It’s August 20, 1987, and I’m at the Louisville Gardens to see Hulk Hogan vanquish a vague foreign specter named Killer Khan. Khan was a notable heel who (in story line) broke Andre the Giant’s ankle in 1981, but I knew him only as Hogan’s anti-American foil du jour, and that was enough. I got my dad to buy tickets. My friend’s dad bought tickets too. Hogan went on midway through the card. When I asked my dad why he wasn’t last, he said that the Hulkster probably had a flight to catch. I once asked Hogan himself about it years later, and he said he had to catch a flight to another house show that same night. The historical record doesn’t back that up—he didn’t wrestle anywhere else, although the WWF had shows in Pennsylvania and New Jersey the same evening—but the majesty of the night, along with the impossible explanation from the man, perfectly encapsulates Hulk Hogan, the most famous pro wrestler of all time, the superhuman icon of my youth who evolved into a problematic cartoon knotted up in a kayfabe unreality.
Hulk Hogan, real name Terry Bollea, died on Thursday at 71 years old. He was the biggest star the pro wrestling industry has ever known. And at his last appearance for WWE, the company’s Netflix debut on January 7, he was booed relentlessly. This is the dichotomy of Hulk Hogan. We loved him as much as we possibly could until we couldn’t love him anymore.
Why did we love him? That’s a question that’s both easy and impossible to answer. He was a real-life superhero, a neon-lit, muscled-up avatar of the 1980s ethos of self-reliance, materialism, and MTV-era rock ’n’ roll. From his promos to his torn T-shirts to his sweat-stained jingoism, he was a Reagan-era Superman, a totemic cocaine fever dream. He was everything a child of the ’80s could dream of. But there’s an undefinable part, an almost inexplicable magnetism that made him matter so much more than everyone else. Sure, he was playing the role of the hero, and someone wrote that role. But no understudy could have ever stepped in and been Hulk Hogan.
More on Hulk Hogan
More on Hulk Hogan
I remember him taking on Andre the Giant on Saturday Night’s Main Event, watching on my parents’ bed with my sister, the only time I somehow conned my whole family into watching wrestling with me. (Thirty-three million people watched that broadcast.) I remember watching him beat King Kong Bundy in a steel cage in the main event at WrestleMania 2 on closed-circuit TV. I remember the run-up to the first WrestleMania, with Mr. T and Hogan everywhere. I remember The Brawl to End It All—the first time I watched MTV, the first time I had something in common with the older kids who talked about it nonstop. These are all formative memories for me, and for the millions of kids who grew up glued to the screen every Saturday morning like I did, the ones who stayed tuned past the cartoons, or outgrew the cartoons, to watch the bare-knuckle morality plays that the WWF was offering up. Scrolling back through the timeline, I want to say I remember the night at Madison Square Garden when Hogan took the WWF title off the Iron Sheik, the launch of “Hulkamania,” the launch of the modern pro wrestling world—but I don’t. I’ve seen the clip a million times, both in my childhood and as an adult, because it’s the origin story of the entire WWE empire. But I wasn’t watching when that happened. I was watching all of that other stuff because that happened. I was watching wrestling as a kid, and have watched wrestling my whole life, because of Hulk Hogan.
Hogan started training to be a wrestler in 1976. He had his leg broken by trainer Hiro Matsuda as a form of “breaking him in.” Or maybe it was a sprained ankle—wrestlers protected the business from outsiders in those days, so the truth is notoriously hard to ferret out; and of course, Hogan himself is a notoriously unreliable narrator. His first years were spent in the Southeast—Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee—before he was called up to the big leagues of Vincent J. McMahon’s WWWF, where he was named “Hulk Hogan” (previously he had been known as Terry “The Hulk” Boulder and Sterling Golden) and built as a heel to face Andre the Giant, whom he battled at Shea Stadium in 1980 on a card headlined by Bruno Sammartino vs. Larry Zbyszko. It was a trip to Japan that gave Hogan his first real taste of superstardom, when he squared off against and later tag-teamed with Antonio Inoki, the trailblazing giant of Japanese wrestling who has sometimes anachronistically been called the Hulk Hogan of Japan.
