My Life Outside the Ring

by Hogan, Hulk

  A lot has changed now. We haven’t tag-teamed in the ring for quite a while. In fact, I’ve renamed him Brutus “the Barbecue” Beefcake because he mans a mean grill. I’m telling you, you haven’t tasted steak and lobster until you’ve tasted Brutus’s.

  If it sounds a little bit like a retirement, it’s not. Not by a long shot. Remember, talking to lawyers is almost a full-time gig for me now. That makes it difficult to get the next phase of my life under way. But I’m definitely in transition—and that’s exciting.

  I’m constantly talking to Eric Bischoff about new projects, potentially mind-blowing projects that could rock the world of sports entertainment. I’m toying with the idea of letting cameras into my life again, imagining how different a show could be now that I’m living with a positive mindset. I’m looking past all of that to some bigger ideas that go way beyond just my “career,” too.

  There’s one thing I know: If everything goes south on me with these lawsuits and the divorce, if I wind up broke, I’ll be cool with it. I’ll live in a van by the beach and be happy. I really will. That may sound like cheap talk, but it isn’t. I’ve been there before, and I can go there again. I know it like I know that I’m standing here living and breathing today.

  Don’t get me wrong. I would love to keep my cars and my houses and a chunk of this money that I gave up most of my life and half of my body to get. I’m still spending hours and hours talking to attorneys to try to make sure I get to keep what’s mine. At the same time; I know that I can live without any of that material wealth if that’s what God has in store for me.

  Even if I’m forced to start over from scratch, I know I will rise and prosper again, because this time my mind will be focused on something higher than just my personal goals. I really want to help people. I want to find a way to let all the Hulkamaniacs in the world start profiting from their devotion. I keep having visions of myself and Eric Bischoff and Brutus and all of my lifelong friends filling stadiums full of fans. Not necessarily to watch wrestling. For something else. For something that gives back to all of those wrestling fans who were so loyal to all of us for all those years. Something that will change people’s lives for the better.

  I can’t quite put my finger on what it is yet, but I was put on this earth to do something more than wrestle. I know that now. All of these tests I’m going through? All of these life situations that keep hitting me again and again? They’re the proof. They’re preparing me for the greatness that’s waiting for me, just up ahead around the corner.

  In early 2009 I started getting calls from Vince McMahon Jr. He was putting together his massive plans for WrestleMania XXV. I could hardly believe it had been twenty-five years since the original WrestleMania set the world on fire; twenty-five years since Muhammad Ali held my arm up in the air and I took home that championship belt.

  I have to say, it was hard to imagine the twenty-fifth anniversary of WrestleMania going down without Hulk Hogan in the ring. Still, I didn’t say yes to Vince right away. He kept calling me and calling me, but for some reason I hesitated.

  I thought about the bad blood between us in the past, but I was such a different person now. I considered the fact that Vince still owned so much of the Hulk Hogan legacy, and that he and the whole WWE organization were still unwilling to share that. I built that empire with Vince. We were partners in this game. Yet I’m not allowed to post old videos of my matches on my own Web site because Vince owns the exclusive rights to them all. So I had issues, both business and personal, with the whole concept of jumping into that particular ring. Even so, I couldn’t help but get excited about it. To this day, every time I walk by a ring I get chills. I salivate just thinking about getting back in there. I started to think about how big a comeback this could be for me. Think of the story arc: I was down and out, and beat up in the press, and now I’d show up in that ring and blow the audience away and be right back on top!

  But life wasn’t going to let that happen. As April approached, a string of ongoing back surgeries kept me from even entertaining the possibility of hitting that ring. Doctors finally discovered that the bottom of my spine is shaped like a J now—the result of 20 years of dropping the leg drop on my opponents, landing full-weight on my left butt cheek. I was really disappointed. I felt miserable about it. I wanted to be able to make that choice myself and not have it dictated by doctors.

  Of course, once I stepped back and looked at it through my new eyes I realized that I did make that decision myself. I brought these back surgeries into my life, and everything happens for a reason. These new doctors I’ve seen and new techniques they’re using should leave my back feeling good in the very near future, I told myself. I can feel that tremendous relief already, and I’m grateful for it. Plus, for me to go participate in that kind of one-off wrestling spectacle was much more a part of my old life than of the life I’m living now. My new life is going to hold so much more.

  In all practicality, maybe I’m simply too old to keep doing this to my body. If I’d forced myself to go into that ring, maybe something really terrible would have happened. Who knows? I’ve just learned to be grateful for whatever circumstances arrive in my life. Right now, I am grateful to stay home.

