My Life Outside the Ring

by Hogan, Hulk

  There were times when I thought that whole bottle of pills would go down easy. A bunch of those pills with the rest of that bottle. I’d heard that wasn’t a painful death—that you’d just go to sleep and that’s it.

  Then I noticed the gun in my hand.

  I was careless with it—running it up and down my right leg. Scratching the side of my nose with it. Feeling the cold steel of the barrel as it dragged across my cheek. I’d learned years earlier to never put your finger on the trigger unless you were ready to fire. It was basic gun safety: You keep your index finger pointed straight ahead, and you don’t curl it over that trigger unless you mean it. But I kept my finger pressed right to that trigger the whole time. Right on it. Firm.

  Just three pounds of pressure is all it would take—nothing for these big hands of mine—and if I moved that finger like an inch in the right direction, like flicking off a light switch, I could have blown my brains out.

  I remember how it tasted when I put the barrel in my mouth, and the sound it made when the metal clicked against my teeth.

  It was real weird behavior—like I was psyching myself up to do the deed. Mystifying myself into thinking it was the right thing to do.

  People might look at a guy like me and think, He would never commit suicide. But I was so depressed I just kept thinking, This would be so easy. I understand now how it’s possible for anyone to get themselves into such a trance that the actual suicide could happen by accident. It’s seductive. And like I said before, when I make my mind up on something, you can pretty much count on the fact that I’m gonna follow through. Whatever the cost. Whatever the pain. Whatever it takes: When I’m in, I’m in all the way.

  Add to that the haze of the pills and the booze and it’s some sort of miracle that the gun just didn’t go off. Heck, the tips of my fingers are still numb from that Tombstone incident way back in the ’90s. Which means I probably could have pulled that trigger without even knowing I’d done it.

  Boom! The end.

  Two days into this mess, my phone rang again. I looked at it. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was a 310 area code. The Beverly Hills area. Not many people have my cell phone number. Could it be Nick or Brooke calling from that rental house Linda’s got in L.A.? For some reason, at that second, I was real curious. So I picked it up.

  “Hi Terry. It’s Laila.”

  It was Laila Ali—my cohost on Gladiators.

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  This girl I barely knew had picked up on the fact that I was having a real hard time on the Gladiators set. Days had gone by, and she was still thinking about it. She was thinking about me. I was floored. Why did she care?

  The funny thing is, I’d met her dad a bunch of times. He was the guest referee at the very first WrestleMania—holding my arm up when I won the championship belt. Right there in the ring with me in the heart of Hulkamania. Whenever we saw each other, the greatest boxer on earth used to hug me and whisper in my ear, “You’re the greatest of all time, Hogan.” I got such a kick out of that—that this guy I idolized, who was truly the greatest, would say that to me. And here his daughter is calling me up out of the blue to see how I’m doing. She cares how I’m doing. She wants to know if I’m okay.

  You know what? I wasn’t okay. Not until that moment. For some reason, that phone call snapped me out of it. I can’t explain why. Who knows why things happen the way they do? Was there a reason it happened? I can’t help but think, Yes. I’ve never told her this, and she might not even understand the depth of the impact she had on me, but Laila Ali saved my life. With a simple phone call. By simply thinking about me, and caring enough to call me and ask me how I was doing. At that moment, that call saved my life.

  Laila invited me to go to church with her—to a place called the Agape Church (pronounced “a-GAH-pay”), a place I had never heard of and that had absolutely no meaning to me at that moment. But I loved the idea that she would offer something like that. Something so personal.

  At that time in my life, for somebody who was almost a stranger to say, “Hey, we love you and we miss you and we care about you, and we wanna make sure you’re doing good,” was just shocking. It was so the polar opposite of what I’d been hearing from Linda for so long.

  She didn’t stop there, either. She told me to call her back if I needed to talk. “Here’s my other numbers in case you can’t get ahold of me,” she said. “If you get a hold of my husband, have him page me or call me so I don’t miss your call.” She was being so nice to me. She didn’t want anything from me, or need anything from me. She just wanted to make sure I was okay. It caught me so off guard. When I hung up that phone I broke down crying like a baby.

  Maybe other people get phone calls like that every day. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock all these years. But for me, that was it. After I stopped crying I got up from my chair. I took a shower. I ate. I slept. That feeling of bleeding inside, that emptiness, that depression, wasn’t gone, but the flow of it had slowed just enough that I could move again.

  The next day I flew back to L.A. I went back to the set. I gave Laila a big hug when I saw her, and I got back to work. I never did go to church with her. We were only there for a few more days of shooting, and I just don’t think I fully absorbed what a good idea it would have been for me to go with her to that church. It would take me quite a while to learn to be fully aware of the people who were reaching out to help me.

  It still wasn’t easy for me to be on that set, performing the way everyone wanted me to perform, but somewhere in the middle of those December days I started psyching myself up for something better.

  I realized that those moments with the gun in my hand were as low as I’d ever been, but I’d been low for a very long time. Even before Nick’s accident, I just felt angry or depressed or fed up all the time.

  I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

  I was determined to change things.

