{"id":50775,"date":"2025-07-24T22:12:32","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T03:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50775"},"modified":"2025-07-24T22:12:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T03:12:32","slug":"happy-trails-hulkamania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50775","title":{"rendered":"Happy trails, Hulkamania"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Meeting the Hulkster in 2005 at a car show, coincidentally wearing this shirt. He greeted me “nice shirt, brother” <\/em> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Countless sauces<\/a>: \u201cHulk Hogan\u201d Terry Bollea passes away at the age of 71<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Long ago, one of my closest friends and I were bullshitting about the random things that bros do, and at one point we talked about, how would we feel when Hulk Hogan inevitably dies? Nobody lives forever, and although we weren\u2019t really so much die-hard Hulkamaniacs so much as we more or less liked him in this ironic manner because he was just so over-the-top and often larger than life, \u00a0we still were fans of the guy that basically embodied professional wrestling.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We knew that his time would eventually come, and although we\u2019ve witnessed countless professional wrestlers from our childhood pass away from various reasons, there weren\u2019t many who were going to be at the tier, that of someone on the echelon of the industry as Hulk Hogan was, and we pondered on what would happen around the business, and how we might possibly feel when it inevitably happens.<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Over the span of the last week, the world saw the passing of Malcolm-Jamal Warner AKA Theo Huxtable, and days later, Ozzy Osbourne, the so-called Prince of Darkness. And is often popularly murmured upon hearing the deaths of celebrities, it always comes in threes<\/em>.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      In one of the group chats I share with many of my closest friends, I specifically mentioned that a probable high likelihood name to be the third, was Hulk Hogan.\u00a0 Leading up to today, it was known that he had gone to the hospital, but it was very ambiguous and this kind of gross game of information being spread on his condition, where some parties were spreading that he was on his death bed and didn\u2019t have long to live, while others proclaimed that all was well and that recovery was oncoming; but when a 71-year old former professional wrestler of the rockin\u2019 80\u2019s era goes to the hospital, there\u2019s always the possibility that things are going to go tits up.<\/span><\/p>\n

      Unfortunately for me, wrestling fans, and all those whom might be interested, I just so happened to be right in this case.\u00a0 And as much as I often extol the wondrous feeling of being right, this is one of those cases where I don\u2019t feel any sense of satisfaction at it because in the end, the world lost an icon, whether people were a fan of him or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. As is often times the case whenever someone of a degree of celebrity passes away, I become fairly judgmental towards the parties that spout their condolences and keep them in their thoughts and prayers, primarily when I know that at some point(s), they\u2019ve turned their backs on the departed. To me, their sudden returns to grace come off as disingenuous and attempts to piggy back sympathy and attention to themselves and it often disgusts me when I see people pulling 180s on guys like Hulk Hogan, just because they passed away.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        I understand why a lot of people cancelled Hulk Hogan over the years; him getting caught dropping the hard-R on a recording was enough for many.\u00a0 His absolute shitshow lawsuit against Gawker Media, revolving around the fact that he was involved in some bizarre cuckolding scenario with a Tampa shock-jock and a sex tape \u201cleaked\u201d didn\u2019t really help his general public image.\u00a0 And of course, who could forget him pledging his allegiance to the orange turd in the 2024 election, complete with him showing up to the RNC, cutting a pro-turd promo, and ripping his shirt off on stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

        I get it, man hasn\u2019t been remotely close to the bastion of a paragon that prime 80\u2019s Hulk Hogan was, encouraging children to take their vitamins and say their prayers, since his retirement, and I wouldn\u2019t challenge or argue with anyone who decided to cancel post-career Hulk Hogan.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Yeah, I don\u2019t dig the hard-R, and his over-the-top alignment to the right.\u00a0 The Gawker trial was personally endlessly amusing, and I probably made no less than 13 posts about it during its lifespan.\u00a0 Honestly, Hulk Hogan, or Terry Bollea, or whatever you want to call him, clearly wasn\u2019t a perfect human being, but quite frankly neither are any of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

        If I decided to cancel every single celebrity that had done something offensive, then I probably wouldn\u2019t be a fan of anyone.\u00a0 If I decided to cancel any random people that I know, friends, colleagues or otherwise, for something that they\u2019ve done that\u2019s slighted me, I\u2019d probably become a bigger island of a man than I already feel like sometimes.\u00a0 And if I held myself to the same criteria as those I should<\/em> be cancelling, I\u2019d have cancelled myself probably 168 times.<\/span><\/p>\n

