Although he’s one of the biggest stars that professional wrestling has ever seen, Hulk Hogan’s reputation has taken a significant hit over the last decade.
Following the emergence of a sex tape in 2012, video footage came to light in 2015 of Hogan making racist comments back in 2007. The star was seen using a number of racist slurs and expressing his disgust at the idea of his daughter dating a Black man.
In the months that followed, Hogan was released from his WWE contract, pulled from the Hall of Fame (he has since been reinstated) and all references to the star were removed from WWE’s website.
Hogan returned to WWE in 2018, but his popularity has fallen significantly and the star was famously heavily booed when hosting WrestleMania 37 in 2021.
While appearing on a recent episode of the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, Hogan discussed his legacy and said that the controversy in 2015 was a “speed bump.”
“There was a temporary situation where I thought, ‘Okay, where’s this going to end up at? Where’s this gonna wind down? Where’s the legacy, where’s this, that.’ At the end of the day, there had been so much goodwill with the Hulk Hogan brand, and people knew me so well, I mean I’ve been around over 40 years. People know me so well, from Mike Tyson to Brutus Beefcake to Vince McMahon to Verne Gagne to Bret Hart, everybody knows me so well that they knew that I would come back and I would become the person that I was.
There was a temporary situation with the surgeries and some of the racial stuff that went down. It was a speed bump, but that’s not who I was, and everybody knew that. So it was a tough time, but the main thing that really got me were the surgeries over the last ten years. That was the thing that was in question.
When you come out of a back surgery and someone tells you you’re never gonna walk again, that will really screw your head up. The rest of this stuff, I had a bunch of people on my side, I had a huge support system. People that knew me stuck with me, and it’s just been amazing to see how the fans have stayed with me.”
Hulk Hogan Open To Retirement Match
During the same interview, Hulk Hogan revealed that he had been approached by WWE and Shane McMahon about returning to the ring for one more match. Although surgery made an appearance at WrestleMania 39 impossible, the veteran refused to rule out a return.
H/t to Fightful