  I got way too close to the edge, and I told myself I would never go down that dark road again.

  I was gonna get through this. Not only was I gonna get through this, I would somehow rise above it all and fix everything that had gone to shit in my life and be happy again!

  Yeah, I know. Even I thought it sounded pretty ridiculous. I had absolutely no idea how I was gonna do any of that. I trusted the feeling, though. I trusted my resolve. I trusted my instincts. I trusted my gut. That’s pretty much how I’ve made every big decision I’ve ever made in my whole life, and I knew that nothing had ever mattered as much as my resolve to be happy at that moment.

  What I didn’t know was that my will would be tested before December was even finished.

  Backing Away

  When American Gladiators wrapped for Christmas break, I headed home to Tampa again.

  I’ll be honest: I was still worried about what might happen when I walked back into that house—when I saw those pictures again, when I laid down alone to go to sleep in that big bed that Linda and I used to share, knowing my family wasn’t there. I had made up my mind to get through this, but that certainly didn’t mean it would be easy. What if I freaked out again?

  I tried not to think about it as I came home from the airport. I must’ve had my head buried worse than I thought, because I didn’t even notice that all the lights in the house were on when I walked up to the front door. I put my key in and turned the lock and pushed the door open.

  I froze. What the hell was going on? The house was all decked out with greenery and Christmas lights. I walked in and saw there was a fire going in one of the fireplaces. I rounded the corner and saw another fireplace lit up, too. There were like fourteen fireplaces in that house. Were they all on?

  It smelled like a turkey dinner was cooking. It smelled delicious. There were Christmas trees set up.

  All of a sudden someone steps out from the kitchen. “Hi, honey.”

  It was Linda!

  I felt like I’d stepped into A Christmas Carol. Was I
dreaming?

  It staggered me. And if this was a ghost, was it Christmas Past or Christmas Future?

  Linda’s hair was all hot-rollered up like she wore it in the ‘80s. She had an apron on, and pink lipstick, and these long pink fingernails. I couldn’t figure out if she looked like the young Linda I fell in love with, or if this was more Play Misty for Me—like a Fatal Attraction moment.

  She had a big smile on her face. “Merry Christmas! Welcome home!” she said, and she came over and put her arms around me. “Give me a hug,” she pleaded.

  I didn’t hug her back.

  It was weird. Like Clockwork Orange weird. I’m seriously thinking, What the fuck?

  “Linda,” I said, “What’s going on?”

  “I thought the whole family could be together for the holidays,” she replied in this cutesy voice.

  I finally backed up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Linda—wait a minute here. I’ve been trying to talk to you for months, and you haven’t wanted to talk about anything, so—just let me regroup for a minute here.”

  As soon as I gave her any hesitation, that cutesy tone started to change. “What do you mean?” she said.

  “Well, I need more than thirty seconds to figure this out, Linda. Just hold on,” I said.

  That’s when she noticed I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring.

  “If you want to reconcile, put the ring back on your finger and let’s reconcile,” she said.

  It was all too much. I said, “Well, we need to talk about this. I’m not just gonna—”

  “God damn it. Put the fucking ring on, Terry!”

  Just like that, the nasty side of Linda came flying right back out.

  Now, I don’t want to overanalyze the situation, but all my lawyers, everyone around me who was really close and who saw the back-and-forth and this “abuse” (if that’s what you want to call it) that Linda laid on me, they all seem to agree that there could only be one explanation for why Linda did this: She never thought I would answer her divorce filing.

  That’s a legal term—when someone files for divorce, the spouse has to “answer” it in order for the filing to proceed. And I did. After my meeting with that divorce lawyer, Ann Kerr, I answered Linda’s filing. As much as it pained me that she wanted to end the marriage, I saw that something had changed in her and she didn’t want to talk about getting back together. I knew that it was truly over.

  So the only thing that makes any sense as to why Linda was in that house with an apron and a smile on is that my “answering” the divorce filing caught her off guard; that she never actually dreamed that I’d go through with it. She was so used to my kissing her ass and bending over backward—“Oh, honey, we can move to Miami. Oh, honey, we’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy”—that she filed the divorce as a big public “Fuck you” to get back at me somehow and make me do things her way once and for all. And if that’s the case, then this whole situation must’ve been some kind of a move to win me back and take control again.

  So I’m sure she never expected what happened next.

  The old Terry, the old Hulk Hogan—that guy? I can guarantee that he would have wrapped his arms around Linda and thanked her for coming home, and probably broken down like a baby as he put that ring back on his finger, feeling so thankful that his marriage wasn’t going to fail after all.

  That’s not what I did. When Linda started cussing, I started walking backward down this long skinny hallway behind me. She kept cussing and demanding I put the ring on. “Don’t you dare walk out that door,” she said.

  But that’s exactly what I did. Without saying a word, I walked out that door. I got in my car. And I left.

  That was the last time I stepped foot in that house, and the second step I took toward gaining control of my life. This idea that I could change direction and somehow find happiness wasn’t just a thought anymore. It wasn’t just something I had resolved to do. I had actually taken action. I made the choice not to go backward. I made the choice not to step into a future with Linda by my side.

