14 DAY TRIAL // In July this year, transcript of an older recording between Hulk Hogan and a lover emerged online, exposing the wrestling legend as a racist for the freedom with which he was throwing the N-word around in relation to his daughter’s then-boyfriend. WWE instantly dropped him and erased all mentions of his name from their webpage, literally doing away with his legacy as an entertainer.
Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) issued an apology within hours of the leak, but it was mostly overlooked. His daughter’s Facebook poem instead got plenty of attention: Brooke Hogan took to social media to defend her dad, pleading with fans and the media to understand that he only made a mistake. He was not a racist, she said.
On his first televised appearance since the scandal, on ABC’s Good Morning America, Hogan says the same: he is not a racist, he just didn’t imagine that the words he used weighed so heavily.
Hulk Hogan explains himself, apologizes
You can see a snippet from his GMA special in the video below. He starts off by saying that the recording was made without his knowledge, at a moment when he was at his lowest. In fact, he was so low that he was suicidal, he adds.
Even if that hadn’t been the case, he would have said those things because that’s how he grew up.
“The... the environment I grew up in in south Tampa and all my white friends, all my black friends, to hear the word on a daily basis when they'd greet me in the morning, that's what they'd say to me, ‘Good morning, so-and-so’,” he explains. “I think that was part of the culture and the environment I grew up in and I think that's fair to say.”
Not that this makes his words any less offensive, he concedes. The things that came out of his mouth were absolutely horrible and he is very, very sorry he said them, even if he didn’t mean them in the way they were taken to mean.
He wants his fans to understand that he is only human and he made a horrible mistake, but he also wants them to forgive him.
Hulk Hogan breaks down in tears
Hogan calls the day WWE erased him from wrestling history one of the biggest hits he ever took in his life. With all this, what gets him choked up is being reminded how his daughter stood up for him on Facebook when the entire world turned on him.
Brooke Hogan was the first person with a good reason to turn her back on him, because all his anger was directed at her when he said those things. She didn’t do that: instead, she proved to be his biggest supporter and champion, and the only one to tell him that everything will eventually be alright again.
Right now, the GMA piece says, Hogan is working to turn the experience into something positive: he’s raising awareness on the negative impact of racial slurs.