My Life Outside the Ring

by Hogan, Hulk

  “That might be true,” I said, “but this is the real me.”

  Brutus Beefcake was so surprised by my change in demeanor that he went out and started reading The Secret and all these other books, too.

  The public didn’t know any of that. They had no clue. In fact, if you added up all the horrible things that were being said about me, you’d have thought I was nothing more than a cheating husband who stalked Linda, encouraged his kids to drink and drive, and blamed John Graziano for his own condition!

  For a long time I didn’t care how the public perceived me. Honestly, I knew I needed to get my head on straight before I could deal with anything outside of my own life and family situation. Then all of a sudden Eric and my publicist Elizabeth Rosenthal and Brutus and every one of my attorneys, including David Houston—all of the people I trust to look after my image, my career, and even my family’s well-being—came at me simultaneously with the very same message: “You need to respond or you won’t have a career to come back to.”

  So finally, in early June, I decided it was time to come out of my little spiritual cocoon.

  Talking about all of this, especially my son’s accident, would not be easy. This was delicate territory, and the last thing I could afford to do was to make another mistake like I had on Arsenio’s show in 1991. My image had already suffered too much without my direct involvement.

  What I said was almost as important as where I said it. I didn’t want anything to seem sensational. I didn’t want to make it seem like I was somehow trying to promote myself, when all I wanted to do at this point was let my fans hear my side of the story firsthand.

  I worked closely with Elizabeth, who stuck by me through this entire ordeal and somehow saved me from having to answer every tabloid headline. I also hired a crisis management PR firm in Los Angeles, just as backup in case anything got worse. It cost me a fortune, but I didn’t want to take any risks this time.

  In the end, I think the only thing I needed was the biggest weapon I already had in my arsenal: honesty.

  I had crossed that bridge in my personal life once and for all. True open honesty was it for me now. With my kids. With my ex. In my business dealings. Everything. I knew it wouldn’t be any different when it came to talking in public.

  Within a couple of weeks we decided on two press outlets known for their fairness and journalistic integrity: People magazine and Larry King. That was it. I wouldn’t go on a media tour. I wouldn’t appear on late-night talk shows or early-morning broadcasts. I would let my words speak for themselves. I would give my fans the chance to make up their minds who they wanted to believe—the naysayers and haters who were trying to burn me at the stake, or me, the man they’d grown up with and watched and embraced both in and out of the ring for the last thirty years.

  It actually felt good to talk about it all. It was cathartic in a way to finally speak out and just tell someone outside of my immediate circle what I’d been through, and what I was still going through. Plus, I felt it was so important that I shift some of the focus back to John Graziano, so the public would be thinking about his healing and sending positive thoughts and prayers his way after reading or listening to what I had to say.

  I answered Larry King’s questions as honestly as I possibly could. There was no acting or putting on airs. I just spoke to him, from the heart, and I think people could tell. I answered People magazine’s questions the same way. Once I had said my piece, I went back to my life. I went back to Jennifer. I went back to making my new TV show. I went back to spending time with Brooke; we finally saw eye to eye after all we’d been through, and she even moved back in with me for a while. I went back to visiting my son every hour I possibly could for the remainder of his time in jail.

  It felt good. I somehow felt like I had completed a big step in my journey. It was out of my hands now. I was grateful that those big media outlets still embraced me in a way that allowed me to say what I had to say.

  In fact, the only downside to it was the effect it seemed to have on Linda. It put her on the defensive, even though I did my best not to say anything too negative about her at all in those interviews.

  Right in the middle of it, her lawyer stood up and proclaimed to the world that this divorce was going to be a war. He was actually quoted saying that to People magazine, in a rebuttal quote they included in my story.

  A war? I remember thinking what a terrible thing that was. For the two of us. For our kids. Linda already knew I was willing to give her half of everything at that point. I was happy to give her whatever a judge deemed was her share. She deserved it. We had been married twenty-three years. That wasn’t enough for her. It seemed like she wanted to try to destroy me. And that just made me sad for her.

  I kept asking myself, What kind of a person wants to turn their divorce into a war?

  Chapter 20

  Revelations

  Sometimes, asking a question is all it takes for the universe to suddenly provide you with answers.

  With all of these questions about Linda on my mind, I went back and reread A New Earth—and suddenly I saw things I had never seen before. Starting on page 129 I came across a description of something so familiar to me it felt like it was specifically written about my wife.

  The basic idea is that certain people feed off of negative energy. They need it to live. The only way they can survive is to constantly create negativity in the lives of everyone around them: family, friends, co-workers—anyone they can draw into that vacuum of misery, they will.

  A New Earth calls that powerful, living, breathing type of negative energy a “pain body,” but I’ll spare you the new age language and try to describe this phenomenon in my own words.

  It all goes back to the idea that your thoughts are like a magnet. The more negative the thoughts you harbor, the more negative the consequences you bring. Certain people get caught up in that negative energy: As their thoughts get worse, the consequences get worse, and as the consequences get worse, the bitching and moaning and complaining about the circumstances of their life gets worse, which creates even more negative energy, and so on.

