Hulk Hogan Was Suicidal After Reality Show Cancellation

Hulk Hogan has revealed that he was suicidal after his reality TV show was canceled back in 2007.

Hogan Knows Best revolved around the former professional wrestler’s life, and also featured his daughter, Brooke, his son, Nick, and his then-wife, Linda.

Hogan, who was born Terry Gene Bollea, has now explained how the show’s cancellation, as well as Nick’s involvement in a serious car accident and the demise of his marriage, left him at “rock bottom.”

He opened up on Oprah: Where Are They Now?, which provides an update on the lives of some of the biggest headline makers to have ever featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Hogan candidly declared, “Everything got dark, everything happened at once. I was drinking alcohol very heavily. It just all kept piling up, it all kept mounting and mounting. I didn’t know how how to handle it.”

The WWE legend, whose character helped to spark wrestling’s surge in popularity in the late 1980s, continued, “I always wondered how could someone possibly take their own life and so I got to that point where I said, ‘You know what, maybe this would be easy. You know, maybe this would be an easy way to fix things.'”

However, Hogan admitted that he has now been able to put these thoughts behind him. He noted, “I now realize I had to go through all this stuff to be who I am today, to make me who I am today.”

Hogan candidly added that his road to recovery began after he ran into a group of Hulkamaniacs on New Year’s Eve in Miami.

“I was with my family and a bunch of my friends at a table,” he recalled. “And there’s a bunch of negativity about the food being bad, the champagne didn’t work, even though it was all consumed. And when I walked outside, some kid ran up and hugged me and was like, ‘Oh I grew up watching you. I didn’t have a dad, you’re like a dad to me.'”

This fan was then joined by another wrestling aficionado who proclaimed to Hogan, “Hey Hulk, we love you.” These interactions helped to crystallize Hogan’s focus on life. He confirmed, “It was right then. I didn’t understand what was going on, but it hit me that there’s clean air and that there’s dirty air. And once I walked back inside again, I realized I couldn’t take it anymore. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

[Image via carrie-nelson/Shutterstock]