by Hogan, Hulk
So I started talking to him and reading him passages from these books whenever I could. I thought it would help to keep his spirits up, the same way it was helping me. Now that I knew about the law of attraction, I also wanted to make sure he stopped dwelling on the negative and started looking ahead to the positive things that could come out of this whole terrible situation.
One big way we did that was to pray for John to be totally healed. We committed ourselves to being grateful for John’s recovery. The more positive energy we could send John’s way, the better chance he’d have of pulling out of this thing. I truly believed that, and still do.
But on March 24, 2008, the Grazianos finally filed their civil suit against me, Linda, and our still-minor son, Nick. Like I said, I knew that day would come. The cost of John’s care is immense. There are bills to pay, insurance companies involved. They wanted to collect damages to somehow put a price tag on John. As cold as that seems, that’s just the way things work. I knew that.
I tried to step back and look at the millions of dollars they were trying to squeeze out of me with some kind of objectivity, and I just couldn’t make any sense of it. I kept asking myself, “Is the point of a lawsuit to bankrupt the other party so that everything they’ve worked for their whole lives is taken away? So that one family is no longer allowed to function while the other family suddenly gets rich? Or is the point of a lawsuit supposed to be to make sure that John has the best care possible for the rest of his life so that someday he can get back on his own two feet?”
If this situation were reversed, and Nick were the one in that passenger seat without a seatbelt, I know with 100 percent certainty that I would be seeking the latter. Just as I know with 100 percent certainty that I would want John in that hospital room every single day visiting my son and trying to help him pull through. That’s what friends do. Instead, they banned us from seeing John and sued us for what I felt was a ridiculous sum of money.
As all of this got under way, I basically started a whole new career: talking to lawyers. Since early 2008, I feel like that’s been my full-time job. There were lawyers everywhere I turned. Linda’s lawyers, the Grazianos’ lawyers, my own divorce lawyers, the defense lawyers I put in place to help my son with the criminal charges stemming from the accident. All of them demanding my time, taking deposition after deposition. Before I knew it, my mornings, my afternoons, my evenings, and even my weekends were taken up talking to lawyers. It never stopped. All that talk has forced me to relive the events of my crumbling marriage and the horror of driving up on that accident scene over and over again. It’s enough to make a person’s mind explode. It’s no exaggeration to think that I might not have survived without the support of my ever increasing connection to spirituality.
At one big powwow a few months down the road, as I attempted to reach a settlement with the Grazianos, I looked around the room and counted twenty-four lawyers. Twenty-four! All of them getting paid, presumably, by me. Meanwhile, as all of those people sat around earning big fat paychecks, John sat in a hospital bed with nothing.
There’s no logic to it. I mean, in a sane world we would all sit down and agree to set up a medical trust fund for John with an endowment that would more than pay for the absolute best care at the best medical and rehabilitation facilities in the world, no matter how long it takes to get John back on his feet—something I still haven’t stopped believing will happen someday. Instead, all I see is this crazy ongoing cycle of lawsuits and lawyering that prevents that from happening.
Tell me: How does that make sense?
Chapter 19
Coincidence or Fate?
The Grazianos filed their suit just a few days before I was scheduled to fly to Los Angeles to start work on the second season of American Gladiators. I had already decided to invite Jennifer to come with me to California, and I couldn’t have been happier when she said yes. It was a big step for such a new relationship, but I felt like there was a reason we met, and I wanted her there every step of the way.
Walking onto that set felt really good that second season. Despite the new pressure of the lawsuit, I was already in a much better place emotionally than I was the season before. I knew that being happy was a choice I could make, and it was definitely the choice I was making.
After all I’d been through, it was real weird to see Laila Ali again—the girl who almost single-handedly saved my life. She was just as friendly as ever, and just as positive as ever. I’m not sure if she picked up on this change I was going through right away or not, but out of the blue she asked me again if I’d like to go to her church with her sometime.
“Where is this church again?” I asked.
“It’s the Agape Church, here in L.A.,” she said. “It was founded by Dr. Michael Beckwith. I could—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Michael Beckwith from The Secret? That Michael Beckwith?”
“Yes!” she said. She seemed surprised that I knew of him.
Michael Beckwith was one of The Secret’s most prominent voices. He was one of the main figures in the DVD that played over and over again in my car.
“Yes!” I said. “I’d love to go!”
The coincidence was too strong to ignore. She had invited me to go to that very church when I was sitting in my bathroom on Willadel Drive with a gun in my hand. Now the teachings of the leader of that church were a major part of my life. Laila had offered me a golden ticket back then, and I mistakenly ignored it. I sure wasn’t ignoring her now. I was floored by it.
That was the second remarkable coincidence that happened right around that same time.
One of the biggest revelations in the Secret DVD, a moment that had truly knocked my socks off, was when author James Arthur Ray asked this really weird question about gaining control over the direction of your life. “When would now be a good time to start?” he asked.