  A New Hope

  There’s a lot to be grateful for in my new life, but almost nothing can compare to how grateful I am to have solid relationships with both of my growing children.

  Brooke is still pursuing her music, and finding TV success on her own (even though the old man continues to make a few cameo appearances). Her show Brooke Knows Best drew even bigger numbers than Hogan Knows Best on VH1. I couldn’t be more proud.

  More important, I’m just real proud of Brooke for how far she’s come, and how positive she’s managed to stay after going through all of this with our family. She’s so wise sometimes it blows my mind.

  And Nick? Nick’s state of mind after all that he’s been through can be summed up in one small moment I was lucky enough to witness.

  One night, just before Nick made the move to California, Jennifer and I, along with Brutus and some friends and neighbors from just down the beach—all these real positive people I surround myself with all the time now—were gathered at the beach house getting ready for dinner, and we had just watched the sun drop down behind the dunes, throwing the most amazing colors up into the Florida sky. A few minutes later, Nick came walking in through the front door.

  “Did you guys catch that sunset?” he asked. “It was beautiful!”

  He was right there. In the moment. Paying attention to life as it unfolded around him.

  That night, we sat around the kitchen eating some of Brutus’s barbecue and talking about Nick’s big plans. He was so excited to make the move.

  At one point Nick asked me what I thought of that Mickey Rourke movie, The Wrestler. He hadn’t seen it yet, and he wanted to know if it was worth the price of admission.

  I told him I could do better than that. I had a DVD copy of the film right there if he wanted to watch it.

  As some of our guests filtered out, and others settled in to watch the movie, I went to the sofa with my boy. Just as we were sitting down I placed my hand on his head and tousled his hair. It’s just one of those things parents do with their kids, and as I did it I realized I hadn’t done it in ages. For some reason it struck me how big his head was now. He was no longer that little boy I used to line up peas for at dinnertime, you know?

  As the movie started, I told him it was accurate in a lot of ways, but the real stories of wrestling were so much bigger. This film was like watching wrestling on a TV with the color saturation turned way, way down. When Mickey cut his forehead in the ring, I reminded him of the way I used to pull blade jobs all over my head. He had heard some of my stories of the injuries and the crazy shit that went down in and out of the ring in my early days, but not many. It’s funny how little our kids really know about the people we were before they came into the picture. This movie gave me a really cool excuse to walk him through
memories of my life before he was born.

  Not to spoil the movie for you, but there’s a real sad twist at the end of The Wrestler. After all of these down-and-out years, Mickey Rourke’s washed-up character goes back into the ring for one last comeback. Just one more match, you know? And he dies. He dies right there in the ring, and all of his dreams die there with him.

  I kept glancing over at Nick as that scene played out, his face lit in the blueish light of the big-screen TV. All of a sudden this real worried look washed over him.

  “Dad?” he asked. “Could that happen to you?”

  Honestly, a few years ago, it might not have been all that far-fetched. If I look inside at the person I was, and what my priorities were, and what I was doing with my life, I have to admit that the thought of a washed-up Hulk Hogan going down in the ring was one possible outcome for my life.

  Now? After all I’ve been through and how far I’ve come? Knowing that I still have so much to do, and how grateful I am just to wake up every morning, completely aware and alive? The answer came real easy.

  “No,” I said to my son that night. “That is not how I’m gonna go down.”

  I’m choosing to live life differently in the second half of the game, and the fact is, my future looks brighter now than at any point in my whole life. That may sound crazy coming from a guy who already had such an amazing run.

  But I’m telling you: It’s the God’s honest truth.

  Afterword

  Expect the Unexpected

  Just before this book went off to the printer, something happened that took a lot of people, especially the media people here in Tampa, by surprise: Linda and I reached an agreement and settled our divorce.

  I wasn’t surprised. I knew it would happen. In my mind, in my heart, it had already happened. Like I said, all the craziness stopped consuming me many months ago. I moved past it. I was grateful for reaching a truce with Linda and grateful for Linda finding happiness long before any of this happened. Remember: “What you think about, you bring about” really works. And maybe this sudden outbreak of peace in the Hulk vs. Linda war will serve as a little bit of proof to those who doubt it.

  I can’t reveal the terms of the divorce settlement. We both agreed to keep that between us. But I do want to share the story of how this resolution finally came to pass.