The Hulk Hogan of America got his first mainstream breakout opportunity when he landed the role of Thunderlips in Rocky III in 1982. Vince Sr. didn’t approve—he thought a wrestler acting in a movie pulled the curtain back on the sport—so he fired Hogan, and Hogan went to the AWA, where he became that promotion’s top star and built the foundation of what would become Hulkamania. He borrowed his style from “Superstar” Billy Graham, his promo lilt from Dusty Rhodes, and his look from Muscle Beach. Vincent K. McMahon, the son of Vincent J., bought his father’s wrestling promotion the same year that Hogan appeared on the big screen, and the next year he hired Hogan back to be his top star. There’s a lot of philosophical dispute over which matters more to the 1980s pro wrestling boom, McMahon’s vision or Hogan’s charisma, but it’s fair to say that it doesn’t happen without both of them. The WWF grew from a regional enterprise into a national—and international—multibillion-dollar company, largely on the crispy-tanned back of Hulk Hogan, and it’s fair to say the pro wrestling world grew as a result.
The era of Hulkamania begat a sea of “journalism” pieces about whether pro wrestling was “on the level”—most notably the John Stossel report on 20/20 that led to Stossel getting slapped and then suing the WWF—which were largely the result of the media trying to take an angle on the new wrestling boom. But pro wrestling was primed to move past such stale arguments, and Hogan was the ideal avatar. His punches were from Popeye, and his winces were from vaudeville. He was a competent brawler and at times a sublime in-ring storyteller, but his style could be politely described as rudimentary and broad. He got beat down in every big match until he started his comeback, which was the same every match, give or take a body slam: finger-wag, shake off punches, point, finger-wag, block a right, punch, punch, punch, Irish whip, boot to the head, leg drop. No one could look at a Hulk Hogan match and mistake it for real violence. Nobody except a young child or, maybe, Hulk Hogan. By virtue of his transcendence, almost unintentionally, Hogan diffused all the arguments about his art. He helped make pro wrestling acceptable to the masses by making it musclebound camp.
Through his growls, his 24-inch python flexes, and the ceremonial tearing of his T-shirts, Hogan made wrestling unmissable. As a kid watching the drama unfold week in and week out on television, it was Hulk Hogan that drew me in and kept me coming back. I was along for the ride as he dueled with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Bundy, Andre the Giant—who turned heel to reverse and amplify the drama of their Shea feud, although the WWF pretended the two had never met in the ring before.
At some point, the enterprise spilled out of the ring: there was the Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling cartoon (featuring an unknown Brad Garrett as the voice of Hulk), the t-shirts, the vitamins, the action figures, the Wrestling Buddies, the bracelets you mailed off for to show your support after Hogan got injured by Earthquake on “The Brother Love Show”. It was a slobberknocker of consumerism. The march through the next three WrestleManias (and all the newly established pay-per-view shows and Saturday Night’s Main Event specials in between) was, frankly, exhausting. In the best possible way—Hogan would just overcome the odds to defeat whatever foil materialized before him and then, as if by clockwork, a new foe would emerge for the Hulkster to vanquish. His most memorable opponents after Andre were erstwhile friends—his old partner “Macho Man” Randy Savage, whose falling out with Hogan gave a generation of kids their first experience rooting for the villain, and, at WrestleMania 6, the new real-life hero of our action-figure imaginations, the Ultimate Warrior. By the time Hogan lost to Warrior and passed the baton, it was a wistful moment, but it felt like it was time. And for many in Hogan’s position, that would have been a good career.
But Hogan returned, headlining the next three WrestleManias, culminating in a WrestleMania 9 surprise finish when Yokozuna won the world title from Bret Hart, and Hogan came back to win it the same night from Yokozuna. Exhausting still, but in a slightly less appealing way. The luster of Hulkamania was wearing thin. We use words like “god” to describe wrestlers of Hogan’s ilk, and it’s appropriate because pro wrestling has roots in mythology; “living legend” could be the name for the whole sport. But legend is sometimes most powerful in the retelling, and in the modern era the repetition grew stale. The Hulk Hogan character was too simple, too stagnant, and to any of us raised on him, a reminder of the children of the ’80s that we had outgrown being. Maybe every hero has an expiration date, even the “immortal” ones.