It was such a weird phrase, and it just blew my mind. His point was that you could change your life whenever you decided to do it. You didn’t have to wait for a New Year’s resolution, or put it off until you lost some weight, or until you felt better, or until you finished school. You could change your life right now. You could change everything this instant just by changing your perspective, changing your outlook, and changing how you thought about your life and your circumstances.
I was so blown away by that idea and by the presence James Ray had on screen that I started to think about what it would be like to meet him and talk to him in person.
Not three weeks later, Nick was in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and who did he bump into? James Arthur Ray. Nick called me up, all excited. “Dad, I just ran into that guy from The Secret. Hold on. Let me see if he’ll talk to you!”
Nick approached him, and next thing I know I was on the phone with James Arthur Ray. The two of us started talking pretty regularly after that. He became an adviser and friend to me, and to Nick, as we geared up for Nick’s upcoming court date.
James, it turns out, was also friendly with Michael Beckwith. When I told him I was planning on going to the Agape Church, he put me on the phone with Dr. Beckwith himself. So when Laila and her husband and Jennifer and I got to the church that day, we had a parking spot right up front, and they led us right up near the front of the church for his sermon.
I hadn’t been inside a church for a very long time, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the experience. I never thought much about it in all those years. My church was Madison Square Garden, you know?
Now here I was, surrounded by this congregation of people who were all dialed in to this world I knew nothing about just two months earlier. The tradition they have at this church when a new guest comes in is they ask you to stand up, and then every member of that whole congregation points his or her palm right at you, arm outstretched in your direction, while they welcome you into the fold with words like “we love you” and “we’re here to support you.” Now, that’s a powerful experience. Remember how I told you I would tear up just hearin
g the music on those religious Sunday morning TV shows? There was no way I could avoid the waterworks in this place. I wept like a baby.
It’s hard to explain that feeling of suddenly having a whole church full of people vowing to support you and love you. I didn’t feel so alone anymore. It dawned on me that there’s a whole world full of people out there who experience life in a way that I never even knew existed.
It also occurred to me that I had been thinking about church all wrong, ever since I was a kid. You don’t go to church to find God. God is already inside each and every one of us. The reason to go to church is simply to help bring God out of you, and to better help God function through you. I loved that whole concept.
Jennifer and I met with Dr. Beckwith after the service, and we went back again a few times while we were in L.A. Ever since, his assistant has been kind enough to send me CD copies of Michael’s weekly sermons so I can listen to them in my car here in Florida.
Jennifer. Laila. Michael. James. From personal friends to spiritual guides, I suddenly had new people in my life that cared about my spiritual and emotional well-being. For all these years I had agents and accountants who watched out for my money and career. I had doctors who cared for my aches and pains. But this huge, important area of life had been mostly void of contact going all the way back to when I was a teenager.
It’s almost like a set of support beams was added to stabilize this big crooked frame of mine—just in time for the hurricanes that were about to pummel my shore.
My Hometown
Back in Tampa, the media frenzy around Nick’s accident stayed at a fever pitch from the day after the crash straight through that spring of 2008. The news would come and go in the national press, but in Tampa? It never slowed down. Mostly because one DJ on one local radio station decided to focus on Nick’s case—a DJ that goes by the name MJ.
Now, here’s where Tampa being such a small town comes into play. MJ, many years earlier, had come to me with a plan to buy the local radio station. He and his partner were the top DJs in the Tampa market, and they thought if they bought the station they could corner that market. I’m not sure why they thought Hulk Hogan would be the perfect guy to put up the big money to make this happen, but that’s what they thought. I turned them down. It was nothing personal. I just looked at the deal they were offering, and what my return on investment would be, and I didn’t think it was a good business deal. So I passed.
Years go by, and I become really good friends with another DJ in town who goes by the name Bubba the Love Sponge. I would appear on Bubba’s radio show whenever I could just to help him out. Well, as time went by, Bubba became the number-one DJ in Tampa. He just blew MJ right out of the water.
I think that caused more than a little bad blood. So when this accident happened, MJ started hammering away at Nick, nonstop, every morning, for months on end. He put a call out to listeners. “Did anyone see Nick Hogan racing that night? Did anyone see Nick Hogan drinking that night? Who out there has embarrassing stories to tell about Nick Hogan. Call in now!” He inspired all these anonymous idiots to call in with crazy stories about Nick and John and Danny and Barry—the whole bunch of them—and he did his best to hammer me, too. It was his radio show that stirred up the whole ridiculous controversy over whether or not Nick went into the liquor store with me that Sunday in August to buy beer.
Now, you may think the words of a local DJ aren’t anything to worry about. In this case? The words of a local DJ kept heat on Nick’s case. It seemed the whole Tampa metro area turned against my son. All of a sudden it was a lynch-mob mentality. MJ’s listeners were whipped into a frenzy thinking Nick was at fault for this accident and he should burn at the stake.
My friend Bubba did everything he could to make the counterargument. He would go on the air and talk about the fact that John was the adult in this situation, that John was the one drinking that day, that John was a marine and was certainly responsible for his own behavior. None of us wanted to say bad things about John, though, and no matter what was said it was difficult to undo the damage that MJ’s listeners did to my son.
