{"id":34119,"date":"2025-07-24T16:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T16:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/34119\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T16:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T16:28:08","slug":"hulk-hogan-dead-pro-wrestler-was-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/34119\/","title":{"rendered":"Hulk Hogan Dead: Pro Wrestler Was 71"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHulk Hogan<\/a>, the blond and boisterous body-slammer who brought pro wrestling into the mainstream in the 1980s while becoming one of the most recognizable celebrities of his generation, died Thursday. He was 71.<\/p>\n

\n\tHogan\u2019s death was confirmed by promoter Eric Bischoff, his partner in the recently launched Real America Freestyle amateur wrestling league<\/a>. TMZ reported<\/a> that medical personnel were sent to his home in Clearwater, Florida, with operators stating it regarded a \u201ccardiac arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Hulkster\u201d headlined WrestleMania<\/a> eight times, with perhaps his most memorable bout in the WWE<\/a>\u2018s signature event coming in 1987 against the 520-pound Andre the Giant \u2014 his mentor \u2014 in the Pontiac Silverdome before a then-record crowd of 93,173.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe won the World Wrestling Entertainment championship six times during his career.<\/p>\n

\n\tSix-foot-7 and 320 pounds in his prime, Hogan \u2014 born Terry Bollea \u2014 would enter the ring in yellow trunks, boots and a bandana, his muscles bulging, his body glistening. Accompanied by his \u201cReal American\u201d theme music, he would rip apart his singlet and cup his ear to the roaring crowd.<\/p>\n

\n\tPost-match, the crowd got their money\u2019s worth, too. Hogan would cup his ear once more and pose, flexing his \u201c24-inch python\u201d arms and often waving a large American flag. It was all part of \u201cHulkamania.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we say \u2018Hulkamania will live forever\u2019, it\u2019s immortal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tInside the ring, he started out as a baby face, a hero, only to reinvent himself as a rule-breaking heel.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis over-the-top acting skills naturally led him to Hollywood, where he portrayed the wrestler Thunderlips in Rocky III (1982) in his big-screen debut. Sylvester Stallone, who would induct Hogan into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, said that the wrestler sent four stuntmen to intensive care after he jumped into the crowd in one scene.<\/p>\n

\n\tHogan went on to star in such other films as No Holds Barred (1989), Suburban Commando (1991), Mr. Nanny (1993) and Santa With Muscles (1996) and in the 1994 syndicated series Thunder in Paradise. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u00a0also appeared as himself in everything from The A-Team and Baywatch to Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Spy Hard (1996) and Muppets From Space (1999), and he lent his voice to episodes of\u00a0Robot Chicken\u00a0and American Dad!<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1985, Hogan co-hosted (with Mr. T) Saturday Night Live and was the star of the CBS Saturday morning cartoon Hulk Hogan\u2019s Rock \u2018n\u2019 Wrestling. He faced Jay Leno in a PPV tag match \u2014 and lost! \u2014 and starred alongside his first wife and two kids in the reality show Hogan Knows Best.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his heyday, he was the most requested celebrity for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHulk Hogan battled Sylvester Stallone in 1982\u2019s Rocky III.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUnited Artists\/MGM \/ Courtesy: Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tNot everything went smoothly for Hogan. In 1994, he admitted that he had used steroids for 13 years. Twelve years later, he was ostracized by the WWE and removed from its Hall of Fame after he was heard making disparaging racial comments in a leaked sex video.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2016, the wrestler was awarded $140 million by a Florida jury after he sued the celebrity website Gawker, which had released a clip of the video. (Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, backed Hogan\u2019s case.) After losing in court, Gawker filed for bankruptcy protection and sold itself to Univision in 2016. Hogan eventually wound up with $31 million in a settlement.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was welcomed back into the WWE fold and the Hall of Fame in 2018.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn April, Hogan and Bischoff launched the Real America league, and it landed a TV rights deal with Fox Nation<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn in Augusta, Georgia, on Aug. 11, 1953, Terry Gene Bollea was the son of a pipefitter and a U.S. Navy secretary. He idolized wrestler Dusty Rhodes and convinced his father to take him to the Fort Homer W. Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Florida, to watch the matches.<\/p>\n