  Sometimes these same people fall prey to addictions. Alcohol and drugs fuel the hunger, but the thing they’re addicted to most is the uproar and chaos that they themselves create.

  Reading those passages, realizing that what I’d witnessed in my own household had happened to other people, that it was tangible and describable—I can’t tell you what a relief that was. The understanding I took away from those pages acted like a construction crane, grasping and lightening the load of that boulder I’d been carrying on my shoulders. And that made it easier to carry the whole truth of my marriage once it finally started to emerge.

  “Ask and ye shall receive.” I asked for answers about what kind of person would turn their divorce into a war, and in the summer of 2008 my own children opened my eyes to sides of Linda that I never even knew existed.

  I still can’t believe it took a divorce and my son going to jail and my daughter not talking to me for months on end before I finally took off the blinders when it came to my wife. I was finally ready to understand not only the person Linda had become, but the true person she was in all of those years when I wasn’t around for days on end and she was home alone with my children.

  In mid-2008, every time I saw Brooke I told her how bad I felt for all she had been through in these recent months and years. It just killed me that my daughter had been thrown on this emotional roller coaster that Linda and I created. I kept saying to her, “I just wish we could go back to the good times we had as a family.”

  Then one day that summer, Brooke stopped my little trip down memory lane dead in its tracks. She stopped me by asking a question: “When was that, Dad?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “Those good times you’re talking about. I mean, it wasn’t really that good,” she said. “Ever.”

  From that day forward I started to really talk with my daughter about th
is marriage, as she saw it. I guess I had never taken the time to do that—to fully imagine what life was like as Hulk Hogan’s kid and Linda Bollea’s daughter.

  In fact, it really shook me up, because part of me never really thought all that much about what was happening in my home when I was on the road all those years. I think I made a lot of assumptions about how the kids were being raised, and the messages they were getting, and the lessons they were receiving. Linda was my wife, and I just assumed she was parenting in a way that was appropriate and compatible with my own values.

  Until that summer, I didn’t realize there was a whole life between Linda and these kids that I knew nothing about.

  Brooke didn’t want to explain it all to me, but she wanted me to understand. So one day, she told me about her diaries. Diaries she had kept going all the way back to when she was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old. It was a shocking thing to hear my daughter open her private thoughts to me in that way, but it was that important to her.

  The biggest revelation from Brooke was that Linda’s drinking affected the children. Linda was especially mean when she got drunk. So mean that Brooke apparently dreaded the sound of Linda’s footsteps in the hall. Brooke, my little girl, kept rosary beads hung above her bed so she could hold them and pray for the misery to pass.

  All those years I had no idea.

  I’ll stop there. I think you get the point. Having Brooke open up to me about what was in her diaries broke my heart.

  The thing is, I’m not talking about all of this to trash Linda. I’m talking about it because I’m trying to understand her, and because I want you to stop and think about what happened to me and how it might apply to you: How massive, deep-seated problems can go unnoticed in a marriage or any other relationship if you’re not totally present and aware of what’s going on in your own life.

  It’s staggering to me that I could have been blind to these things for so many years. I could stand in the ring at Madison Square Garden, totally present and aware of the mood swings and mindset of twenty-two thousand people—so much so that I could hold that entire audience in the palm of my hand—and yet I wasn’t present and aware enough in my life outside the ring to notice how dysfunctional and damaging my own family had become.

  Finding Forgiveness

  Throughout this yearlong reevaluation of everything I’ve ever done in my life, coming to grips with what went wrong in my marriage was the hardest part of it all.

  But once I had that understanding, I had to do something more: I had to learn to let go of my anger toward Linda.

  Linda’s a product of the home she grew up in, a product of her parents, a product of the environment that shaped her. She’s even a product of the life I gave her. A life filled with excess. A life spent living in Hulk Hogan’s shadow. A life with a husband who was constantly gone.

  The more I’ve grown to understand all of that, the more I’ve grown capable of forgiving her. For everything.

  I will always, always love Linda. Nothing will change that. And I’m so grateful that she came into my life. I’m grateful for the time we shared together. I’m grateful for this tremendous life that she allowed me to live—and she really did make it possible. She was the one taking care of my home and children and even my money while I was out wrestling every day. So I’m grateful for that. And of course I’m eternally grateful for the children that we brought into this world.

  I’m even grateful—get ready for this one, folks—for the hell that Linda put me through at the end of our marriage: the disappearing, the drinking, even the divorce itself.

  If it wasn’t for all of that, I never would have bottomed out in December of 2007. And if I hadn’t bottomed out, I might still be walking on that treadmill of misery I called my life.

  The fact is, I’m not walking on that treadmill anymore. As much as it may look like my life is nothing but pain and misery and ordeals as I continue to undergo back surgeries and the divorce gets drawn out and the Graziano lawsuit looms, nothing could be further from the truth.

  The thing I’ve come to realize in this last couple of years is that sometimes right before your greatest success you face your darkest hours. Sometimes you have to have a tragic loss or some tragic event has to happen to you in order to make you become aware and present and grateful for your life. I’ve reached a point where my life is now drastically happier than it has ever been. On a minute-by-minute, day-by-day basis, I spend more time smiling than ever before.

