The world of wrestling and entertainment was brought to stand still on July 24, 2025 when it was announced that Terry Bollea, better known as WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan, had passed away at the age of 71. TMZ broke the news by confirming Hogan's cause of death was a cardiac arrest, and he leaves behind his two children Brooke and Nick, as well as his wife Sky Daily.
If we're being brutally honest with ourselves, the wrestling business, and in turn this entire website, might not exist had it not been for the success of "The Hulkster"during the 1980s. He was far and away the most famous wrestler of his day, and outside of someone like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, he might just be the most famous professional wrestler to have ever lived. Having said all that, Hogan does leave behind a legacy that can be considered as questionable by some, and downright deplorable by others.
For fans who tuned in to the debut of "WWE Raw" on Netflix back on January 6, they will have seen Hogan, accompanied by long-time friend Jimmy Hart, getting booed out of the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. While Hogan wanted to usher in a new era of WWE with his Real American Beer as an official sponsor on the canvas, it was clear that the audience in attendance, and the millions watching around the world at the time were not happy about seeing someone with such a controversial past being the one to give this new era his seal of approval.
In reality, Hogan's life has had more obstacles than if the set of Total Wipeout stretched as far as Route 66, and that's what we're here to talk about today. The most tragic parts of the wild life and career of the late Terry Bollea, where we can hopefully unpack his chequered legacy to see why he ended up as the person he became.
While Hulk Hogan was almost indestructible on-screen, behind the scenes he had a number of legal troubles that would impact his personal life.
In the lead-up to the inaugural WrestleMania in 1985, Hogan appeared on "Hot Properties" alongside Mr. T to promote their match against Paul Orndorff and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. The show's host, Richard Belzer, asked Hogan to put him in a wrestling hold just to see how real it was, with Hogan putting him in a front chin lock. Belzer was choked unconscious on camera, and after Hogan let him go, he smacked his head off the floor and cracked his head open, resulting in Belzer getting nine stitches, and Hogan being sued for $5 million. The case was settled out of court, with Belzer getting enough financial compensation to buy a house in the south of France which he called "Chez Hogan."
Hogan was also involved in the steroid trial that almost sent Vince McMahon to prison in 1994. While under oath, Hogan admitted that he had been taking anabolic steroids since the 1970s, something he had originally denied, but that McMahon andWWE physician George T. Zahorian III never sold him anything, which destroyed the governments case against McMahon as Hogan's testimony was crucial in McMahon getting sent down. In the end, Hogan's testimony was a major reason why McMahon was found not guilty.
However, the lawsuit that would ultimately lead to a later controversy we will get on to later was the suit filed against American blog Gawker in 2013. Gawker had posted portions of a sex tape Hogan had made Heather Clem, the wife of Hogan's friend and radio personality Bubba The Love Sponge.Hogan was suing the site based on invading his privacy and the emotional distress caused, and would end up getting a healthy cash settlement when the courts voted in favor of Hogan. While he didn't get the $140 million he was looking for as Gawker would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, he would receive $31 million in November 2016.
As previously mentioned, Hulk Hogan leaves behind his wife Sky Daily, who he married in September 2023. It seemed as if Hogan was extremely happy in what was his third marriage, but his previous two marriages ended in divorce.
In 1983, Terry Bollea married Linda Claridge and would have two children, Brooke and Nick, together. It was a marriage that lasted for a total of 26 years before they eventually got divorced in 2009, a divorce that was originally filed by Linda in 2007. The divorce came shortly after an interview that Christiane Plante did with the National Enquirer, where the former model claimed that she was Hogan's mistress, and that the affair with the WWE Hall of Famer had been going on while the Hogan family were filming their "Hogan Knows Best" reality TV show.
Linda would confirm that Hogan's infidelity was the reason for the divorce, and while she had her suspicions that he was sneaking around long before the news was made public, Hogan doubled down by saying that he never cheated on Linda up until that point. This divorce actually almost led to Hogan's death in 2009 as he reportedly contemplated taking his own life, but was talked out of the idea by American Gladiators star Laila Ali.
His second marriage would begin in 2010 when he married make-up artist Jennifer McDaniel. Their relationship began while Hogan was in the middle of his first divorce, and would last for a total of 11 years, but those 11 years were turbulent to say the least. McDaniel was with Hogan throughout the entire Gawker lawsuit, meaning that it was already known he cheated on her. Then details of a racist rant came to light which McDaniel had to defend her husband on, and when their marriage ended via divorce in 2021, Hogan tweeted out a picture of him and his new girlfriend, as well as saying "I thought everybody already knew" that he was divorced.
