Terry Gene Bollea, known to the world as Hulk Hogan, has departed the squared circle of life at the age of 71, though his leathery hide suggested a man who’d wrestled time itself to a draw. The news of his passing, like a folding chair to the skull, leaves us reeling in the neon-lit amphitheatre of nostalgia.
Hogan, the peroxide colossus of professional wrestling, was a figure so outsized he seemed to have been sculpted by a deity with a penchant for melodrama. Born in Augusta, Georgia, he transformed from a mere mortal into a cultural juggernaut, his bandana-clad cranium and handlebar moustache becoming totems of an era when men in spandex could sell out arenas.
His rise in the 1980s under Vince McMahon’s WWF (now WWE) was less a career than a cartoonish conquest, fuelled by “Hulkamania”—a phenomenon that convinced millions to “train, say their prayers and eat their vitamins,” though one suspects the vitamins were suspiciously anabolic. With his 24-inch pythons (a term he coined for biceps that defied Euclidean geometry), Hogan body-slammed opponents like André the Giant while captivating audiences with a charisma that was part carnival barker, part evangelical preacher. His catchphrases—“Whatcha gonna do, brother?”—echoed like scripture for a generation raised on Saturday morning spectacles.
Yet, beneath the tan and tassels, Hogan was a paradox: a scripted hero whose real-life foibles—divorces, scandals, a leaked tape that exposed unsavoury rhetoric—revealed a man as flawed as any jobber he pinned. His later years were a curious sideshow; reality TV stints, a ill-fated foray into pasta restaurants, and a penchant for litigation kept him in the public eye, if not always the spotlight. He oscillated between revered icon and punchline, a relic of a simpler time when good guys wore yellow and bad guys got suplexed.
His return to WWE’s embrace, post-controversy, was less a redemption arc than a nod to the eternal kayfabe of fame. Hogan leaves behind a legacy as enduring as it is gaudy: a reminder that authenticity in wrestling is as real as the blood capsules. Survived by his fans, his ex-wives, and a closet full of tearaway shirts, he exits stage left, still flexing.