Hulk Hogan, who turns 70 today, has been a former wrestler for just over ten years: his very long career lasted from 1977 until 2012 and coincided with the transformation of the discipline into a form of global entertainment. In the ring, Hogan was the main protagonist of that ascent, becoming the wrestler par excellence, gaining enormous popularity and creating boundless merchandising around him. The specialized sites registered 171 different ones action figure representing him, his look with long blond mustache, tan, bandana and tank top is recognized on various continents.
Today, at 70, Hulk Hogan still dresses like this, still shows himself working with weights in the gym and advertises karaoke nights at one of its clubs on the beach in Clearwater, Florida. He recently announced his third engagement to a 45-year-old yoga teacher, after pointing to past divorces, an expensive lifestyle and poor financial choices as the main reasons for an economic condition that is not as prosperous as it seems. would expect from someone who has been moving huge amounts of money for a few decades.
Hogan was the main protagonist of the affirmation in the 80s of the World Wrestling Federation (then WWF, today WWE, in practice a monopolist in the sector) first nationally and then internationally. He holds various records and an endless string of successes within that and other federations: in wrestling, winners and losers of matches are decided at the table, based on a script, but those primates are testament to his great and enduring popularity. He also tried a film career, acting in about fifteen films: none of them very successful, except for a small part in the film Rocky III by my friend Sylvester Stallone.
With singer Cyndi Lauper and Mr. T in 1985 (AP Photo/Suzanne Vlamis)
Terry Eugene Bollea, his real name, was born in 1953 in Augusta, Georgia, the son of an Italian-American bricklayer (Hogan’s grandfather was an Italian immigrant from the province of Vercelli) and a teacher of Franco-Scottish origins. When he was less than two years old the family moved to Florida, from sixteen he began to be passionate about wrestling and in particular the wrestler Superstar Billy Graham, whose look he would later copy, with long hair and a mustache. He was noticed by some impresarios for his size: he is about two meters tall and during his career he had a healthy weight of about 135 kilos. He began fighting in 1977 and in 1979 joined the newly formed WWF group, where his first encounters with another wrestling legend, André the Giant, immediately made him famous.
From 1980 he was part of another wrestling circuit and at the same time took part in the New Japan Pro-Wrestling, the Japanese league. Since 1983 Vince McMahon, the impresario who transformed wrestling into a real entertainment industry, focused on him as a leading character. In the classic division of wrestling between good and bad characters, Hulk Hogan was part of the former, represented the classic American hero and was credited with vague Irish ancestry (Irish-Americans were the second largest ethnic group in the United States). The so-called Hulkamania began in those years, the period in which Hogan was the most popular, successful and followed character in that world.
In a show at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1985. (AP Photo)
He began to dress in yellow and red colors, he began to have a series of rituals, recurring phrases and special moves that became recognized and appreciated signs. Most of her meetings developed according to a similar and repeated plot: the public waited for the various moments and participated in the ritual. Upon entering the ring he tore off his shirt, posed showing off his muscles, and put a hand to his ear to listen to the roar of the audience. During the fights he faced wrestlers who played the part of the villains and who almost always started by winning and scoring various hits, almost knocking him out. towards the opponent and then signaled no with his fingers: here a defined sequence of blows and special moves started, which underwent some variations from match to match and which ended with the so-called running leg dropa jump on the opponent on the ground hitting him with the legs: it was the finishing move.
After about ten years, in 1993, the script that was always the same and the difficulty in finding new variations on the theme even in relations with the opponents led to a certain decline in the popularity of Hulk Hogan, who therefore initially decided to take a break from fighting to devote himself to cinema and television. Involvement also contributed to the decision in a steroid use scandal which proved to be widespread in the WWE: Hogan admitted to having used it. In 1994, however, he signed with a competing league, the World Championship Wrestling of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. Here Hogan managed to relaunch his career with a reckless operation: he transformed into Hollywood Hulk Hogan and became a negative character. He grew a dark beard, abandoned yellow and red for black and white, and became popular again.
With Muhammad Ali and pianist and singer Liberace, in 1985 (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)
In the long run, the operation also managed to stimulate a certain nostalgia for the “good” Hulk Hogan in the public and from 2000, with his return to the WWF, the character was recovered and continued to be the protagonist in the ring until 2012. Hogan remained all inside the show, without fighting, until 2015, when he was fired for publishing some recordings of his private conversations in which he expressed himself in strongly racist terms. After a few years of exclusion and various attempts at remedial interviews, not always successful, he has returned to the “old glories” of the WWE.
Meanwhile, in 2012 he had sued the popular American news site Gawker for the publication of a video in which he was shown having sex with his then-wife of a friend: he asked for 100 million dollars in damages, the jury in first instance convicted Gawker to pay him 115, then before the appeal the parties agreed for 31. In recent years he has cyclically complained of health problems, especially concerning his back, linked to his long activity in the rings.