Hogan left the WWF in 1993 and resurfaced in the rival WCW in 1994. WCW was trying to compete on a national level with the WWF and wanted any hint of the nostalgia that made the WWF popular, but it only served to cement Hogan’s status as an antique. Until, of course, he was revealed as the third man in the nWo, a trio of former WWF employees who had come to WCW to wreak havoc. It was a breathtaking and world-altering angle in the bizarre but somewhat staid world of pro wrestling, and the postmodern touches helped usher wrestling into the modern era. Hulk Hogan, for his part, reinvented himself as “Hollywood” Hogan, a black-clad heel with a scruffy black beard outlining his trademark yellow handlebar mustache—if ever “a new coat of paint” were both literal and metaphorical, this was the moment.
The nWo run was basically just three years, and there were definite moments of high drama, but there were also moments of repetition and self-indulgence, and in many ways this is when the Hogan legend takes its turn. As the pro wrestling internet community took off, so did behind-the-scenes stories of Hogan’s refusal to agree to certain losses and storyline decisions. (It also served as a means to fact-check his more incredible statements.) Fans typed “That’s not gonna work for me, brother”—to be read in Hogan’s voice—on message boards as a symbol of his backstage disputes. The WWF-vs.-WCW feud is often depicted as a battle between McMahon and WCW owner Ted Turner, but it can just as easily be read as a fight to determine artistic superiority between the two creators of Hulkamania, and although Hogan’s turn to the dark side changed the way we looked at pro wrestling—and forced the WWF to evolve into its grittier Attitude Era—WWF won out in the end. WWF bought WCW in 2001 and McMahon claimed the victory.
Hogan returned to his old WWF home in early 2002 and took on The Rock at WrestleMania 18. It was one of the most incredible matches of all time, as Hogan entered the heel and emerged from the match the babyface, symbolically delivered from his WCW era (and the nWo gimmick) by the love of 68,000 fans in Toronto’s SkyDome. He hung around for a while after that, but that was the last truly great thing Hulk Hogan ever did.
(One more personal anecdote: On April 18, 2005, I went with my friend Bryan to see Raw at Madison Square Garden. Hogan made a surprise appearance to join Shawn Michaels against Muhammad Hassan and Daivari. It was a surprise, but not a totally unexpected one, and despite having heard Hogan’s theme song “Real American” a thousand times before, I leapt out of my seat. That was a very good moment, but not exactly a great thing.)
Hogan’s life post-WWE was a mixed bag, and I use that phrase liberally. He went to TNA Wrestling, where he tried and failed to build a new viable competitor to WWE, only for his own ego to get in the way. He starred with his family in a reality show called Hogan Knows Best, which was a lesser version of The Osbournes. And, of course, he had a sex tape leaked by Gawker, whom he sued for $100 million, ultimately settling for $31 million. The tape was later revealed to contain a racist diatribe about his daughter’s Black boyfriend. He apologized in an interview with ABC News. “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.” Perhaps realizing that his statement missed the mark, he later told People that “it was unacceptable for me to have used that offensive language; there is no excuse for it; and I apologize for having done it. This is not who I am.”
He was quietly banished from WWE for a few years, until he was invited back into the fold in 2018, when—reportedly—he went to talk to the locker room to apologize for his racism and ended up trying to give them a lesson on avoiding cameras. Many wrestlers, even those willing to give him a second chance, were justifiably offended.
