Wrestling the Hulk: My Life Against the Ropes

by Linda Hogan

  While I was on the dance floor, his friend Nelson asked me to dance. I think it made Thunderlips kind of jealous because he kept staring and eventually came over. He said in a low voice, “Hey, excuse me. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Sure,” I said, nonchalantly. Then I turned to Kathy and whispered excitedly, “He wants to buy me a drink.”

  Thunderlips came back with the drinks and introduced himself as Hulk Hogan. “Uh, what? Hunk what?” I said, not sure if I heard him correctly. We danced a bit and drank some more. Later, we stood in front of the cigarette machine where it was quieter and talked. For a massive guy, he had a gentleness about him. Hulk told me he was a professional wrestler. Wrestling? I thought. Back in those days, there was no wrestling on television on the West Coast like the kind of entertainment the WWE offers today. It was just Mexican wrestlers in masks who didn’t speak English, seen on local Spanish stations at three A.M. I really didn’t know what he meant. I thought Hulk was an actor. “Is wrestling like boxing?” I asked.

  As we spoke, Hulk rubbed his body against mine. He was so big and tall and had incredible presence. I remember his jeans being really tight, and he was so tall that his package was up to my chest.

  At the end of the night, when Kathy and I were getting into my Corvette at the valet’s desk, Hulk suddenly pulled up, sitting in the passenger seat of his friend’s beater. He asked me for my phone number. I’m not sure if I was playing hard to get or just plain scared because he was so big, but I didn’t give him my number. Then he asked me where I worked.

  “I work at Chatsworth Nail Designs,” I said.

  “What’s the number?” Hulk asked.

  “It’s in the phone book,” I yelled, as we drove off. Earlier in the evening he had mentioned that he lived in Minnesota, and I figured that I would never see him again, so what was the point.

  The next day, when I arrived at work, I told the girls at the salon all about meeting Thunderlips. I answered a flurry of questions: What was he like? Was he as big in person? Is his hair really that blond? They thought our chance meeting was really cool, and all the ladies were on high alert in case he called. But I really didn’t think he heard me outside the club; even if he did, I didn’t think he’d hunt the number down. Later that day the receptionist came up to me and said, “Hulk Hogan is on the phone.”

  Oh my God, really? I can’t believe he found my number! I never thought he’d really call.

  My heart immediately raced as I answered. His voice was low and sexy. I was so nervous! He told me that he wanted to hook up again since he was visiting for a few more days. We ended up meeting at the same bar because he didn’t know his way around. His friend dropped him off, and later I realized that I had to give him a ride home. We were at the bar for a total of five minutes when he asked me if I wanted to get out of there.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

  “Do you mind if we go for a drive?” he responded.

  We got into my Corvette and I let him drive. It just seemed right. Hulk and I headed south along Freeway 101 with the wind blowing through our equally long golden blond hair. Freaky enough, the Rocky theme song “Eye of the Tiger” started playing on the radio! Wow, I thought. Ironic to the tenth power. Rocky music playing. Thunderlips behind the wheel. My head was spinning. About ten minutes later, we got off at the Coldwater Canyon exit because he wanted to stop by his agent’s to pick something up.

  After we went upstairs in an old noisy elevator, we entered his agent’s dingy-ass apartment. Hulk’s rep was asleep face-first on his bed in his room with the door open (clearly not the image of a power player in Hollywood). Ooo-kay, I thought. Hulk closed the door and took me into the other bedroom where he was staying.

  “Do you want a drink?” Hulk asked me, quietly. We both had a beer. I was sitting on the edge of the bed and he said he’d be right back. Hulk disappeared into the bathroom.

  He was in there for what seemed like forever, as I waited. I just felt uncomfortable since this definitely wasn’t my normal type of date. It was at that moment that I snapped back to reality. What am I doing here? I thought. I live at home now and it’s really late. My dad’s a cop. My mom is probably waiting up for me. And I don’t even know this guy!

  Just as I was thinking of walking out of the apartment, Hulk nonchalantly walked out of the bathroom, completely naked!

