Latest news with #RockyIII
UPI
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
Look: Nick Hogan pays tribute to late dad and 'best friend' Hulk Hogan
July 27 (UPI) -- Nick Hogan is paying tribute to his dad, the wrestler and media star Hulk Hogan, who died Thursday at the age of 71. "Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me and comforted me over the last few days. It truly means a lot. I'm sorry to everyone I have not responded to yet. This has been overwhelming and extremely difficult," Hogan wrote on Instagram Saturday. "Hearing so many kind words and stories about my dad's life, interactions and experiences with everyone has been incredible and comforting. My dad was the most incredible person I've ever known and will always be my hero. He was the most kind, loving and amazing father anybody could ask for. I feel so blessed to have had the greatest dad in the world. He was not only the best dad but also my mentor and my best friend." Addressing his father directly, he added: "Thank you for being my best friend. I love you so much Big Dog and I will miss you forever." The elder Hogan -- whose real name was Terry Bollea -- died at his Florida home at the age of 71. In addition to his career inside the WWE ring, Hogan starred in the reality shows Hogan Knows Best, American Gladiators and Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling. His film credits include Rocky III, No Holds Barred, Suburban Commando, Mr. Nanny and Spy Hard.
Kuwait Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
Pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan dies at 71
MIAMI: Hulk Hogan, the American sports and entertainment star who made professional wrestling a global phenomenon and loudly supported Donald Trump for president, has died at the age of 71, World Wrestling Entertainment said on Thursday. 'WWE is saddened to learn WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan has passed away. One of pop culture's most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s,' WWE said on X. It gave no cause of death. The bleach-blond, mahogany-tanned behemoth became the face of professional wrestling in the 1980s, helping transform the mock combat from a seedy spectacle into family-friendly entertainment worth billions of dollars. A key moment in that evolution came at the WrestleMania III extravaganza in 1987, when Hogan hoisted fellow wrestler André the Giant before a sold-out Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan for a thunderous body slam of the Frenchman. Hogan parlayed his wrestling fame into a less successful career in Hollywood, starring in films like 'Rocky III' and 'Santa With Muscles', but kept returning to the ring as long as his body would allow. In 2024, he appeared at the Republican National Convention to endorse the presidential bid of Trump, who in the 1980s had played host to Hulk-headlined WrestleManias. Hogan said he made the decision to support the Republican candidate after seeing his combative, fist-pumping reaction to an attempted assassination on the campaign trail. 'Let Trumpamania run wild, brother!' Hogan bellowed to a cheering crowd, ripping off his shirt to reveal a Trump tank top. 'Let Trumpamania rule again!' Becoming 'Hulk' Born Terry Gene Bollea in Augusta, Georgia, on Aug 11, 1953, the future Hulk and his family soon moved to the Tampa, Florida area. After high school, he played bass guitar for area rock bands, but felt a pull to the red-hot wrestling scene in Florida in the 1970s. Many of the details of his career were showbusiness exaggerations, representative of the blurred lines between fact and fiction in wrestling. His first trainer reportedly broke Hogan's leg to dissuade him from entering the business, but he kept at wrestling, weight training, and – he later admitted – anabolic steroids. He gained in notoriety as his biceps turned into what he dubbed the '24-inch pythons'. The 'Hulk' moniker came from comparisons to the comic-book hero portrayed on TV at the time. He would end up paying royalties to Marvel Comics for years. 'Hogan' was the invention of promoter Vincent J McMahon, the owner of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), who wanted Irish representation among his stable of stars. His appearance as wrestler Thunderlips in 'Rocky III', where he dwarfed leading man Sylvester Stallone, rocketed Hogan to the mainstream. Upon a return to the WWF, now controlled by McMahon's son Vincent K, he defeated the Iron Sheik in 1984 to claim the world championship, a belt he would hold for four years. Hogan became a household name, appearing on the cover of magazine Sports Illustrated and performing alongside pop culture stars like Mr T. The WWF came to dominate wrestling, anchored by its annual WrestleMania pay-per-view events. Facing 'The Rock' Later, he joined competitor World Championship Wrestling, swapping his trademark yellow tights for black and taking on a persona as the villainous 'Hollywood' Hogan, the head of a gang of rulebreakers known as the New World Order. The gimmick reinvigorated his career. Hogan eventually returned to the WWF, now known as WWE, and faced Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson at WrestleMania in 2002. 'I'm in better shape than him,' Hogan told Reuters at the time, five months shy of his 50th birthday. 