I’m not the person to tackle Hogan’s racism, though I’ll say this: There are some issues in life that require more than a finger wag and a leg drop, and to shake your head and pretend to be unfazed by their severity doesn’t solve anything. Hogan no-sold the controversy instead of facing it like a mortal human, and that’s the nicest way I can say it. I’ll also say this: As a culture, we love to make heroes and we love to tear them down. But we also want to forgive them. We want to welcome our fallen heroes back into the fold. We saw this played out both metaphorically and literally at WrestleMania 18. Many wrestling fans wanted to forgive Hogan after his transgressions, but he never seemed particularly apologetic. He just acted as if he apologized forever ago and was annoyed that nobody remembered. (He also showed up as a speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention, in support of Donald Trump, and tore off his shirt like it was 1985.) It’s a continuation of the bizarre reality he inhabited. In the wrestling world, every story is suspect, every retelling comes with a motive. For the lifers—its biggest stars or the guys who grew up in the business, the ones who never had to deal with reality separate from their character—the line between kayfabe and reality is razor thin. Real is indistinguishable from the story, and they’re both indistinguishable from the stories we tell to get ourselves over.
In an industry constantly trying to access the mainstream, Hogan was the quintessential crossover star. Maybe it was the crossover that did him in. After all, nobody asked Terry Bollea for an interview. But Terry—er, Hulk—was probably happy to keep it that way. The irony is that Hogan led a mythological life, and yet he still inflated: Elvis used to watch him wrestle (Elvis was dead); he out-partied John Belushi after WrestleMania 3 (Belushi was dead). Some of the disconnect has to do with the end of kayfabe, I’m sure, and attempt to rewrite gravity into the in-ring battles in a world where everyone knows it’s scripted: Hogan claimed he didn’t know whether Andre the Giant was going to let him win at WrestleMania 3 until he actually did. The lack of self-awareness is staggering. Hulk Hogan the character would never apologize. How is Hulk Hogan the human being any different?
I can’t say I’m not shaken by his passing. I can’t say I’m not the kid who watched Hogan at the Louisville Gardens all those years ago. I can’t say I’d be doing this now if it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan. I almost certainly wouldn’t. I also can’t say I didn’t outgrow him 25 years ago and wish I hadn’t had to grapple with the last 15 years of his existence at all.
One of the hardest things about pro wrestlers dying is that they’re living gods, and even after so many deaths, we subconsciously expect them to live forever. Hogan to his last day looked like the guy we rooted for in the ’80s. (When I interviewed him in 2014, I ran into him in the bathroom before the interview, and he was putting his hair extensions in.) But certain icons like Hogan push this to its limit. There’s a point where even the gods get put out to pasture, where the mythology needs to end. Part of the pain of the latter Hogan years wasn’t just his downfall but the way it affected our formative memories, the way it conflicted with our love of the form. Wrestlers are just normal people—there are racists and every other form of vile human among them, and great people too. The fact that we build them up to be living gods doesn’t change that, but you would hope it would change the wrestlers themselves. Some of them are just too caught up in the character to deal with reality.
What’s the line from The Dark Knight? “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Hulk Hogan lived long enough to become the villain, become a hero again, and become a villain again, too. He expanded the narrative arc of the modern hero, and the modern celebrity. He changed the way we see our idols. He changed the way we make myths.
Hulk Hogan was a deeply problematic person and a hugely influential character. It would be convenient to leave him behind, but we can’t—he built the business that so many wrestling fans today love, regardless of your thoughts on the man. When Hogan showed up on Raw in January, he was there to promote his new beer—Real American Beer, a salesman to the end—the crowd booed, loudly, and he seemed confused. Who wouldn’t be? Why would an arena full of wrestling fans turn on their onetime hero? An introspective person might have expected it, but an introspective person probably would have never been the shameless, guileless, fearless icon of pro wrestling, which is to say, he would have never been Hulk Hogan.
In Hogan’s honor, I’ll just close by telling this lie: I remember being there in the front row at Madison Square Garden that night in 1982 when Hogan pinned the Iron Sheik to win the world title. I remember his sweat landing on my arm. I remember looking at him right there in that moment and telling my dad, someday that guy will break my heart, but he just changed pro wrestling forever.
David Shoemaker is the host of The Masked Man Show With Kaz and the author of ‘The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling.’