  There was a long silence as I gazed at Hulk’s overwhelming body. What I originally thought was fat in his jeans was clearly muscle on top of muscle on top of muscle. I had never seen anyone so massive. What was he thinking? Did he think I’d be that easy?

  As I sat on the edge of the bed, I questioned my normally good judgment. At first I wanted to get up and run out of the apartment, thinking What am I doing?! But he convinced me to stay. This was so wrong, but I stayed anyway.

  I locked up with Thunderlips. He’s a Leo—the king of the jungle. Man meets woman. Man wants woman. It was almost primal. We were both young. Both hot for each other. I remember him crawling on top of me and starting to kiss me. He was six foot seven. I was touching muscles so big I became submissive and just let him take me over. He was so sexy and strong. He started going for it and the next thing I knew my legs were up over my head, the pillow was folding up around my face with his massive chest right above me. The sex was probably great, but I was too worried about trying to find my next breath!

  It was exciting, but I just felt so guilty. I felt bad because I thought that he probably had girls everywhere and that he’d never call me back. He’d go home to Minnesota and forget about me. I had been in such great control of myself about the guys I was going out with. I had gone three months without having sex with anyone and here I felt like a slut! I liked sex with guys, but I had to go out with them for more than one night before we went to bed. But on the way home, I realized that it was a great time. And it would definitely make for great conversation at the nail shop the next day. An exciting one-night stand and worth it, I thought to myself. And besides, how many people can say they fucked a giant?

  Chapter Three

  Ringside

  FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, ALL THE GIRLS AT WORK would whisper and giggle and say, “Oooh, Linda, it’s Hulk calling again!” And Terry called me a lot! I thought this might not be a fling, but a thing. Through the conversations that we had on the phone at work or at home at night I learned more about Terry. I would ask him stuff about his background and how he got into wrestling. Even though he tried to explain what he did, it was hard to wrap my head around it.

  I had no idea who Terry really was. In fact, I didn’t even understand what he did for a living. Who is he? I wondered. Is he Terry Bollea? Is he Hulk Hogan? Is he a movie star playing a wrestler? What is a wrestler? I had so many questions. It didn’t help matters that the inner workings of professional wrestling were kept top secret from the public. I knew wrestling as a sport, but I didn’t know it as “sports entertainment.” If Terry and I were to date seriously, I needed to know what my boyfriend actually did for a living. One day, I asked him point-blank, “What is wrestling?”

  After a long pause, he responded, “You have to experience it to comprehend it.”

  He sent me fifty magazines in the mail so I could see exactly who he was and what he did. I didn’t know much about the wrestling moves or the guys in the magazines. I only knew that whoever Terry was, he was famous. He graced every cover and centerfold, but most of the magazines were in Japanese. No one in America really knew about wrestling and Hulk Hogan yet, but Terry was a huge star in Japan.

  A week later, Terry flew me to one of his matches in Denver, Colorado. I landed a few hours before the event began and met up with Terry. We had lunch, went up to our hotel room, and got in a prematch workout in the form of wild sex.

  This was only the second time I had physically ever seen or been with him. But we picked up right where we had left off. Sex was intense. He was aggressive and wasn’t afraid to take what he wanted. Shortly after sex, we both got up and
looked at each other as we noticed some odd black gook all over the sheets. Oh my God, I thought. Not really knowing each other all that well yet, I began to suspect the worst.

  Terry looked at me and asked, “Are you having your period?”

  “No, I’m not,” I responded.

  “What is this?” he asked, as we both backed away from the bed. At that moment we were both thinking: Did you shit yourself? We didn’t even have to ask each other anything; it was as if we read each other’s minds.

  “No. Did you?” I shot back, certain the substance was coming from him.

  “No!” he exclaimed, certain the substance was coming from me.

  “Well, what is it then? Are you bleeding?”

  “No, are you?”

  Terry got serious and “Hulked up” just like he is known to do in the ring. He bravely went over to the bed and stared down at the unknown dark substance as if it was his next opponent. He bent down, wiped his finger in it, and proceeded to smell it.