No matter how blind justice is supposed to be, it is impossible for judges to sit on a bench and not be influenced by the mob mentality and media frenzy of a case like Nick’s. Think of Judge Ito displaying mugs on his desk during the O.J. trial. Think of that teary-eyed judge in the Anna Nicole Smith case. Cameras change everything. So does the sway of the local community.
It didn’t help that Nick’s case came up in the middle of an election year. Do you think the mob mentality shared by tens of thousands of MJ’s local listeners every morning didn’t have any sway? Anyone who’s ever watched an episode of Law & Order knows better than that.
There was more. When Nick finally received a hearing date on his case, we were assigned a female judge. My lawyers were excited. They said she was one of the most reasonable, fair-minded judges around. A woman who was unlikely to be swayed by the morning DJs or the celebrity factor of this case. As soon as my attorneys walked in the room for a prehearing conference, though, that judge removed herself from the case. Turns out many years ago my attorney, Lee Fugate, was responsible for putting that judge’s brother in jail for life. It was a conflict of interest.
My attorney said he forgot.
Welcome to the hillbilly circus of the Greater Tampa justice system.
Knowing how this whole thing turned out, I can’t help but wonder if I should have objected to her replacement judge as well: Judge Philip J. Federico.
Years earlier, I actually helped Judge Federico’s brother, Rick, break into the wrestling business. I changed his name from Rick to Rico Federico and helped launch his career. He did quite well as a wrestler, so I didn’t think of it as a conflict of interest, but could there be some kind of bad blood I’m not even aware of? It’s easy to drive yourself crazy second-guessing these things. Still, I can’t help but think it was impossible for Nick to receive fair and impartial treatment in the small-town circus of the Tampa-Clearwater region. Unfortunately, it was the only circus in town. All of us would have to learn to accept that.
Judgment Day
The last thing any of us wanted was a long, drawn-out trial. Nick was driving the Supra that night in August, and while he wasn’t driving crazy or racing the way the media still insists he was to this day, he agreed with our lawyers that the right thing to do was to stand up and take responsibility.
He wasn’t “guilty.” So he wouldn’t plead “guilty.” He would plead “no contest.” In other words, without admitting any guilt, he would simply stand up and face the charges. It’s an option the legal system offers, and for Nick, it seemed like the best option we had.
Our lawyers were very clear about the possibilities Nick would face. A charge of reckless driving with serious bodily injury could carry jail time. Any judge would have that option in this case. However, the legal precedent made the possibility of jail time extremely remote. According to my attorneys, no minor in the state of Florida had ever gone to jail for that charge. Ever. In fact, the standard sentence for that charge was six months’ probation.
We knew Nick’s sentence would be harsher than that—the case was way too high-profile to think Nick would get off easy. A longer probation, a suspended license, community service—there was a whole arsenal the judge could throw at him if he wanted. We even had conversations with the lawyers about what kind of a jail he would be sent to if this judge decided to really, really make an example of him, and they told us: a minimum-security facility, where Nick could go out in the yard and play basketball, and watch TV, and spend time reading in a library. It would not be a hotel. It would not be pretty. It would not be easy. But it would not be dangerous, and he would not be mingling with hardened criminals.
I told Nick not to worry about going to jail at all. “What you think about, you bring about,” I reminded him. Unfortunately, in the days leading up to that trial, Nick spent most of his time with Linda and her family, and it was a
depressing environment—even his grandparents kept on him about the possibility of it. Jail, jail, jail. “You’re going to jail. You’d better get ready!” Nick told me about all of this talk that surrounded him, and it just scared me to death.
The thing was, the law of attraction had been in play throughout this ordeal. As he started to understand it himself, Nick confessed to me that the night before the accident he and John had been watching videos of car crashes on the Internet. Car crash after car crash after car crash. Call it a coincidence. Call it what you want. Whatever you call it, thoughts and actions are interconnected.
I kept focused as best I could. The lawyers insisted no judge would want to set a new precedent. So I put the possibility of jail completely out of my mind.
It wouldn’t be enough.
On May 9, 2008, we all made our way over to the Pinellas County courthouse. Through Brooke and Nick, Linda and I had communicated enough to agree to sit together as a family in that courtroom as Nick stood up and entered his plea. It was the least we could do to put our differences aside for one day.
We did it, too. Linda and I didn’t really talk. We said hello, but that was pretty much it. It was strange to see her, especially sitting in the front row, and watching her new attorney, A. J. Barranco, holding her hand, and rubbing her hand, throughout the whole court proceeding. That was something I felt I should have been doing, even with all the problems. That was my wife. It was creepy, although the distance between us was just as big as it had been in the final months of our marriage. Being in her presence again didn’t change that.
Nick got dressed up in a suit and tie. He felt it was important to show the court that he took this matter seriously. And he did take this matter seriously. He had done nothing but take this matter seriously since day one.