Hulk Hogan Dead: Pro Wrestler Was 71

Hulk Hogan, 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, has died. He was 71.

Hogan’s death was confirmed by promoter Eric Bischoff, his partner in the recently launched Real America Freestyle amateur wrestling league. Details of his death were not immediately available.

“The Hulkster” headlined WrestleMania eight times, with perhaps his most memorable bout in the WWE‘s signature event coming in 1987 against the 520-pound Andre the Giant — his mentor — in the Pontiac Silverdome before a then-record crowd of 93,173.

He won the World Wrestling Entertainment championship six times during his career.

Six-foot-7 and 320 pounds in his prime, Hogan — born Terry Bollea — would enter the ring in yellow trunks, boots and a bandana, his muscles bulging, his body glistening. Accompanied by his “Real American” theme music, he would rip apart his singlet and cup his ear to the roaring crowd.

Post-match, the crowd got their money’s worth, too. Hogan would cup his ear once more and pose, flexing his “24-inch python” arms and often waving a large American flag. It was all part of “Hulkamania.”

“When we say ‘Hulkamania will live forever’, it’s immortal,” he said.

Inside the ring, he started out as a baby face, a hero, only to reinvent himself as a rule-breaking heel.

His 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.

Hogan 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.

He also 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 Robot Chicken and American Dad!

In 1985, Hogan co-hosted (with Mr. T) Saturday Night Live and was the star of the CBS Saturday morning cartoon Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling. He faced Jay Leno in a PPV tag match — and lost! — and starred alongside his first wife and two kids in the reality show Hogan Knows Best.

In his heyday, he was the most requested celebrity for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Not 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.

In 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’s 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.

He was welcomed back into the WWE fold and the Hall of Fame in 2018.

In April, Hogan and Bischoff launched the Real America league, and it landed a TV rights deal with Fox Nation this month.

Born 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.

Bollea was a Little League pitcher and later a guitarist for Florida rock bands before he was spotted at Hector’s Gym in Tampa by wrestling scouts and urged to train with Japanese star Hiro Matsuda.

“The wrestlers were like Greek gods to me,” he wrote in his 2002 autobiography, Hollywood Hulk Hogan.“They 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’d say, was where it all started for me.”

He wasn’t always Hulk Hogan; his earlier character incarnations were the masked Super Destroyer, Sterling Golden and Terry “The Hulk” 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’ The Incredible Hulk.

“When I got on the show, the host looked at Ferrigno and he looked at me and he said, ‘Oh my God, you’re bigger than Lou Ferrigno! You’re bigger than the Hulk!’” he recalled. “And I said, ‘That’s because I’m the real Hulk.’”

Hulk wrestled for promoter Eddie Graham’s Championship Wrestling From Florida and Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association in Minneapolis, and during a stint in Japan, he was nicknamed “Ichiban” (meaning No. 1) after he defeated the great Antonio Inoki.

His lifelong friendship with WWE boss Vince McMahon began in 1979 when he was put against stars Ted DiBiase, Bob Backlund and Andre the Giant, whom he said “grabbed me by the back of my shirt and straightened me out,” he noted during his Hall of Fame speech. “More than anybody in the ring, [Andre] taught me how to be a professional in his business.”

In the WWE, Hogan would begin his pre-match interviews with Gene Okerlund by yelling, “Well, let me tell you something, Mean Gene.” He would be sure to call everyone “Brother” and end by asking, “Whatcha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild on you?”

The birth of Hulkamania occurred in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Jan. 23, 1984, when Hogan leg-dropped The Iron Sheik to capture the heavyweight crown.

The 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, who passed out and hit the back of his head.

He teamed with Mr. T at the inaugural WrestleMania in 1985 to defeat “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff, then faced King Kong Bundy in a blue steel cage the following year.

After 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’s MGM Studios, and he won the title in his debut against Ric Flair.

When Turner launched WCW Monday Nitro on TNT in 1995 as a counterpunch to McMahon’s Monday Night Raw program on USA, the WWE mocked Hogan, then 42, with ageist skits, calling him “The Huckster” and having an impersonator enter the ring using a walker.

But Hogan had the last laugh with a career-resurging heel turn as the mystery “Third Man” during WCW’s Bash at the Beach main event in 1996.

For wrestling fans, it was a shocking moment; the much-loved Hogan had turned bad guy with a leg drop on longtime friend “Macho Man” Randy Savage and joined forces with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who weeks earlier also had jumped ship from the WWE.

The 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 “Hollywood Hulk Hogan.”

As that character, he would win the title six times and battle longtime foes including Piper, Flair, Lex Luger, Sting, Savage and The Ultimate Warrior.

In 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.

Also that year, he lost the WCW belt to Bill Goldberg, a former player with the NFL’s 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.

Hogan 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 “The Rock” Johnson at WrestleMania later that year before 68,237 fans at the SkyDome in Toronto.

His final WWE match came at SummerSlam 2006 when he defeated the upstart Randy Orton in Boston. He then joined TNA Impact in 2009 as an onscreen authority and occasional wrestler before exiting in 2013.

Survivors 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.

In promoting his 2009 book My Life Outside the Ring, Hogan drew a distinction between what was “fake” in wrestling and what was “pre-determined.”

“Fake implies that the punches don’t hurt and you never get injured,” he said, “that 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 … it’s as real as it gets.”