14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of July, WWE cut absolutely all ties with wrestling legend Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea), after a transcript emerged of him admitting to being a racist and using racial slurs in reference to daughter Brooke’s then-boyfriend.
The transcript was from an unauthorized recording of a romantic encounter between Hulk and a female lover, which was leaked to the media some years ago. Gawker ran almost 2 minutes of the video on their website, and Hogan sued.
The case has been in and out of court since, with the transcript being introduced as testimony at some point. Hogan is now claiming Gawker leaked it to discredit him even more, but Gawker strongly denies it, saying he has no one but himself to blame.
Brooke Hogan is still in her father’s corner
The moment word got out that the transcript would be published, all mentions of Hogan’s name on the WWE website were deleted without as much as an explanation.
WWE waited until the compromising piece of evidence came out to make the announcement: they would no longer be associated with him because of what had transpired in the press. Hogan issued a formal apology, saying that, even though he admitted on tape to being “a little bit racist,” he was anything but.
Still, he was sorry for saying those things and he took full responsibility for his mistake. It wasn’t representative of who he was as a person, but it was his - and for that, he apologized.
Daughter Brooke stood by him by penning a poem in which she argued her father was “only human after all,” so he was bound to make mistakes because he wasn’t perfect. This was one of them.
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight to promote her upcoming, 5-track EP “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” (video below), she tells the same story: what Hogan did was regrettable but it wasn’t as bad as the world made it look.
Hogan’s not racist, he has black friends
A slightly amused Brooke insists that her father is not racist and that the moment that was captured on tape (and then on the leaked transcript) was him at his lowest, saying mean things he didn’t actually believe, just to vent.
Hogan was upset with his daughter, so he took it out on her boyfriend, by saying he wasn’t good enough for her because he was a “N-word.”
“My dad's best friends with Mr. T, he's best friends with Dennis Rodman, he's not racist,” the 28-year-old singer tells the e-zine. Plus, it’s not like she doesn’t know what it means to have people say stuff about her that might offend.
“You know, it would be offensive. But this is something that we have to put a stop to everyday, because I'll be honest with you, I've had a black guy call me a honkey, and I've also been told that white people smell like bologna. I don't take offense to it, I just laughed at it,” she says.