  The thing is, as dirty and crazy as everybody thought our divorce proceedings were—and I swear, especially here in the Tampa area, people were ready to put us in the history books alongside Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, as if our split made Alec Baldwin’s and Kim Basinger’s divorce look like a squirt-gun fight—I can tell you now that we hadn’t even taken the gloves off. This thing was set to go to trial in October of 2009, and it was about to get really, really nasty.

  I didn’t want it to get nasty. I didn’t want to slam Linda. But as she and her attorney and her publicist kept amping up the drama, and amping up the accusations in the press, I felt I had no choice but to unleash my lawyers and a team of investigators to fight for what’s right. That meant interviewing people all over Tampa and Clearwater about everything they knew about Linda and her young boyfriend, Charlie Hill, and the nonstop party I felt they had been living at my expense.

  Finally, in July, we sat down for a big day of depositions with the man himself: Charlie. We started at 7:45 a.m., and for the first time ever, he and I were face-to-face, just across a table from one another, and I had a chance to stare him down. I knew I’d never hurt Charlie. As I’ve said all along, even the thought of getting into a violent confrontation makes me feel sick inside. But Charlie didn’t know that. And boy did he look nervous.

  The depositions started like most, going through Charlie’s work history, just establishing who he is. Before we got into the heavy stuff, we took a break. I stood up, and was probably the last one to leave the room—just ’cause it takes me an extra minute to get my legs moving after I’ve been sitting for a while—and as I started walking down the hall, I had my head down. I was looking at my cell phone, not paying attention to where I was going, when all of a sudden I looked up and almost ran smack-dab into Charlie.

  We were way down the end of a hallway, face-to-face, with no one else around—and I guess he felt trapped because, man, he was shaking!

  For ages people had told me that Charlie was worried I was gonna kill him. I heard it from friends, from strangers, from Nick. And here I was towering over him in the corner of this hallway, and I thought he was gonna faint.

  “Calm down,” I said. “I’m not gonna kill you. I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t have to be scared of me.”

  All of a sudden Linda came power-walking toward us, and before she could say a word I said, softly, “Linda, I was just telling the kid that I would never hurt him.”

  Right then and there, something shifted. Linda put her hand on my chest and started crying: “I thought you were gonna kill Charlie,” she said.

  My response? “Linda, you know me. I would never do anything like that. Twenty years ago I might have threatened it, but I never would have done it. You know that. You know me.”

  She nodded. She agreed. And for the first time since all this craziness started in 2007, I saw an opening. “Linda,” I said, “what are we doing? After all this fighting we’re in the same place we were eighteen months ago, only now there’s a lot less money. This is just ridiculous. We need to put a stop to this.”

  For a moment, she paused. “Okay,” she said.

  That’s how we started talking. And that’s how our lawyers started talking, in earnest, about reaching a settlement instead of dragging out this thing that Linda herself had once called a “war.” A couple of weeks later we put the paperwork in high gear, and I sat with my attorneys, David Houston and Ann Kerr, and Linda’s attorney, and hammered this thing out over the course of five fourteen-hour days.

  When we walked into court on July 28 to present our settlement to the judge, Linda kissed me on the cheek. She chatted with Jennifer. And when the gavel came down, I gave Linda a big hug and said, “Have a good life.” After reading this book, I hope it’s clear to you that I meant it. Heck, I even told her to call me if she ever needs my help with something. You know what? It’s not that big a deal, brother. When you’re living like I’m living now, the bitterness all goes away.

  Linda’s getting what she’s wanted for a very long time: She’s moving to California with enough money to be set for life. I’ll be moving back into the big house on Willadel, at least for the time being, and eventually we’ll sell our properties and start our new lives without any of that old baggage attached.

  “The war is over,” Linda told a reporter that morning. As I write this, two days later, my cheeks still haven’t come down. They’re stuck in a permanent smile. I’m free.

  The “life situations” aren’t over for us. Not by any means. The civil suit from the Graziano family is still moving forward. Finding a way to provide the right kind of care for John will still be a challenge, and my days spent talking to lawyers are sure to last for a long time. But when people ask if I’m worried? I think about everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve learned, and I smile because I know the answer: That lawsuit is already taken care of. It’s going to turn out however it’s going to turn out, and I’m grateful for whatever happens.

  The good stuff in life, the intense stuff, the crazy stuff—all of it happens for a reason. And now, more than ever before, I see the big picture and keep it all in perspective, which means that the future can only get brighter from here.

  To put it another way: The best is yet to come, brother. The best is yet to come.

 

 

 
: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share