  If I wasn’t going backward, and I wasn’t standing still, that could only mean one thing: I was moving forward.

  And that scared the shit out of me.

  Turning the Page

  Chapter 18

  A Secret Revealed

  It never occurred to me how much looking back I would have to do in order to move forward with my life after Linda. From the moment I backed away from her, I started paying more attention to the things I had done and said in the past. It’s almost like I needed to piece together clues from my own life to convince me, fully, that I was doing the right thing. And when I thought about some of my behavior—especially my behavior in recent years, and in the most private moments of my life—there was no question I had been yearning for a major change.

  In the last years of my marriage, there were times when I’d wake up early on Sunday mornings and tune the TV to whatever religious programming I could find. I wasn’t really paying attention to the sermons or anything like that, but there was something about the organ music and the whole mood of those shows that would just set me off. And I’d cry. It was just my way of venting. Just this crazy release.

  I never told anyone about it, but this roller-coaster ride I was on was so dramatic, and so stressful, and so painful, it was eating me alive. I had to unlock a valve now and then just to get some relief. If I had a moment to breathe, to not be Hulk Hogan, to not hold it all together for the cameras or my kids, I’d just let it go. I couldn’t help it.

  I remember every once in a while my kids would catch me crying at the movies. It wouldn’t even have to be a sad scene. I’d look around the theater and nobody else would be crying, but two people hugging on screen, or the rise of the music, some little thing would set me off and I’d just lose it. It was kind of embarrassing, you know? All of a sudden the kids would hear me sniff a little bit. I’d try to catch myself real quick, but Brooke would always notice, and sometimes laugh at her sensitive old man.

  When friends of mine hear about some of this stuff, they ask why I haven’t gone to see a therapist. Maybe it would have done me some good, but honestly, the idea of going to a shrink just never occurred to me. I’ve always found my own way to handle everything.

  After Linda filed for divorce and then pulled that Play Misty for Me crap at the house before Christmas, I started turning strangers into therapists.

  I felt like I was just bouncing around in a pinball machine for a couple of weeks there. Sometimes I’d run into someone who seemed like they wanted to talk, and I’d just unload on them about everything that was wrong with my life. At the same time, I didn’t really want to be around people. Public appearances were real hard for me at that point. To be mobbed by fans who wanted to see that Hulkamania madness and pose for a snapshot as I flexed my muscles was nearly impossible for me. I just wanted to be at home.

  But I couldn’t go home. My wife was in our home, and now the legal system was getting involved and deciding who went where. So I bounced around. I stayed at our beach house for a few days, but then there was a dispute over who could live in which house, so I stuffed whatever clothes I could find into Hefty bags and rented an apartment further down Clearwater Beach, in a high-rise overlooking the ocean. It was a nice place. It had sort of a bachelor pad feel to it, up on a top floor. But it wasn’t home.

  I hadn’t lived in an apartment since I was in my twenties. Now, in my midfifties, to have all of my things taken out of my hands was such an empty feeling. My bed. My toothbrush. The chair where I brushed my teeth. Most of my clothes were still hanging at the big house. My gym and my office—two big things I depended on for my work and my income. All of it was inaccessible to me. The real irony of it was, from the balcony on the north side of that apartment, I could look across the Intracoastal Waterway and see the red roof of the twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion that I was no longer allowed to step foot in.

  I could have fought to stay in that house. In fact, I�
��m sure a judge would have granted that to me, while Linda could have stayed at the beach house and lived the idyllic job-free life she wanted. But I didn’t want to fight. I also wanted the comfort of that house to be available to Nick.

  During this time, because Nick was still a minor, he had to choose which parent to live with. Linda and I were fifty-fifty. He could choose wherever he wanted to go, and I told him I would not put any pressure on him. He said to me, “You know what, Dad? I think you’re going to be okay, but I’m worried about Mom. If she’s upset, I want to be there for her.” I understood why he wanted to do that. I also thought it was good for Nick to sleep in his own bed, in his own room, to have access to the life he knew before this all started. I knew how tough it was for me to not have access to my normal life, my normal routines. Why should he have to suffer that same fate?

  At the end of that month, I flew to Texas for an appearance, and on the way back I started into my whole “woe is me” routine with a guy sitting next to me on the plane. We were seated in first class, where there are only a few seats, and when he opened the door of conversation I just walked right through.

  I went on and on about all the misery in my life, and my wife filing for divorce, and how my son’s got to go through this whole fiasco in court because of these criminal charges even though he’s suffered so much because his best friend is still in the hospital, and my back hurts so bad that my legs are starting to go numb if I sit too long, not to mention my feet swell like crazy every time I get on a plane now. Just on and on and on with my complaining.

  All of a sudden I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn, and this dark-skinned woman with the most peaceful face who was sitting in the row behind me says, “You should read this.”

  And she hands me The Secret.

  I realize now that The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, is a book that became a giant bestseller, and was featured on Oprah, and has all these followers and people who swear by it—so much so that there are spoofs of it, and whole groups who think it’s a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and do all they can to hate it. But I had never heard of this book when she handed it to me.