  “Ew! What is it?” I shouted out, disgusted.

  “It’s chocolate,” he said, surprised. We both let out a huge laugh. It dawned on me that as we were wrestling around, some Junior Mints that I had bought at the airport spilled out onto the bed. The body heat from us having sex melted the chocolate all over the sheets. Hence, the mystery of the black gook was solved. Phew!

  That night, Terry—I mean Hulk Hogan—wrestled Nick Bockwinkel, who at the time was the American Wrestling Association heavyweight champion. The arena was a smoke-filled, dingy place with maybe a total of three hundred fans in attendance. It was a far cry from the “Wrestlemania craze” that would eventually take the world by storm years later.

  During the match, Terry fell out of the ring onto the concrete floor. It looked as if he bumped his head pretty badly. When Terry got up and went back in the ring to lock up with Bockwinkel again, his face was covered in blood. It was a gory mess! I immediately panicked. “Is anyone going to call an ambulance?” I yelled out from the first row. An ambulance? I don’t think so. Nobody was even thinking about helping Hulk. In truth, the fans turned into rabid animals at the sight of his blood. They now were yelling, “More! More! We want more!” They absolutely loved it. The more violence and blood, the more crazed the audience became. I was really concerned. So much blood! And I was shocked that nobody was doing anything. But it was par for the course.

  Welcome to professional wrestling.

  Following the match, Terry and I went back to his hotel room. We ordered room service and I nursed his wounds by putting ice on his head. His wrestling boots and white laces were stained red with blood and he asked me to take them to the tub and wash them off. I agreed to help him, but I saw them and thought Yuck! I don’t even know this guy and I am already acting like wifey-poo. What I didn’t realize was that he gashed himself with a razor blade during the match to make it seem like he had been injured. And now he was actually acting like he had a huge concussion, when in truth he was really letting me dote on him and he loved the attention. When I came out of the bathroom with Terry’s boots and laces looking good as new, I saw he had already fallen asleep on the bed.

  The warrior needed his rest after a night of battle.

  The following morning we got in a cab together and headed to the airport. For the next year, this would be a familiar scene—Terry and I parting ways at the terminal as he headed off to another city for another match and I headed back home to Los Angeles to work at the salon. We’ve all heard of Sex and the City. Well, our relationship for the next year was “sex in the city”. . . and we did it in almost every one along the western seaboard. Las Vegas, Reno, San Francisco, San Diego—you name it, we partied in it.

  When Terry would come to Los Angeles to wrestle, it was always fun to have him in my hometown. We both loved the beach and bright California sunshine. I would tell my mother that Terry was visiting from out of town and I’d take off work for the duration of his stay. We’d usually spend all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday together.

  I’d pick Terry up at the airport in my Corvette and we’d go directly to the Sheraton Hotel at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, where a room with an ocean view awaited us. It was a passionate relationship, and we always had sex first thing out of the gate. Sex in the morning, sex in the afternoon, and sex at night—with Terry everything was full throttle. Same with his diet! When you’re dating a guy who is three hundred twenty-five pounds, food is a must. And the amount of food was like nothing I had ever seen before in my life. He and I would go down to the coffee shop in the hotel in the morning and start the food chain rolling. Terry would begin with a bowl of Raisin Bran with skim milk. Then, he’d consume twelve eggs, a grilled hamburger patty, hash browns, and wheat toast with no butter. Lunch and dinner were just as hard core.

  After we finished eating, we’d put on our workout clothes and train at the world-famous Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach. Working out and showing off big muscles was a popular thing back in the ’80s. And Terry was one of the poster boys in that movement. The people who trained at Gold’s were the kind of workout diehards who had a hundred pounds of muscle on their body.

  I usually followed Terry around during his workouts. Little by little I learned more about how to get in shape. As I took more interest in working out, Terry put me on a special diet and showed me how to watch grams of fats and carbs. Pretty soon, with all the working out, healthy food, and lots of sex, I started to look pretty good. Terry and I did activities together that I had never really done with guys on dates before. It was an exciting learning experience when I spent time with him.

