Why I’m not dancing on Hulk Hogan’s grave
Arguably the most famous professional wrestler of all-time, Hulk Hogan, died in July at the age of 71. His death followed a long struggle with myriad health issues stemming from his time in the ring, including multiple extensive surgeries, some of which were botched.
News of Hogan’s death was met with a mixture of reactions. Naturally, there were plenty of tributes that celebrated his time as a performer and focused on the character of Hulk Hogan over the man who played him, whose name was Terry Bollea.
On the other side were the obituaries that focused on Bollea over Hogan. And unlike the red-and-yellow superhero character he played, Bollea was, to put it charitably, complicated.
The downfall in the public’s assessment of the Hulkster truly began in 2012, during the infamous trial in which Bollea, with the help of tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sued and destroyed the website Gawker over their publication of a snippet of a sextape Hogan made. Not long after, more private footage was released, this time of Hogan using the n-word while talking about his daughter’s dating life. In the video he declared himself “racist to a point” and then, later, issued a widely panned non-apology.
As wrestling podcasts grew in popularity and the public gained more insight into the inner workings of the business, Bollea’s character was further impeached. Jesse Ventura shared a story from the 80s of Bollea, by far the top-earning star in the industry at the time, turning stool pigeon on wrestlers who were trying to unionize the locker room. Countless other performers have shared stories of Hogan lying in his anecdotes or refusing to take losses that might have helped other wrestlers make names for themselves.
And, of course, there was the infamous steroid trial in the early 1990s in which the public learned there might have been more behind Hogan’s physique than vitamins and prayers.
Then, in 2024, Hogan appeared at the Republican National Convention to endorse Donald Trump for President, a man whose first term was rife with corruption, scandal, and violence and whose second term is already even worse.
All of this does paint a pretty bad picture. And it’s more than fair to include it in any assessment of the man, before or after his death. So widely known were Bollea’s deep flaws that, during his last televised appearance for the WWE — the company he helped build — he was heavily booed. And some of the negative obituaries have reflected this attitude. The podcast The Majority Report, for instance, published a Hogan post-mortem originally titled “Rest in Piss”.
This, to me, seems a bit much. I’m not here to demand that anyone provide sympathy they don’t feel, but there are degrees of villainy in America, and we sometimes lose that nuance in conversations about people like Hogan.
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For as bad as he sometimes — maybe even often — could be, Terry Bollea was not Henry Kissinger, Adolf Hitler, or even Donald Trump. The hearts he broke with his hateful comments and lack of remorse don’t add up to the harm those men have done. Casting him as an irredeemable villain who we should be gleeful is gone strikes me as unwarranted and divisive. His death does not further the cause of justice, but celebrating it arguably drives another needless wedge between people.
Bollea was selfish, that much is a given. And he was, by his own admission, a racist, but even his comments there are sometimes sensationalized. He expressed an ugly thought about who he wanted his daughter to date — a thought for which he ought to have repented — but it was unfortunately not a thought that’s completely uncommon in families with children who date interracially.
Take it beyond Bollea/Hogan. What are we to do with America’s millions of ignorant, stubborn, casually racist fathers and uncles? Should we celebrate and say “good riddance” to all of them when their card is punched? Maybe so, but maybe there’s also room to admit that flippantly using a slur in a private conversation isn’t as bad as, say, committing genocide.
Naturally, even the most strident Hogan haters can admit that. But it doesn’t always come through in the way we talk, or in the headlines we use to attract clicks and attention. Instead something much nastier comes across, a puritanical kind of scolding. And this attitude, this notion that people must be righteous in all their thoughts and deeds, public and private, is part of what has alienated so much of middle America from left politics.
It’s the kind of attitude people like Trump point to when he says, “If they can do this to me, they can do it to anyone.” It’s a cheap lie in Trump’s case, but a lot of people do think the left is simply out to get them. For people who aren’t smart to all of Hogan’s flaws, hearing some of those negative reactions may have been alarming. And maybe it just isn’t worth spending that kind of energy to ensure an accurate accounting of the life of Hulk Hogan.
Had Hogan been part of a more consequential field, maybe his flaws would have done more damage, and we’d be right to wish him into hell. His attitudes, his racism, and his anti-union stance are all very dangerous in the hands of someone like President Trump. But Terry Bollea just wasn’t that consequential.
If anything, he became quite pitiable in his later years. He was badly broken down physically, and his public perception went from being a real-life cartoon superhero idolized by millions into a racist old coot. There’s not a ton of reason to believe Bollea made any real effort to change, and that makes him even harder to forgive. He had multiple chances to redeem himself and he chose not to take them. He blurred the lines between his real self and his character to the point where many fans wanted nothing to do with either.
It’s a sad story, but for whatever reason, I’m inclined to afford him more grace than others on the left would. I know that there are far too many in America like him: Racist, angry, confused, turned around by FOX News or immoral parents or any number of other social factors. And I hold out hope that there are ways to reach at least some of these people. The world we’ve constructed is harsh and unforgiving, but people can harbor abhorrent attitudes without being fundamentally wicked. In the words of the late Michael Brooks, “Be ruthless with systems, be kind with people.”
I have no idea if Brooks would agree with my take here, and I don’t invoke him to suggest he would. But to me, while Hogan’s flaws were gross, even contemptible, I don’t know if they make him irredeemable — even if he never chose to redeem himself. People should be judged on the impact they had on society, and while the surge in wrestling’s popularity ushered in by Hogan almost certainly contributed to the dumbing down of America, that isn’t what people are criticizing.
Obviously, obituaries that leave out the complicated bits are just childish, mushy, and simplistic. And no one should feel compelled to give grace to someone like Hogan. But maybe dancing on the grave of someone a lot of people love, whose impact in the grand scheme was really not that significant, isn’t all that helpful, either.
The reaction that feels most appropriate to me is simple indifference. That’s what I felt when I heard the news. A Seinfeldian, “That’s a shame.” And for someone like Terry Bollea, who lived and breathed for stardom and attention, maybe that’s the cruelest fate of all.