\n\tBollea was a Little League pitcher and later a guitarist for Florida rock bands before he was spotted at Hector\u2019s Gym in Tampa by wrestling scouts and urged to train with Japanese star Hiro Matsuda.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe wrestlers were like Greek gods to me,\u201d he wrote in his 2002 autobiography, Hollywood Hulk Hogan.\u201cThey were giants, larger than life, and the combination of entertainment and physicality that I saw in the wrestling ring was something I had never seen in other sports. And that, I guess you\u2019d say, was where it all started for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe wasn\u2019t always Hulk Hogan; his earlier character incarnations were the masked Super Destroyer, Sterling Golden and Terry \u201cThe Hulk\u201d Boulder. That last nickname came during a morning talk show interview in Mobile, Alabama, when he came face to face with Lou Ferrigno, star of CBS\u2019 The Incredible Hulk.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I got on the show, the host looked at Ferrigno and he looked at me and he said, \u2018Oh my God, you\u2019re bigger than Lou Ferrigno! You\u2019re bigger than the Hulk!’\u201d he recalled. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018That\u2019s because I\u2019m the real Hulk.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHulk wrestled for promoter Eddie Graham\u2019s Championship Wrestling From Florida and Verne Gagne\u2019s American Wrestling Association in Minneapolis,\u00a0and during a stint in Japan, he was nicknamed \u201cIchiban\u201d (meaning No. 1) after he defeated the great Antonio Inoki.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis lifelong friendship with WWE boss Vince McMahon<\/a> began in 1979 when he was put against stars Ted DiBiase, Bob Backlund and Andre the Giant, whom he said \u201cgrabbed me by the back of my shirt and straightened me out,\u201d he noted during his Hall of Fame speech<\/a>. \u201cMore than anybody in the ring, [Andre] taught me how to be a professional in his business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the WWE, Hogan would begin his pre-match interviews with Gene Okerlund by yelling, \u201cWell, let me tell you something, Mean Gene.\u201d He would be sure to call everyone \u201cBrother\u201d and end by asking, \u201cWhatcha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild on you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHulk Hogan and Chris Lemmon on the 1994 TV series Thunder in Paradise.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBuena Vista Television\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tThe birth of Hulkamania occurred in New York\u2019s Madison Square Garden on Jan. 23, 1984, when Hogan leg-dropped The Iron Sheik to capture the heavyweight crown.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe following year, Hogan reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount after he placed a sleeper hold on comedian and talk show host Richard Belzer<\/a>, who passed out and hit the back of his head.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe teamed with Mr. T at the inaugural WrestleMania in 1985 to defeat \u201cRowdy\u201d Roddy Piper<\/a> and Paul Orndorff, then faced King Kong Bundy in a blue steel cage the following year.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a 14-year career with the WWE, Hogan was poached by Ted Turner to become the face of World Championship Wrestling. A parade was held for him at Disney\u2019s MGM Studios, and he won the title in his debut against Ric Flair.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Turner launched WCW Monday Nitro on TNT in 1995 as a counterpunch to McMahon\u2019s Monday Night Raw program on USA, the WWE mocked Hogan, then 42, with ageist skits, calling him \u201cThe Huckster\u201d and having an impersonator enter the ring using a walker.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Hogan had the last laugh with a career-resurging heel turn as the mystery \u201cThird Man\u201d during WCW\u2019s Bash at the Beach main event in 1996.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor wrestling fans, it was a shocking moment; the much-loved Hogan had turned bad guy with a leg drop on longtime friend \u201cMacho Man\u201d Randy Savage and joined forces with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who weeks earlier also had jumped ship from the WWE.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe three wrestlers became known as the villainous, rule-breaking New World Order (NWO). As its leader, Hogan now wore black and white, grew a beard, sported dark shades, cheated to win and called himself \u201cHollywood Hulk Hogan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs that character, he would win the title six times and battle longtime foes including Piper, Flair, Lex Luger, Sting, Savage and The Ultimate Warrior.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1998, Hogan teamed with then-Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman to fight Diamond Dallas Page and Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz, who had lost to the Bulls in the NBA Finals just weeks earlier.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso that year, he lost the WCW belt to Bill Goldberg, a former defensive tackle with the NFL\u2019s Atlanta Falcons who was on a meteoric, undefeated run. Their match was held at the Georgia Dome, and more than 5 million households watched, the largest TV audience for a wrestling match in cable history.<\/p>\n

\n\tHogan was back in the WWE after it purchased the WCW in 2002, and at age 48 he won its world title for the sixth and final time. However, he lost to Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson at WrestleMania later that year before 68,237 fans at the SkyDome in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHulk Hogan faced Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson at WrestleMania in 2002.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGeorge Pimentel\/WireImage<\/p>\n

\n\tHis final WWE match came at SummerSlam 2006 when he defeated the upstart Randy Orton in Boston. He then joined\u00a0TNA Impact in 2009 as an onscreen authority and occasional wrestler before exiting in 2013.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors include his wife, Sky, whom he wed in 2023, and his children, Nick and Brooke, from his first marriage to Linda Claridge (they were married from 1983 until their 2009 divorce). He also was married to Jennifer McDaniel from 2009 until a 2021 separation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn promoting his 2009 book My Life Outside the Ring, Hogan drew a distinction between what was \u201cfake\u201d in wrestling and what was \u201cpre-determined.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFake implies that the punches don\u2019t hurt and you never get injured,\u201d he said<\/a>, \u201cthat the blood is fake, that you keep getting knocked out in the ring is fake, that the people who have died in the ring is fake \u2026 it\u2019s as real as it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hulk Hogan, the blond and boisterous body-slammer who brought pro wrestling into the mainstream in the 1980s while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,28329,10756,28330,28331,4366],"class_list":{"0":"post-34119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hulk-hogan","10":"tag-obituaries","11":"tag-vince-mcmahon","12":"tag-wrestlemania","13":"tag-wwe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}