Hulk Hogan Almost Stopped Eating His Vitamins And Saying His Prayers

Hulk Hogan Almost Stopped Eating His Vitamins and Saying His Prayers

Growing up as a kid I was a huge professional wrestling fan. Ultimate Warrior, Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Hulk Hogan were my favorite wrestlers to watch on Saturday nights. I couldn’t get enough of it! I truly was a Hulkamaniac and still hate Hogan’s arch nemesis, Andre the Giant, to this day. As I grew up, I stopped keeping track of Hulk Hogan and was surprised to see him back on television. He wasn’t wrestling on TV; he had his own reality show, Hogan Knows Best.It was then that I found out his life wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.  He has a son who killed a friend in an auto accident, a wife at the time who was an alcoholic, and a spoiled-rotten daughter. Apparently, Hogan had an affair with another woman while taping the show. So being the great person that his ex-wife is, she pulled out the divorce papers on the TV set of their reality show and embarrassed him in front of thousands of people. That was the beginning of almost the end for Hogan. Afterwards, Hogan went on a drug-raged binge and almost committed suicide. It was a phone call from Laila Ali that saved him from becoming just another statistic. Hogan is set to release a tell-all book which focuses on his personal life including the last few tumultuous years of his life.

Hulk Hogan joined WQAM in Miami to talk about his new book that reveals a lot of secrets, how he has kept it together in not taking out his ex-wife’s 18 year old boyfriend, and him hitting a low point in his life after learning of his ex-wife’s relationship.

On his new book that reveals a lot of secrets:

“Big-O-mania that is what is going on my brother.  I had to set the record straight.  I couldn’t play the tabloid game with the ex and her lawyers and publicist after they raw beat me to death.  I remained quiet for so long I had to finally speak up.  All my friends and partners ware saying that: ‘If you don’t say something you are not even going to have a career left’.  Finally I spoke up and it didn’t let up.  It kept coming and the tabloid stuff every week, he tried to kill me, and he is stalking my 18 year old boyfriend, and he is the biggest drug addict in the world. So finally said that I am going to write this book and set the record straight and let people know too.  I crashed and burned and I lost everything in a short amount of time.  Financially I burned and I lost my family but I wrote this book also to tell people hey man I know its tough but hang in there.  People are good, life is good, don’t give up, just hang in there things will get better.”

On how he has kept it together in not taking out his ex-wife’s 18 year old boyfriend:

“Well you know a lot of my friends were asking me that because over on the other side of the state, directly across from you guys in Tampa.  I grew up there and went to school there, college and lived there basically my whole life until I came to Miami for a year and a half.  All of a sudden that whole mentality and all of my friends are going: Well hey Hulk, the house you grew up in, the $20 million home, your 52 year old wife is sleeping in your bed with an 18 year old child that went to school with your children.  He is driving your cars all over.  Everybody sees him.  He is driving your power boats.  He is driving your motorcycles.  Aren’t you going to do anything?  I had to make a choice man to either become a statistic or get busy dying or get busy living.  I took the high road man.  I had to because I just couldn’t go down that road because there has been enough devastation in my family and life already that I just could not end things that way.  I had to take the high road.”

On him hitting a low point in his life after learning of his ex-wife’s relationship:

“Well the high road was after all of that. Yeah brother I had no idea that ‘til death do us apart or for better or for worse, I didn’t know that some people weren’t serious about it. So I never dreamed I would be divorced and apparently Linda wasn’t serious because at times it got rough. I thought that we would hang in there and make it but she was attracted to some other things.  At the time when I got hit with it I finally had a primetime show on a real network at eight o’clock. I just got killed with all of the media and the negative stuff.  On the set on the first day in front of a thousand people in front of the sound stage, Linda picked her spot and hit me with divorce papers in front of my son and I lost it. I just broke down and when I went home to Florida I walked in a house and you know little things that you don’t realize will really push you over the edge.  When I opened the door and my dogs didn’t come running to greet me.  They were gone. (Host: You take it for granted.) Yeah and just the dogs weren’t greeting me. My god that really put me over the edge and then I went to walk in all of the closets and Linda’s closet, to see them empty with the clothes gone, that hit me like a sucker punch. I didn’t expect that so I sat in this chair in my bathroom because I couldn’t stand up and shave because my back was so bad.  I had to lay down on the floor halfway through shaving because my back was so bad.  That old wrestling mentality kicked in.  I was staring in the mirrors saying let me have a drink and the next thing I knew the gun that I had, I’d put in the safe many years before because I didn’t want to end up like Phil Hartman. You know Linda was on such a roll that I didn’t want to end up that way.  I was worried about that that all of the sudden this gun was in my hands.

I don’t remember getting it.  I don’t remember getting the gun.  That is how messed up I was so I sat and stared in the mirror for two days playing with the gun, hypnotizing myself, touching my face, hitting my teeth with it and anything could have happened.  And then Laila Ali called saying we love you. My god you were so depressed when you were hit with divorce papers on the set in front of everybody. You walked out just crying and so messed up. We are worried about you.  We love you.  Please come back to L.A. and go to church with us. That snapped me out of it.  I didn’t realize that you could get close to the edge and not really know what you are doing. I crashed and burned brother that is why I wrote the book. If I can pull a nose up on this thing. I realized that life is good and people are good.  Don’t give up. I know times are tough but I was in a relationship where I thought that it was normal to yell and scream and to hear my wife: F this and F that and yell at my kids all the time. I thought that was normal. I had no idea that being isolated from my friends no one would come over that manipulation that would make you think this crazy stuff normal and it is not. That is the first thing that I did was apologize to both of my children.  Oh my god I am so sorry that yelling and screaming at people is not normal.”