  I only wish Linda could get there, too. I pray for that to happen every day.

  That’s the amazing thing about negative energy: Sometimes it gets so powerful that it finally crashes and sends you careening in the opposite direction overnight. That’s what happened to me when all of a sudden I grew sick and tired of being sick and tired. I just keep praying that Linda finds that feeling soon. I really do.

  As for all of that other ongoing stuff in my life? Those are all just situations I have to deal with. I’ll admit there are a lot of really heavy situations that are still hitting me simultaneously. It’s more than a lot of people could take. Sure, it can be daunting at times. That’s a good thing, though. I like a challenge, and I know now that I can survive and thrive through all of these obstacles because something better is waiting for me on the other side.

  That’s the power of spirituality.

  I’m not some kind of hero for acting this way. There are no heroes here. I’m not doing anything other than what everybody should try to do. It’s pretty simple stuff, actually.

  When it comes down to it, no matter what your situation, no matter what your circumstance, just ask yourself, “Would I rather be happy or sad?”

  When you wake up every morning, stop and ask yourself, “Would I rather be joyful or miserable?”

  When faced with a situation in life that could go either way, just ask yourself this one big question: “Do I want to be good or bad?”

  That’s it. You choose. End of story.

  I wish I could say that every circumstance in my life improved the moment I had this spiritual awakening and these moments of forgiveness. It didn’t. I’d spent far too many years wallowing in negativity for it all to turn around just because I’d read a few books and made some new friends.

  Just like it takes time for a seed to sprout through the surface of the soil, it takes time for a life to turn around and head in a new direction. My books taught me that. I see evidence of my life turning around every day now, because I’m as present and aware of what’s happening in my life as any man can be.

  I could go on for pages and pages here about all the crazy situations life continued to throw at me as 2008 turned to 2009. I could talk for days about how quickly all the money I’ve ever made is being depleted—by Linda, by lawyers, by these massive expenses I’m laying out—to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each month. I could go on about the fact that at this moment, I don’t have a job, which means that all of that money could truly be gone by the middle of 2010 if this cycle doesn’t stop; which means there won’t be any money left for me to fund John Graziano’s care, let alone anything else his family wants to do with their winnings, should a judge decide to rule in their favor. I could go on about Linda trying to have me arrested when I drove near our old neighborhood. Or explain how Linda treated our kids now that I was no longer around to serve as her punching bag. I could certainly talk for hours about my wife’s nineteen-year-old boyfriend who was living the high life, driving my cars, driving my boat, and sleeping in that mansion while I paid for the nonstop party he and a whole bunch of his friends were having care of Linda’s wide-open wallet, and more.

  Like I said, though, those are all just “life situations.” They’re not my life anymore.

  I haven’t gone soft. Don’t get me wrong. I will continue to fight for what’s right, and what’s mine. There’s nothing about this new lifestyle of mine to suggest that I should just roll over. In fact, just the opposite. I need to fight for what’s
right more than ever—to fight for what’s “right” and not “wrong.”

  All I’m saying is that those things don’t consume me anymore.

  The things that consume my thoughts are much bigger, and much brighter.

  Nick walked out of jail a free man on October 21, 2008. I don’t use the word “man” lightly. He grew up a lot in those months. It’s hard to imagine a way to become more present and aware and grateful for what you have in life than to see your simplest freedoms taken away, and I know Nick is stronger than ever for going through that ordeal.

  The judge in my divorce finally allowed me to move back into our house on the sand in Clearwater Beach. So I gave Nick that bachelor pad to stay in till he decided where he wanted to live. (There was a real motivation for him to move to California—to escape the Tampa media madness, for one, and to have a shot at getting his license back sooner, so he could try to find work and establish a life and career for himself now that he’s turned eighteen. In 2009, that’s exactly what he would do.)

  Living on the beach turned out to be a dream. I wasn’t allowed to change Linda’s putrid decorating experiments—the house was still a “marital asset,” so the tartan-plaid carpet and paisley wallpaper she installed on the ceiling have to stay until the divorce is finalized and we decide who gets what property. Still, waking up and looking at that white sand every day, dipping into the ocean whenever I feel like it—it’s an idyllic life that I appreciate now more than ever.

  I follow a pretty simple routine most days. In fact, I recently had a pretty good laugh when I realized that part of the routine I follow is something I’ve been preaching for a very long time: I train at the gym, I take my vitamins, and I say my prayers. Every day.

  Jennifer—my light—has continued to stay at my side through every twist and turn, and the two of us started to do things that Linda would never allow. I reconnected with some of my neighbors on Willadel Drive, and we actually went out to dinner with them—and had a good time. What a concept! We took some time off to get away to Key West. Just the two of us. I started inviting friends over, without any fear that they’d suddenly feel the need to flee. My old friend Brutus “the Barber” Beefcake actually spent a few weeks staying with us at the beginning of 2009. He never would have dared to do that in the old days, he admitted—he just couldn’t be around my wife. That’s changed now.