from Leaked 2015 Sex Tape
For those who have forgotten—or never saw—the tape, it was secretly filmed by his former friend, radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. In it, Hogan had sex with Bubba’s then girlfriend—who stated in the 2016 Bollea v. Gawker case that this was normal in her relationship with him.
Hogan would go on a rant about his daughter Brooke having dated a Black man and used the N-word several times. So, there was a bit of a double whammy there. By 2015, sex tapes were commonplace as were leaked sex tapes. The sex tape itself resulted in a court case while Hogan’s comments caused damage to his reputation.
For most of his career, Hulk Hogan was depicted as and best remembered as the 80s wrestling version of an All-American superhero. His WWE run mainly involved him in wars against monsters and powerhouses. He would wave the American flag and tell kids to say their prayers and eat their vitamins.
Obviously, his on-screen persona is different from his private persona but they’re united as it happens with wrestlers in the social media age. Opinions on Hogan after this varied among fans and Black wrestlers and personalities in the business.
In appearance on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Hour, Hogan touched on his concerns for his legacy after the video came out and that period in his life:
“I mean I’ve been around for forty years and people know me so well from Mike Tyson, Brutus Beefcake to Vince McMahon, Verne Gagne to Bret Hart, everybody knows me so well that they knew I would come back and I would become the person that I was. There was a temporary situation with the surgeries, some of the racial stuff that went down. That was a speed bump but that’s not who I was, and everybody knew that. So, it was a tough time but the main thing that really got me over the past ten years was the surgeries that was the thing that was in question when you come out of a back surgery and someone tells you you’re never going to walk again. That will really screw your head up. The rest of the stuff, I had a bunch of people on my side, I had a huge support system and people that knew me stuck with me and it’s just been amazing to see how the fans have stayed with me.”
Hulk Hogan would be dropped from WWE later that July and attempted to explain that his use of the N-word and homophobic slurs came from his upbringing in the old neighborhood. At any rate, he would return to the company in 2018 to resume his on-air personality duties and was reinstated Into the WWE Hall of Fame—and re-inducted as part of the new World order.
CHECK IT OUT: Get The Overtimer’s Hottest Stories, Breaking News and Special Features in your email, CLICK HERE! Also, subscribe to Daily Soap Dish on YouTube for reality TV news and views and hit the bell icon for updates.
