WWE News: Major Backstage Update On Hulk Hogan Being Brought Back To The WWE
We all know the story by now. Last year, Hulk Hogan and Gawker media were in a huge lawsuit over Hogan’s sex tape going up on the website. No one knew exactly what would be decided, but Gawker felt that the best thing they could do to stick it to the WWE Hall of Famer was to release an audio tape of Hogan from now nine years ago, where Hogan said some choice words about a black man that his daughter, Brooke, was dating. The racial remarks were not well-received.
WWE had Hogan under contract, and he was even working the WWE Tough Enough show on USA Network at the time. Due to this, once the comments came out, WWE lost $50 million in stock within just hours. WWE had no choice but to release Hogan, mainly just to save them from losing more money. It was the right business move for WWE as they knew they had literally no choice from a business perspective regardless of how they felt personally about the Hulkster.
However, Hogan just won his case against Gawker. The judge even found that Gawker was basically trying to hurt Hogan, going off of the tape release and many other issues. Gawker was forced to pay over $100 million to Hogan due to it. This has now cost them the company, in fact. With all of this being said, WWE now sees Hulk Hogan as a possible help to the company yet again.
The problem for WWE is that they simply have to wait for the right time to bring Hogan back in, as timing can be everything. In reality, it has been about a year since he was released from the WWE. It took a while to get him back the last time, but this time things are a bit more sensitive than the last. That means WWE has to navigate things very carefully as they don’t want to have any trouble once they finally do get him back.
In all realism, Hulk Hogan doesn’t need the WWE anymore. Before, you could at least make the case that Hogan needed WWE to help with getting him out there more, and the money was useful to him. Now, he has life-changing money with no need to work if he doesn’t want to. However, Hogan when asked about returning to the WWE did say he would love to come back. However, most of this happened before he won millions in the Gawker case.
It would not be shocking if Hulk Hogan felt he didn’t need WWE anymore and decided to do something else rather than return. In the past however, before Hogan lost millions for one reason or another, he always loved wrestling and wanted to be with the WWE.
There were even rumors that WWE and Hogan were talking about him returning to the ring and wrestling a match at WrestleMania one year. In fact, Hogan was getting into really great shape so that he might have a shot to do just that possibly at WrestleMania 32. Of course plans had to change due to Gawker putting out the tape but many have seemingly forgiven Hogan for everything. Do keep in mind that Hogan was in a bad way nearly a decade ago. While his comments were still wrong, when put in context to his life you can understand why things were said.
On top of this, Hogan was talking to someone privately and not in a major public forum. That said, his comments were meant to be in private and should have never been released to the general public to hear. However, they were and Hogan had to pay a big price for it. Not only was the sex tape of him taped and put out without permission but the comments too. It is tough to feel sorry for Hogan now that he won the case against Gawker, but private things are meant to be private.
Hulk Hogan’s comments were wrong, but people have started to get past them knowing where he was at the time and the fact he never meant to have personal comments released to the public. WWE seems to see that, too. It will be interesting if and when Hogan does return and how the WWE crowd reacts to it.
[Image via WWE]