'I'll stand next to The Rock and pose down with him if he wants to.' The Rock ultimately won the match. Hogan was inducted twice into the WWE Hall of Fame, and referred to himself as the 'Babe Ruth' of wrestling – after the New York Yankees' famed baseball player. But Hogan's support of Trump in 2024 did not go down well with all wrestling fans, and he also faced other controversies. Gossip website Gawker was shuttered after it posted parts of a sex tape between him and a friend's wife and Hogan sued on privacy grounds, winning a $140 million judgment. In 2015, he was suspended by the WWE after another surreptitious recording revealed that Hogan had used a racial slur. He was reinstated in 2018. He was married three times and had two children, who starred alongside him and first wife Linda in a 2005-2007 reality TV show, 'Hogan Knows Best.' — Reuters
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Hulk Hogan death: Former WWE writer says The Hulkster took wrestling from 'a niche market to pop culture'
Hulk Hogan, the biggest name in pro-wrestling, died on July 24 following a cardiac arrest. The 71-year-old icon's death marked the end of an era for the industry. The likes of Ric Flair and CM Punk took to social media to condole his demise. A veteran writer, who worked closely with Hogan during his career, has now reacted to the tragedy and paid tribute the WWE Hall of Famer's legacy Vince Russo says Hulk Hogan 'put wrestling on the map' Vince Russo is a recognisable name in the professional wrestling business. He rose to fame in the 1990s and went on to work with WCW and the WWE. During his time with the now-defunct promotion, he was closely associated with Hulk Hogan. In an exclusive interview with Indiatimes, the writer paid tribute to the late legend and said he 'put wrestling on the map'. Russo also highlighted that it was Hogan who helped the industry gain mainstream attention. 'He brought wrestling into the MAIN STREAM. He took it from a niche market to Pop Culture. In other words---he LITERALLY put wrestling on the map,' he said Pro-wrestling initially followed a territorial system where promoters refrained from putting up shows in markets outside their parent one. This changed when Vince McMahon took over the WWE (then called WWWF) from his father around 1980. He then built the company around Hogan, the face of the promotion. 'The Immortal One' emerged as a cultural icon because of his macho physique, 'pythons' and catchphrases. His 'whatcha gonna do…' catchphrase in particular garnered mainstream attention. His 'Real American' theme song to caught on with the icon. Hogan also appeared in Rocky III, which further added to his popularity, In the 1990s, Hogan was an inseparable part of WCW and and later revitalised the promotion by forming the nWo with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. This would usher in the 'Monday Night Wars' with WWE, which many regard as the golden period of pro wrestling About Hulk Hogan Hulk Hogan feuded with legends such as The Undertaker, Ric Flair, and The Rock during his iconic career. He also had memorable matches against the likes of Warrior and Brock Lesnar, which he lost. The list of Hogan's rivals also includes the likes of Sgt Slaughter, Randy Savage, Goldberg, and of course Andre the Giant. His last televised match for the WWE took place at SummerSlam 2006 where he beat Randy Orton in a competitive match. Hogan his survived by his wife Sky Daily and children (Nick and Brooke). His death has left a void in the industry that will never be filled again. RIP, 'brother'!
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Hulk Hogan embodied the American dream — and its many nightmares
Pro wrestling is an ostentatious, over-the-top spectacle of violence and showmanship, an endless soap opera whose characters dress in tights and perform mind-boggling stunts to entertain their legions of fans. The audience knows about kayfabe but doesn't care, allowing wrestling to straddle reality and fiction unlike any other performing art in the world. In many ways, pro wrestling is the perfect microcosm of Donald Trump's America, a country where the line between what is true and false has been catastrophically blurred, news is increasingly unmistakable from parody, politics is conducted and consumed like entertainment, and conflict underpins public life. Trump's own links to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and Vince McMahon, the promotion's erstwhile owner who also played a cartoonishly evil, eponymous character, add further heft to this assessment. Hulk Hogan, pro wrestling's greatest ever superstar who died this week, is MAGA through and through. And he is the quintessential American, an ultimate embodiment of the great American Dream, with all its vast contradictions and ugliness. The son of a construction worker, Hogan was a relative unknown outside wrestling circles when he landed a cameo in Sylver Stallone's Rocky III in 1982. His performance caught the eye of the ambitious McMahon, who saw in Hogan's impressive 6'8' stature and 24-inch pythons (read biceps) the key to taking pro wrestling from grimy backrooms and local TV networks in small-town America to the pinnacle of mainstream pop culture. Indeed, WWE might never have been a billion-dollar company without Hulkamania. In