Hulk Hogan

He's a piece of garbage.

Tell your dad to get off the juice!


;)

It's a difficult case to me.

On one side, it's Hulk Hogan that through his Thunderlips appearance in Rocky 3 started to hook me into watching wrestling, and none can deny how worldwide after that if you looked at the dictionary definition of wrestling, it had to be something "what Hulk Hogan does".

And then he was the hero of so many people in the kayfabe time of his Hulkamania run, i know he was my wrestling hero when i started to watch wrestling when i was young , he was THE good guy.
That's very likely why the famous heel turn at Bash at the Beach in 1996 shocked the wrestling fans and why it launched the nWo so successfully, because Hogan was along Ricky Steamboat a character you couldn't imaging turning on the fans like that.

Then years later, how things have changed.

With the death of kayfabe once the internet started and enabled so much backstage reveals, it was exposed that Hulk Hogan was a "backstage politician", a wrestler with enough "moneymaking power" to influence promotions and block the push of many guys that would have deserved it in order to keep himself over.
Learning that really put a big cut on the hero image he had to me.

And with the reality tv crap he threw himself and his family into, it helped to show how much screwed up they were all in their heads even if most those shows are staged with scripts and all, they couldn't help but reveal their true colors that ended to break their dysfunctional family for real.

Hero no more by then to me Terry Bollea had nothing in common with the Hulk Hogan character i was fan of, looks like he was truly a great actor to have managed to fool me that much.

Finally a few years ago, when i thought the guy had screwed up everything of the hero he was to me, he still managed to add another layer with his uncalled for racist tirade against black people that was coming out of nowhere just to impress some woman he just had sex with.

At that point i didn't even cared, because it didn't surprised me considering how very few i was thinking about Bollea, so he was a self admitted racist on top of all that crap ? after all that sounded nearly like an expected progression.
The world never hear about so many good men , why would they talk of such a mediocre one that is racist on top ? Bollea was nothing anymore to me.

And now we're here, after winning absurd amount of money in a lawsuit Bollea is now coming back as Hulk Hogan to WWE after making some apologies in the locker room.

In my faith when someone wants to atone for his misdeeds and ask to be forgiven, it is important to forgive him because deep inside you know yourself you're not perfect yourself.
But all i can hope is that he is geniunely sorry for all of this, and why not use the truckload of money he got from the lawsuit to actually do something for people in need, for the people suffering in his country, etc... ... without calling the medias first ?
That's what a hero would do.

The ball is in Bollea's hands now, it's up to him to prove that he's genuine in his apologies and wants to be the better man Hulk Hogan was supposed to inspire everyone to be.

Real American gives me a nostalgia pang but even in his prime I was more of a Jake Roberts guy and then Bret when he got the singles push. Though I was a child his matches were still too formulaic for me and I thought the Hulk Up routine was so stupid it had me cheering the heel. I was so sick of him that he was the reason I stopped watching wrestling after Wrestlemania IX.

It didn't surprise me to later learn he threw his weight around politically backstage to stay on top. That sort of personality is ugly to me, even without the racial slurs. I heard his apology was along the lines of "watch out what you say, because someone with a video phone will always try to trip you up". It's not really for me to forgive him, but that's not possible to do anyway unless you believe the guy is genuinely remorseful.

I was talking to a white female at my job who opened up to me (again, im black), and my friend who is Hispanic. She told me her father was/is racist and it was sorta in her to an extent (like Hogan said) growing up. She told us that she knows it's wrong and she doesn't want to follow in her Father's footsteps. She says that she has overcome it for the most part and she tries to be very conscious of it. She knows she isn't fully 100% over it due to her upbringing but she is working on it. She didn't have to tell us this but i surely respected her for it.

Now following Hogan, it maybe a case like this for him. It could be his own inner battle. I generally don't go by what ppl say most of the time. I go off of what they do. Hogan seems to have treated ppl of color well in his existence despite saying what he said. Undercover racist or not, i haven't heard ppl of color say he has treated them wrong. I think he should talk less. Simply apologize and treat everyone well. Help out struggling communities. He has done great with the Boys and Girls club. Don't make it seem like you need to be forgiven. Forgiveness is one of the hardest acts for us as human beings. All of us have flaws. He needs to genuinely try to overcome his.

I missed that interview and i just read it now, and wow the hypocrisy of that man is incredible, talking about brotherhood of wrestling considering how much wrestlers he backstabbed in backstage politics in order to keep himself on top ...

I sure hope he's genuine in wanting to become a better man, many people have done this so it's possible with some willpower to improve.
But he should also learn to shut up first and think before talking if he wants to appear sincere.

Now looking past this uninteresting mess, the good thing for the future with wrestling having opened to the world with tools like internet is that *insert a race* hates *insert another race* will lose more and more grounds because wrestling fans start to notice their color does not matter when it comes to enjoying the same matches as their fellow wrestling fans.
And that wrestlers color then start to matter less and less when they're just delivering awesome on the ring.

You want a better world with less ambient racism ? watch more wrestling all over the world lol :D

I think Hogan was done incredibly dirty by having a private conversation made public but at the same time, said private conversation revealed an incredibly ugly side of the man that took many people aback, even with the well-established knowledge that performers are not the people they portray on screen in their personal lives. Despite never being a huge Hogan fan (I was a Macho kind of kid), I was nevertheless saddened to hear him say those things. Unfortunately, I've been on the receiving end of a racist tirade more than once and I'm just numb to the fact that such disgustingly intolerant people exist in the world. Although it perhaps shouldn't have due to my personal experience, it DID hurt hearing someone so "well-regarded" say that stuff yet ultimately, regardless of his star he's just a person the same as everybody else and as I'm sure we're all well aware, sometimes people just fucking suck.

The thing is, I'm over Hogan. I have been over him since the nWo ruined WCW and just never cared for him after that. His umpteen WWE returns? Not really a big deal to me because as far as I saw, he was a relic who just wouldn't be denied the spotlight because his name made the WWE "big" 20 years beforehand. I would never dare to diminish his actual impact on the business but at the same time, his time passed LOOOOOONG ago. They can reinstate him to the Hall of Fame, bury hatchets, hold come to Vince meetings all they want to......all I want them to do is just please, PLEASE keep him off of live television. WWE doesn't need him, like at all, but he needs WWE to satisfy his legendary craving for attention. I'm sure he wants some great big spectacle where his music hits and he comes out and apologizes to fans and gets booed then cheered and whatever but I REALLY don't want to see that. As far as I'm concerned, reinstating him to the Hall of Fame last month is as far as WWE should go and Hogan should never show his face on WWE programming again.

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen.