My Life Outside the Ring

by Hogan, Hulk

  Better still, with the help of Eric Bischoff I started to make far more money than I ever made with Vince and the WWF. I had a bigger cut of every T-shirt and piece of merchandise that was sold, I was sharing in revenues from broadcasts, I had a bigger cut of the gate at the arenas. I could look out at a stadium full of people who were there to see me and know that I was getting my fair share of that massive revenue that was walking in the door every night. That’s a tremendous feeling.

  Like I said before: All I wanted to do was to give my family every opportunity to have whatever they desired in life. Ever since that first moment when I held baby Brooke in my arms, this was all for them. To know that I was going to be able to give them more than ever? That was a rush.

  Chapter 12

  Behind Closed Doors

  While the shadow of steroids hung over my public persona through the mid-1990s, a much darker cloud hung over my personal life.

  On Christmas Day 1994, a process server handed me a letter from a woman named Kate Kennedy. In that letter she claimed that I had sexually assaulted her, and she demanded three things: that I write an apology and publish it in USA Today; that I complete some sort of sexual rehabilitation class; and that I pay her one million dollars.

  Some of this hit the press. A lot of it became all too familiar to radio listeners in the Minneapolis area, where Jesse Ventura had a radio show back then and just beat this whole situation to death over the airwaves. The public humiliation of being charged with something like that wasn’t the worst part, though.

  The worst part was the thorn it drove into my marriage.

  It went down like this: Kate Kennedy worked for and managed the merchandise at Hulk Hogan’s Pastamania, a fast-food restaurant I had opened at the Mall of America. It was one of many ventures I lent my name to as a way to keep money flowing in without getting hit over the head with a chair. I knew a day would eventually come when I could no longer wrestle. I wanted to be prepared.

  After one of the WCW’s big Monday Nitro matches in Minneapolis, Kate Kennedy and her fiancé, a local police officer, came out partying with a bunch of us. We went to a bar, and I sat in with a local band and played a few tunes. (I still play guitar and bass now and then.) After a while we turned it into a typical wrestler’s night—hitting the hotel for some beers.

  Some time in the wee hours of the morning, Kate and her Minneapolis police officer fiancé called it a night and left. I said good-bye to both of them.

  I remember noticing that we only had about three hours to sleep before we had to catch a flight that morning, so I went back to my hotel room to start packing.

  That’s when Kate showed up again.

  Her lawsuit against me was eventually settled, and part of that settlement involved the signing of confidentiality agreements.

  I can’t get into the details of what happened.

  All I can tell you about is the fallout.

  When I first received that letter from Kate Kennedy’s attorney, I was so scared about how Linda would react that I didn’t tell her. I went for a whole year without telling her. Two Christmases passed. After I went through the second Christmas without smiling, Linda saw how down in the dumps I was and she started pressing me for answers.

  A man can only keep something from his wife for so long. So I finally broke down and told her exactly what happened. I didn’t hold anything back. I let her hear it all.

  At first, Linda was really, really angry with Kate Kennedy. This was a woman Linda had befriended and personally approved to work for Pastamania. She couldn’t believe she was about to put our family through this ordeal.

  Eventually, though, the inevitable happened, and Linda got really angry with me. She threw the word “divorce” around, loud and often, for months on end, and even though Linda didn’t follow through with her threat, not a week went by for the whole rest of our marriage that she didn’t bring up the Kate Kennedy fiasco at least once.

  I don’t blame Linda for being angry. There is no excuse for my getting into a situation like that—no matter what happened in that hotel room.

  But the problem in Linda’s eyes was much bigger than just that incident. When this happened, Linda finally had the proof she had been after for years: proof, at least in her eyes, that all of her long-standing suspicions about me cheating must be true.

  Almost from the outset of our marriage Linda was sure that I was cheating with some girl or another. It never made any sense to me. I’m just not the cheating kind.

  In the early days I met Drew Barrymore in passing at a party once—I think Drew was still a teenager at that point—and Linda accused me of having an affair with her. Can you imagine? Another time in the ’80s, Vince threw a gigantic birthday party for Pat Patterson at the Twin Towers, and right in the middle of dinner someone came up and told me that Cher had sent a limo for me; she was throwing her own big party in Manhattan that night, and she wanted Hulk Hogan to join her. I had never even met Cher, but rather than laughing about how bizarre it was, Linda accused me right then and there of carrying on an affair with Cher. Cher!

  The suspicion and jealousy even affected my career. She got so crazy over this stuff, I was actually afraid to leave home for four or five months to make a movie. I feared that Linda might be gone when I got back. So I turned down some major stuff: the lead in Highlander, the role of Little John in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and through the Baywatch guys I had an offer to make a movie with Pamela Anderson, when she was just red-hot. I really messed that one up. I had gone out and bought a copy of the Playboy magazine she posed in. Before I even had a chance to look at it, Linda saw that and said, “That’s it! There’s no way you’re goin’ to make that movie!” And she threw the Playboy in the trash.

  Of course, I really blew it when I took it out of the trash when Linda wasn’t looking. I hid it in my closet like a teenager—and when I finally pulled it out for a look, Linda just happened to walk in. We fought about that forever.

  It wasn’t just a celebrity thing, either. Whenever a girl was nice to me Linda would get suspicious. Like with Cory Everson, the professional bodybuilder. Cory is one of those real outgoing, touchy, kissy kinds of people, and I was friendly with her husband, Jeff, the editor in chief of Muscle & Fitness magazine. There was absolutely nothing between Cory and me other than friendship—in fact, Cory was friends with Linda, too—but every time we’d see them Linda would go off on me. “You’re screwing her. I know it. You’re having an affair.”

  She did the same thing with the wife of one of our neighbors on Willadel Drive—a woman I rarely even spoke to.

  And get this: Linda even accused me of carrying on an affair with my pal Brutus Beefcake. I swear to God! From the outset of our marriage she insisted that he and I were lovers. She insists the same thing about me and my friend Bubba the Love Sponge, the radio DJ here in Tampa, too.

  I know it sounds funny. It’s completely ridiculous. Not to mention it’s not true! There were plenty of times I tried to brush it off as part of Linda’s weird sense of humor or something. But it wasn’t a joke. None of this was a joke. She thought all of these affairs were real. So I don’t want to make light of it at all.

  Linda’s suspicion—scratch that—her belief that I was cheating was like a hole way down in the hull of a ship. No matter what I did or said to try to patch that hole, the water would keep breaking through.

  As far as I am concerned, until our marriage was almost completely over, I never cheated on Linda. Not once. That’s the God’s honest truth. Unfortunately, the truth was never enough for her.

  The past is the past. I can’t change what happened. Still, it’s hard not to second-guess the way we handled our relationship after 1996.

  There are times when I think, If Linda had divorced me right then and there, it could have saved our children so much pain and anguish. No one should have to live under the stress of their parents’ unhappy marriage.

  That’s me talking now, of course. Back then I didn’t really think i
t was all that bad. As far as I was concerned, my family had lots of happy times. We were living a dream life, in Linda’s dream house, with boats and cars and all the toys that money can buy.

  So we had a few problems. So what? I loved Linda, and I thought she loved me. Why else would Linda stay if not for love?

  Playing the Bad Guy

  In the aftermath of the steroid trial, I decided to use the negative sentiment some of the fans felt toward Hulk Hogan to my advantage in the ring. It was time for a New World Order—to flip this whole game on its head. To shed the red and yellow for nothing but black.

  Playing the heel was easy. I’d spent the whole first part of my career in the bad-guy role. Only now, just like I took this Hulk Hogan character to a whole new level of heroism, painting broader pictures and wilder story arcs than anyone had ever seen in this business, I decided to make Hollywood Hogan the most powerful antihero to ever step foot in an arena.

  It worked. The fans exploded.

  When I made that turn in the summer of ’96, determined to take over the WCW with my nWo partners, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash—two top-notch wrestlers who left the WWF at the beginning of that year—the fans in Daytona started throwing shit into the ring. Just picking up and throwing whatever they could find. They were incensed!

  I had ’em in the palm of my hand. I knew it would go down as one of the greatest story lines in wrestling history, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

  I can’t tell you what a high that is. After all the lows I’d been suffering, that high was addictive. And getting back in that ring week after week was all I wanted to do.

  From that point forward, the WCW’s Monday Nitro beat out the WWF’s Monday Night Raw in the ratings—for eighty-four weeks in a row. I was beating Vince at his own game.

  Refocusing the crowds on this new dark character seemed to almost erase the negative publicity I’d suffered. Too bad it couldn’t erase the physical pain I was suffering every time I came out of an arena.

  Maybe it’s just what happens when you hit your forties. Or maybe that Tombstone that the Undertaker laid on me was the straw that slaughtered the camel’s back. Either way, the old days of going six, seven years at a time without getting hurt enough to require surgery were completely gone. Now, every time I wrestled I’d wind up getting cut on. At the very least I’d have to get my back shot up with steroids—not the muscle-building kind, but the medical kind.

  The pain was so bad in my lower back, I actually had the nerves there burned just to quiet the agony. Doctors would scorch them from about five inches above my belt line all the way down to the crack of my butt—so that whole region would go completely numb. I used to tell people they could hit me with a shovel right there and I wouldn’t feel it.

  I had my knees scoped so many times I accumulated a massive collection of crutches that lined the wall of my gym at the big house—right near the high-tech water-massage table that I’d lie in constantly just to get some relief.

  Wrestling became a part-time deal for me not because I wanted it to, but because my body couldn’t take it.

  After all those years of being on the road 24/7, the best part about all that pain was the fact that I got to stay home. I was glad to spend some real quality time with my kids as they started to grow up. I loved watching them develop their own personalities, and knowing I wasn’t missing all the milestones like I had been those first few years.

  Before long, I got the sense that Linda didn’t know what to do with me hanging around the house all the time. It’s like we never quite figured out how to live together in the same space. We had twenty thousand square feet to work with, so it wasn’t so bad to move around each other and just come together over the kids, but there was part of me that really thought she’d be excited to finally have her husband at home. That didn’t happen. Ever.

  It seemed like I was cramping her style and impinging on her days, even though I was happy to be a good house-husband and chip in and help around the house, especially with the kids. I installed a washer and dryer in the gym so I could take care of my own gym clothes, and I would always be the one to get up and make breakfast for Brooke and Nick before school when I could—so Linda could sleep in if she wanted.

  For some reason that became a big deal for me. I’d always cook this massive breakfast with eggs and bacon and pancakes and cereal and fruit, and serve it up to Brooke and Nick in the mornings. It was real important to me that they always had a home-cooked breakfast. Even that seemed to annoy Linda.

  “Just let ’em pour themselves a bowl of cereal in the morning,” she’d complain.

  I couldn’t do that. It was just one of my quirks. Like if someone doesn’t close the microwave door all the way, I have to go over and close it. I just can’t stand that microwave door being left open, you know? I always had to cook that big breakfast for the kids.

  As annoyed as Linda would get at having me hang around the house all the time, though, she wouldn’t want me to leave. “You’ve gotta leave for a whole week to go shoot a commercial? Why can’t they shoot it in two days?” There was always something.

  She even started complaining about how much money I was making. I’d book a commercial or an appearance or an event, and she’d ask about it, and no matter how much it was paying she would say, “That’s it? You should be making a million bucks for doing something like that. Can’t you get more money?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Linda. You’re welcome to get a job anytime. I’ll help you launch whatever career you want!”

  Of course, that never happened.

  Her complaining all the time made me real nervous—I was almost always scared that she was going to up and leave me. When I say I was crazy for her, I really think I was a little bit crazy for her. There were so many times when I’d be in the wrestling ring, going through the motions, playing to the crowd, creating this frenzy, doing all the things I know how to do, when really, on the inside, all I’d be thinking about was getting out of that ring so I could call Linda. Just to check in with her. To make sure she was still there. If she didn’t pick up the phone? Then I’d really go nuts. I’d be dialing and dialing nonstop until I got ahold of her.

  It’s hard to explain all of this. Things happen on a daily basis that might not seem like any big deal at all, but somehow when you add them up over time, they grow into this eight-hundred-pound boulder that’s up on your shoulder and suddenly too heavy to carry around.

  That’s how it was in our marriage.

  By the turn of the millennium, I was a little bit lost again. I had announced my retirement from wrestling on Jay Leno’s show in 1998, but I never really planned on retiring. It was just time to change things up. In fact, I wound up wrestling Leno in a tag-team match, and found myself in a bunch of other celebrity exhibition matches with people like Dennis Rodman. It all devolved into fun and games as my run with the WCW came to an end.

  I don’t know much about the mergers and acquisitions games that go on in corporate America, but as AOL merged with Time Warner in 2001, Ted Turner wound up selling the WCW. Guess who he sold it to? The WWF. So suddenly, me and Vince McMahon were playing on the very same playground once again.

  Time heals a lot of wounds, and the idea of Hulk Hogan making a return to the WWF was almost too hard to resist. Audiences love a comeback. But I was in so much pain my wrestling was strictly part-time anyway. I wasn’t sure if my body could continue to handle it.

  I was also in a lot of emotional pain—my father started to get real sick in 2000. It just seemed like one illness after another. Time was catching up with him. In those later days, that old-school Italian lack of outward affection I had known from him as a kid seemed to vanish. When I saw him now, he openly told me that he loved me and how proud he was of me. Somehow, that newfound affection made it all the more difficult for me to take when he passed away in 2001.

  I took my dad’s death real hard. I wasn’t the same person I was back when Alan died. I took time off to grieve, to be wit
h my family, to take care of my mother. In my late forties, there was just no running away from pain anymore. Pain of any kind.

  When it came to climbing back in the ring, I had to come to grips with the fact that wrestling had changed, too. Everything was ten times more scripted than when I got into the game. The new crop of wrestlers would spend hours going over every move, coordinating every punch, blocking the whole match like a dance. They would write out and memorize what they were going to say. They even had professional writers! It just never made sense to me, and it usually came off as stale and rehearsed—which is exactly what it was.

  The fact is, if you’ve written this whole story line and then you get out there and the crowd isn’t buying it, what are you gonna do? You have to be ready and willing to go with the flow and change the direction of the match on the fly. It’s like improvisational comedy or playing jazz. It needs to be fluid and free or it just falls flat.

  I faced this head-on when I went in to get ready for WrestleMania XVIII.

  Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson was the big hero at that point. His movie The Scorpion King was about to come out, and I had no problem riding that wave—keeping him the hero while I played the ultimate heel, carrying over what I’d built as Hollywood Hogan at the WCW. To make the fans salivate, we set up a match in Chicago to generate heat for this new rivalry: I hit the Rock with a metal hammer in the ring, and my cohorts carried him outside and put him in an ambulance. I tied the ambulance shut with a bunch of chains so the Rock couldn’t get out, and then I crashed a semi into the ambulance. Of course, it was all just on film. So we said “cut,” then the Rock got out, and then I ran over that ambulance with that truck. Things were a lot more elaborate than they were in the old days of choosing whether or not to pull a blade job in the ring. The story arcs were cinematic now, and I can’t imagine an arc that could have painted me as more of a heel than that one.