        The point is, yes some of the shit that Terry Bollea has done has been less than socially acceptable to people like minded to me, but there\u2019s always been this part of me that always gave Hulk Hogan, as well as lots of other people a little more leeway and resistance to cancellation than others might, because I often think about people in the aggregate, and if I cancel a Hulk Hogan, then I probably ought to cancel 58 other guys that might have similar rap sheets.<\/span><\/p>\n

        I\u2019m not saying what bad discretions that Hulk Hogan may have done are okay or acceptable, but I\u2019m just not going to crucify and cancel everyone who conducts themselves in manners that I disagree with, because we\u2019re all imperfect human beings and frankly I don\u2019t want to expend the energy to consciously cancel other people.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Furthermore, a guy like Hulk Hogan, he\u2019s built some equity with me personally, in the sense that he was basically the living embodiment of the professional wrestling industry.\u00a0 Yeah, the whole business used to be something that I kept my fandom about under wraps, but it\u2019s something that has outlasted countless other interests in my life, and I take some joy in how much more acceptable and mainstream it is these days, and the whole carny shitshow of an industry never would have gotten to where it did without the contributions of Hulk Hogan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        So yeah, I\u2019m not going to turn my back on him for discretions that I think a lot more people might have in common than they\u2019d care to admit, and it did punch me in the gut when I found out about it, and it has been living rent-free in my head all fucking day, to where I was itching to be able to sit down and get to write this in real time, and not a post where I write it as retroactively as I can.<\/span><\/p>\n

        I\u2019m not going to say that I was the biggest Hulkamaniac in the world, but I was still a fan.\u00a0 As a kid, I ate his shit up, believing that he was getting his ass beat by Andre the Giant, Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter and everyone else he ever feuded with, and was always blindsided when he kicked out of their finishers, Hulked up and ended the match three punches, a big boot and a leg drop later.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Even as I grew and learned, I was still amused by his whole schtick, and even though it was kind of lame, there was a comfort in familiarity in seeing him do it again and again throughout the years.<\/span><\/p>\n

        The nWo and the birth of Hollywood Hogan was pretty groundbreaking for me to digest, and it really was something of a renaissance, as he worked evil for the first time in history, but by then, I was older and wiser and more cynical, and well, Hulk Hogan was older then too. His whole sinking with WCW was an ironically hilarious ride, as he reverted back to yellow and red Hulkamania, FUNB Hogan, and back to nWo for sporadic stints.<\/span><\/p>\n

        His later years in wrestling were pretty awful, but there was still something to be said about a man who kept lacing up his boots and getting in the ring and taking F5s from Brock Lesnar, or giving an extremely rare tapout L to Kurt Angle.\u00a0 As much as he was accused of gatekeeping and being selfish, man did give back to those who were the most worthy of getting his rubs.<\/span><\/p>\n

        I didn\u2019t really follow his TNA career into ultimately true retirement, and by then, shit like his hard-R scandal, and then Gawker overshadowed his wrestling legacy.\u00a0 But I was always amazed at how the man simply knew how to stay relevant and not stray from the spotlight for ever too long, and even up to his passing, the man always managed to popup somewhere, every few months, and kept reminding the world of who he was and that he still existed.\u00a0 Whether it was his clown show at the RNC, the debut of Real American Beer, or his hilarious bomb at the Netflix premiere of RAW, if there was one absolute truth, it was that Hulk Hogan always knew how to remain relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n

        In the end, you didn\u2019t really have to like the guy, but I do believe that it was pretty undeniable that he was a force of nature when it came to his footprints on wrestling, pop-culture, and celebrity status.\u00a0 The man was truly larger than life, and especially in the professional wrestling industry, I would say, is one of the most monumental passings of an icon there could be, for at least three different generations.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Rest in peace, Terry Bollea.\u00a0 Hulkamania will <\/em>live forever.\u00a0 Brother.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Countless sauces: \u201cHulk Hogan\u201d Terry Bollea passes away at the age of 71 Long ago, one of my closest friends and I were bullshitting about the random things that bros do, and at one point we talked about, how would we feel when Hulk Hogan inevitably dies? Nobody lives forever, and although we weren\u2019t really … Continue reading Happy trails, Hulkamania<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,171,179,129,83,69,54],"class_list":["post-50775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-death","tag-eulogy","tag-hulkamania","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-television","tag-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50777,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50775\/revisions\/50777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}