The racist imbroglio that has engulfed Hulk Hogan stemmed from his childhood on the mean streets of South Tampa, he says, and led him into a suicidal depression.
In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Hogan — the iconic wrestling persona of the man born as Terry Bollea — apologized for dropping racial slurs in the “pillow talk” segment of a secretly recorded sex tape. Bollea said he was angry at his daughter, and was referring to her boyfriend as the n-word.
“The environment I grew up in — all my white friends, all my black friends — you would hear the word on a daily basis,” Hogan said. “When they would greet me in the morning, that’s what they’d say to me. ‘Good morning, so-and-so.’”
The fiasco caused Vince McMahon and the WWE to fire Hogan, erasing all mention of him on their website and in their Hall of Fame.
“Everything I’ve done, my whole career and my whole life, it’s like it never happened,” Hogan said. “It’s like I never existed.”
Hogan replied yes when asked point blank if he had contemplated suicide. The icon then described a scene where he sat despondent in his bathroom.
“I was completely broken and destroyed and said, ‘What’s the easiest way out of this?’ I mean, I was lost,” he said.
Hogan is now suing Gawker Media, which published excerpts from the sex tape, for a reported $100 million. That trial is set for next spring.
As for a message to his fans, Hogan said: “Oh my gosh, please forgive me. Please forgive me. I’m a nice guy. I’m not the Hulk Hogan that rips his shirt off — bang, bang, bang — and slams giants. I’m Terry Bollea. I’m just a normal man.”