Hulk Hogan went from being best known as a professional wrestling icon to being seen as an infamous racist overnight last month when a recording of him making racist comments in 2008 surfaced online. Almost immediately, Hogan was dropped from his contract with WWE and he’s been on a downward media spiral ever since. Now, Hogan is speaking out for the first time since the scandal broke and sharing that he was in a dangerous mental state when he said the infamous n-word.
In a recent interview with “Good Morning America,” Hogan claims that he was in a terrible mental state when he made the racist comments in a 2008 sex tape in which he used the n-word to describe a Black man his daughter, Brooke Hogan, was dating at the time.
“I was at the lowest point of my life, to the point where I wanted to kill myself, you know?” Hogan said, before confirming he was suicidal.
“And I was really mad at my daughter, really for no reason. I was upset over a situation that happened between she and her boyfriend, and I had no idea I was being taped,” Hogan added.
He went on to say that, despite his racist remarks, he’s not a racist man.
“I’m not a racist but I never should have said what I said. It was wrong. I’m embarrassed by it,” Hogan shared.
He tried to explain that he “inherited” the word during his youth in the rough streets of Tampa, Florida, where he says the word was used regularly.
“People need to realize that you inherit things from your environment. And where I grew up was south Tampa, Port Tampa, and it was a really rough neighborhood, very low income. And all my friends, we greeted each other saying that word. The word was just thrown around like it was nothing,” Hogan said.
Hogan says that he’s forgiven himself, but he asks that fans please forgive him, as well.
“Oh, my gosh. Please forgive me. Please forgive me,” he said. “I think if you look at the whole picture of who Hulk Hogan is, you can see over all the years that there’s not a racist bone in my body,” Hogan said.
“I’m a nice guy. It’s not, you know, not the Hulk Hogan that rips a shirt off and bang, bang, bang, slams giants, you know? I’m Terry Bollea,” he added.
Hogan later added that he believes that everyone deserves a second chance in life.
“If everybody at their lowest point was judged on one thing they said and let’s just say in high school, you may have said one bad thing and all of a sudden, your whole career was wiped out today because of something you said 10 or 20 years ago, it’d be a sad world. People get better everyday. People get better,” Hogan said.
Well, Hogan may have apologized, but the WWE still has yet to reinstate his contract. Although he’s hopeful to get back into wrestling, for now, Hogan is focusing on a $100 million lawsuit.
