Donald Trump revered him. ‘How about the Hulkster, how good was he?’ the President demanded to a cheering rally crowd last year.
Terry Bollea, alias Hulk Hogan, stood to acknowledge the praise. ‘I know about entertainment,’ bragged Trump, ‘but when he used to lift a 350lb man over his shoulders and bench-press him two rows into the audience – there aren’t a lot of entertainers that can do that, right? He is one strong son-of-a-gun.’
Former wrestling superstar Hogan, who died yesterday at his home in Florida from cardiac arrest, aged 71, campaigned hard to earn Trump a second term in the White House. Often hinting he had ambitions for a career in politics himself – as the President’s fitness tsar, perhaps.
He could certainly match Trump for outrageous political statements. While promoting his own brand of ‘Real American’ beer during last year’s presidential election campaign, he asked a raucous crowd in Ohio if they wanted to see him ‘body slam Kamala Harris‘, the Democratic nominee.
But it was for his decades in the US wrestling scene that he was internationally famous, once boasting, ‘In Mozambique and Malaysia, they know Hulk Hogan – the parents, the grandparents and the kids. It’s amazing how many homes I have been into around the world on a consistent basis for 40-plus years’.
Bursting out of his trademark leotards, and with a swathe of bandana knotted across his bulging, bald forehead, he was instantly recognisable.
To a European audience, his massive chest and peroxide horseshoe moustache made him look like a modern-day Obelix the Gaul, as though he’d fallen into a cauldron of magic potion as a baby.
To American fans, with his reputed 6ft7 physique and arms like an Olympic cyclist’s legs, he seemed to be a rubber action figure brought to life.
Hulk Hogan gesturing to the audience during his Hulkamania Tour at the Burswood Dome on November 24, 2009 in Perth, Australia
More recently, Hogan became a celebrity endorser for Trump’s presidential campaign in the United States, which he went on to win
He won six championships with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), counted Andy Warhol among his celebrity fans, and held the record for drawing the spectacle’s largest TV audience, 33million viewers – still the most-watched wrestling match in American television history – tuning in to see him fight 7ft4 Andre the Giant in 1988.
WWE was not so much a sport, more a violence-fuelled soap opera, and Hogan understood the largest ego would dominate its storylines.
At first he played the all-American hero, taking on a succession of wrestler villains in protracted feuds. When the public began to tire of that, he reinvented himself as the king of the villains, Hollywood Hulk Hogan, leader of the New World Order.
His movies, including Mr Nanny and Suburban Commando, were commercial failures, though he also appeared in Rocky III with Sylvester Stallone.
Despite announcing he was retiring on several occasions, he remained a beloved figure on the wrestling scene until 2015, when online celebrity gossip site Gawker released a video of Hogan – who was married to his second wife, Jennifer, at the time – having sex with a woman, with her husband’s encouragement.
Hogan sued Gawker for invading his privacy and won, settling for $31million (£23million). Gawker, run by a former Financial Times journalist named Nick Denton, went bankrupt.
But during the trial, an audio recording was played of Hogan unleashing a racist diatribe at the idea of his daughter Brooke sleeping with a black man. Repeatedly using the ‘N-word’, he declared: ‘I am a racist, to a point.’
In the 1980s, Hogan was the driving force behind WWE’s rise from a regional promotion around New York to an international brand – pictured 1991 – but saw his legacy tainted by a racism scandal in 2015
His wife Sky(pictured with Hogan during the Jake Paul vs Mike Perry in July 2024) previously claimed his heart was ‘strong’ after he underwent a routine neck surgery
The WWE icon passed away early Thursday morning after medics were dispatched to his Clearwater, Florida home, per TMZ – pictured
The star is pictured with daughter Brooke, second ex wife Linda and son Nick in 2005
Hogan is pictured at Trump’s campaign rally in NYC in October 2024
He was suspended from the WWE, but then reinstated in 2018.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1953, his mother Ruth was a dance teacher and his father Peter a construction worker. His parents wanted him to be an accountant, and it wasn’t
until they saw him fight at Madison Square Garden in 1984 that his father admitted that wrestling could be a worthy career. ‘That was the greatest night for me,’ Hogan said.
In recent years, he claimed to have stopped drinking and abusing prescription drugs, and found God – calling himself, ‘a meat suit filled with the spirit of Christ’. He leaves two children, his daughter and a son, Nick, as well as his third wife, Sky.
Hulk Hogan, he said, was always just a persona, a character he played. ‘The moment I walk out the front door, the world doesn’t want Terry. They say, ‘Hey Hulk!’ So I say, ‘Hey brother, how are you doing!’ They expect it.
‘But the moment I come home, the headband comes off the bald head, and it’s just Terry, dad, father, husband and friend. It’s not just a job, but I have learned to separate myself.’