  When Terry would leave town to headline another wrestling event card in a different city, I had my own wrestling match to contend with at home. My relationship with Terry didn’t seem to work for my parents. They’d grill me with questions like, “What does he really do?” And “How can he make that kind of money from wrestling?” Truthfully, I didn’t really know, but I began to think that my parents had a point.

  Because of all of my traveling and hotel rendezvous, my mother accused me of being a call girl. My parents were suspicious of Terry’s credibility. But he was addictive. He wasn’t like anybody I had ever met before. I really enjoyed traveling and dating an exciting guy. Living life on the edge was cool, and I wasn’t going to give it up no matter what my parents said.

  A White Christmas

  Our long-distance relationship remained hot and heavy while Terry lived in cold and snowy Minnesota wrestling for the AWA. When Christmas approached, he wanted me to spend the holiday with him. Terry had to wrestle Christmas night and suggested I come visit him and attend the match in Minnesota. Spending a major holiday together seemed like a solid step forward in our relationship. While I felt bad leaving my family on Christmas, I knew I would just stay home bored in California watching my younger brother and sister open all of their presents. Given my feelings for Terry, I decided I’d much rather spend Christmas kissing him under the mistletoe (with a step stool, of course). I asked my parents if they would mind me leaving town and they were okay with it. So it was over the river and through the woods to the Hulkster’s house I’d go!

  On my way to the Los Angeles airport on Christmas morning, a creepy guy in a crappy car followed my Corvette. He looked like some kind of nut (certainly not the kind that roast on an open fire on Christmas). So I circled around and tried to lose him. Eventually, I found a parking spot and headed to my gate. The strange guy reappeared as I was walking from my car to my departure terminal. He made an obscene gesture with his tongue and his fingers. I flipped him the bird and felt kind of bad because, after all, it was Christmas morning. He got the message though and took off after that. Or so I thought. It turned out that while I was flying en route to Minnesota, this deranged man went back to my Corvette, broke into my car, and stole my registration from my glove compartment. He then proceeded to phone my parents and tell them that I had been in an accident and drugs had been confiscated from my
vehicle.

  When I landed at the airport in Minnesota, I heard my name being called out on the loudspeaker requesting that I report to the security office. My mother was on the phone, completely panicked because of the man who was stalking me at LAX. I assured her everything was fine and not to worry. Once my mother found out I was safe, her feelings turned to anger. She told me that I shouldn’t have left the house dressed so provocatively because it was bound to encourage the wrong kind of attention. I told her it wasn’t my fault, but she continued scolding me like I was ten years old. She demanded that I fly back home immediately.

  When Terry picked me up at the airport, I told him what had happened and that I didn’t want to go home right away. He suggested that I stay with him as planned until the problem back home blew over. He pointed out that it didn’t matter if I went back today or tomorrow because the only thing that was awaiting me in California was a further nagging session by my parents. Terry was right, and I decided to stay.

  Terry and I went to his apartment, got cleaned up, and prepared to head to his wrestling match. He took me into the kitchen. Then he reached above the stove, grabbed a mirror, and laid out a few lines of coke on it.

  I had never done it before, and it frightened me at first. I never dreamed it was going to be that kind of white Christmas.

  DRUGS WERE VERY PREVALENT IN THE ’80S. ADD WRESTLING TO the picture, and they became a given. Those guys couldn’t function without them. I actually didn’t realize how prevalent drug use was in the wrestling world until Terry and I had been married a few years and I had spent time on the road with him. From life on the road to the physical brutality of the business, to the schedule and traveling, not to mention being bored and lonely on the road—it seemed like wrestlers had a reason to do every kind of drug and narcotic that was around. It also helped numb them from the pain of being injured. They were up at an ungodly hour and stayed up for an equally ungodly number of hours. The only way they could keep up with the schedule was chemically. I understood what they were taking was prescribed for them. It seemed the only thing was that they used the drugs more heavily than what was probably directed on the prescription.