the 1980s, Hogan was as big a celebrity as there has ever been — imagine Taylor Swift today, but on steroids (literally). Hogan's rise to superstardom exemplified the ideals of the American Dream: it was a story of what the average Joe could achieve in America through sheer hard work, uninhibited self-belief, and a healthy dose of patriotism. But behind the success of Hulkamania was a carefully crafted in-ring persona deliberately fashioned around these cherished American ideals. McMahon booked Hogan as the archetypal babyface: He would almost always take a pounding before suddenly turning the bout around, and finishing his opponent with an Atomic Leg Drop. This move, in anticipation of which audiences would go into a frenzy, did so much damage to Hogan's spine that he spent his last years on and off a wheelchair. Hogan, and many other fellow wrestlers, would call this his ultimate 'sacrifice' for wrestling. The moustachioed baldie, who would arrive at the ring to Rick Derringer's 'Real American', always reminded the fans to 'train hard, say your prayers and take your vitamins', although he himself would later admit to using anabolic steroids to hulk up. After a high-profile investigation on steroid use in the WWF in 1993-94, Hogan would quickly lose a noticeable amount of muscle — so much for the vitamins. Hogan's character also championed the classic 'cheer for me because I'm American and my opponent isn't' angle, with Hogan wearing his patriotism on his sleeve (often literally). His feuds with the likes Nikolai Volkoff, an ethnic Czech made to play the 'evil Russian' by McMahon, and the Iron Sheik (later called General Mustafa), a supposed Saddam Hussain sympathiser, were rife with not-so-subtle racist stereotyping. Hogan almost always emerged victorious, and in the process cemented America's supremacy. In recent years, a number of unsavoury details have come out about Hogan's private life and personality. He has often made both racist and homophobic statements: A leaked phone conversation in 2015 saw Hogan telling his son, who at the time was serving a brief prison sentence, 'I just hope we don't come back as a couple, I don't want to say it, blizz-ack gizz-uys, you know what I'm saying?' Hogan was also a prolific philanderer and a through-and-through company man who would snitch on his colleagues to curry favour with management. Charisma and wrestling chops aside, Hogan politicked his way to the top and politicked some more to stay there, famously ratting out Jesse Ventura to McMahon for trying to get wrestlers to unionise in the mid-1980s. Hogan thus leaves a complicated legacy for fans of being the quintessential American hero while also, by many accounts, being a somewhat dubious character. His emergence as one of the most vocal supporters of Donald Trump in recent years — Hogan famously called Trump his 'hero' at last year's Republican National Convention — has only made him more polarising. But while it might be 'woke' to hate Hogan today, he was but a product of the world he inhabited. He did what he did to succeed and survive in a cut-throat industry, said what he said because he knew what the audiences wanted. That America made him the superstar he was speaks more about Americans than Hogan himself.
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Hulkamania will live on
In the early 2000s, a pair of heels (unsympathetic wrestlers) might be taking turns to pound on an unfortunate babyface (sympathetic wrestler) in the ring, or Mr McMahon, the promoter of WWE, might be getting too full of himself. And then the opening notes would ring out, and the wrestling fan could whoop in joy; it was what one didn't dare hope for. As the lyrics of his entrance music followed, Hulk Hogan in all his roaring, shirt-ripping, bandana-ed glory would emerge. Someone was about to get leg-dropped. This was an American icon, and the macho righteousness that he and his theme song, 'Real American', projected, stood in stark counterpoint to the alternative representations on offer: Green Day's 'American Idiot', or Team America: World Police. It also foreshadowed his later political trajectory. As US President Donald Trump posted after the news of his death on Thursday, Hogan was 'MAGA all the way'. This wasn't the peak of Hulkamania, the great fan craze that had its first wave in the 1980s, or the time of his most famous feats, such as body-slamming André the Giant — supposedly weighing 520 pounds. Terry Bollea, the son of a construction worker, got the nickname 'Hulk' thanks to his size and 24-inch biceps even before he joined what was then the World Wrestling Federation in 1979. He would go on to become the best-known face of professional wrestling worldwide. Hogan also tried his hand at other ventures, including acting, with a filmography ranging from Rocky III to low-budget '90s films. In the 2000s, there was the inevitable reality TV series, Hogan Knows Best, in which he appeared alongside his family. There were scandals, too, such as a leaked sex tape of him with a friend's wife, which led to a legally consequential case against media site Gawker that pitted freedom of speech against the right to privacy. As far as sports entertainment is concerned, though, few would dispute fellow wrestler Sting's characterisation of Hogan — 'the greatest of all'.