Having someone like Hulk Hogan as a family member will obviously cause your life to be a little different to everyone else's. As previously mentioned, the Hogan family even had their own reality TV show in the mid-2000s, but if you were a fan of "Hogan Knows Best," then you'll be sad to learn that, even before The Hulkster's passing, the Bollea family were not on the best of terms.
For Linda, she came out earlier this year and called her ex-husband a liar and a sex addict, as well as saying that her family is falling apart around her. She lashed out at her daughter for supposedly having a drinking problem and not talking to her for years, despite the fact that she had not only gotten married but also had twins. Brooke would fire back on social media, claiming years of mental abuse at the hands of her mother, and that the divorce between her parents left a stain on the family that has never been cleaned up.
Brooke would also not attend her father's wedding where he married Sky Daily in 2023, and as Linda noted, Brooke has completely distanced herself from her family to the point where she is no longer in contact with them, and is simply focusing on her own family. Their son Nick is a different story as he has battled a lot of demons over the years, to the point where his mother still calls him a lovely boy. Nick was at least in contact with his dad as recently as 2023, but was made to serve one year's worth of probation after crashing his dad's car. This was a running theme throughout Nick's teen years and early 20s as his love of fast cars ended up with him spending time in prison for causing injuries via dangerous driving.
If you asked a modern day wrestling fan why so many people hated Hulk Hogan in the years leading up to his death, there would be enough answers to fill a top 10 list. However, for all of the lies he told over the years, most of those ended up being more comical than they were destructive. Tales of wrestling 400 days in one year due to the time difference between the United States and Japan, fighting in MMA promotions that didn't exist until decades later, and being approached on multiple occasions to be the bassist in both The Rolling Stones and Metallica are all told more in jest than anything. However, the main thing that destroyed Hogan's good will with the fans was his racist rant.
On July 24, 2015, exactly ten years before he passed away, The National Enquirer released the transcript of a racism-filled rant that Hogan went on years earlier, where he voiced his displeasure about the fact that his daughter Brooke was dating a black man. After saying that he had pumped nearly $3 million into her music career, to which he called his own daughter a jacka**, Hogan stated that he is a racist, and that if Brooke was to date a black man, he would prefer it if that man was an 8-foot tall n****r worth $100 million like an NBA player. He rounded off by saying "I guess we're all a little racist," to which everyone who read the transcript and heard the audio replied "no, no we're not."
Hogan was later scrubbed from the WWE history books, and went on a media tour to try and repair his image by claiming that he simply used the language he was brought up with, but that didn't really help either. Wrestling fans have long memories, and whenever WWE tried to incorporate Hogan in any form, they would remind the company that they didn't care about his accomplishments, how important he was for the business, and that wrestling in North America wouldn't look the way it is without him. He alienated an entire race with a hate-filled speech that stained his life forever.
Time will always catch up to people, even those who have proclaimed for decades that they are immortal, and that's what happened to Hulk Hogan when he passed away on July 24. However, his passing had actually become a point of discussion in the weeks and months leading up to it thanks to his close friend Bubba The Love Sponge.
Bubba had publicly stated in June 2025 that Hogan had been rushed to hospital due to suffering from heart failure, and that he was very close to dying. These reports were quickly dismissed as inaccurate rumors as PWInsider had it told to them that the reason why Hogan was in hospital was related to a neck surgery he had several weeks earlier. Hogan famously had multiple issues with his spine and legs after years of delivering his trademark leg drop on people, which over time caused him to have multiple surgeries on his back and neck in order for him to get around.
In December 2010, Hogan underwent spinal fusion surgery which allowed him to get back in the ring for a handful of matches in TNA towards the back end of 2011 and early 2012, but this surgery was in fact the seventh time he had any a procedure of some sort to cure his back problems. Hogan claimed that he had six operations over a period of 19 months before the spinal fusion surgery that did the trick, with each surgery only giving him short-term relief before feeling a lot worse over time. This led to a $50 million malpractice lawsuit being filed against the Laser Spinal Institute in 2013, with Hogan seeking financial compensation for having to go under the knife so many times.
In the end, Hogan's back problems weren't what killed him, and his now-widow Sky Daily confirmed that the neck surgery he had in 2025 wasn't related to any other health problems he was dealing with at the time.
