The 411 Staff Discusses WWE Firing Hulk Hogan

Friday was a strange day in the world of wrestling, in the early hours of the morning, a story started to brew regarding Hulk Hogan. It started with rumors of Hogan and WWE being at odds, and turned into Hogan disappearing (being scrubbed) from the WWE website. And then the rumors started that he was gone due to racial remarks. It snowballed from there. The WWE website, AxelMania, all merchandise, all future projects with WWE’s partners including 2K16; Hulkamania was killed by the WWE. But why? What happened. Tapes that included Hulk Hogan making repeated racist statements were released, WWE was going to distance themselves and then cut all ties. The story was everywhere, WWE confirmed it with media outlets and the word spoke by Hogan revealed. Hogan apologized, many of his peers bashed him while others came out to support him. It’s a huge story, and due to that, some of the 411 staff have come together to share their thoughts on the situation…

Mike Chin: Hulk Hogan made some profoundly offensive remarks and from a moral and (probably more influentially) business perspective I can understand WWE severing ties with him.

That said, even in the year 2015, there is no true erasure of Hogan and his WWE legacy. He’s part of the bedrock of the company, with more longevity and name recognition than Steve Austin, more star power than John Cena, and he came along at a time to make his worldwide reputation exponentially more potent on the world’s stage than Bruno Sammartino. While WWE can cut him from current programming and stop selling his merchandise, there are hours upon hours of important footage of the Hulkster they won’t be able to remove from the WWE Network, and fans in their twenties and older will never forget him.

This is the right PR move for WWE right now, and moreover paves the way for both a story of redemption and yet another Hulk Hogan comeback when his reputation recovers–those are two of WWE’s favorite stories to tell. The one truly powerful, long-term ramification I foresee is that, with The Hulkster not getting any younger, and likely out of WWE programming for at least a couple years, this may be the final nail in the coffin to preclude the one last WWE match he had been campaigning for. My head says that that is not a bad thing. My heart, as a child of the 1980s, feels a little heavier that we won’t get that particular WrestleMania moment.

Justin Watry: I was offline from Thursday night through late Friday afternoon, so I missed all of the initial speculation. By the time everything had been reported, full details and the fallout were included. Thus, instead of getting the news revealed step by step, I got it all in one fell swoop. My reaction was one of shock, disappointment, and unfortunately, it was expected. No, not that Hulk Hogan would say THOSE things but that he would say something offensive and finally force WWE’s hand to terminate his contract.

Anybody who has followed his career knows he tends to tell tall tales and often finds himself in controversy. I will not rehash all of his public scandals, but there are at least a dozen high profile stories surrounding his name. Most of them negative. Usually, it was just swept under the rug because he was HULK HOGAN! Money will trump all, and WWE (or whoever his employer was at the time) would just overlook the bad side and focus on the good side. That being said, it is 2015. New age, new time, new company, etc.

WWE was absolutely in the right to fire The Hulkster and distance themselves from him. Hogan, to his credit, has come out and apologized while his lawyer claims he resigned from WWE before the firing, so the damage control has already begun. Ultimately, the situation has already played out as one would suspect. Hogan said something stupid, media dug it up, blasted him for it, the company he worked for fired him, the man guilty apologized, and now we let the chips fall where they may. In a few days, there will be a new story that gets gobbled up, Hogan’s name will fade into obscurity for awhile, and when you least expect it – he will be return to WWE. Hogan was wrong with his comments. WWE was right to fire him, and yet – we all know the two sides will work together again down the road…

Greg DeMarco: Hulk Hogan is the first wrestler I was ever a fan of. As a young child, he captured my imagination like no other, and turned me into a fan of professional wrestling. And it’s been that way for 31 years. Now Hulk Hogan, like so many before him, has fallen from grace. This isn’t his first transgression, and it likely won’t be his last. But that’s not something specific to Hulk Hogan.

It’s specific to celebrity. And we love our celebrities. We also love their redemption stories. Hulk Hogan is a “Real American Hero.” He’s gone from the WWE, but he isn’t forgotten. He isn’t gone for good, either.

In fact, I’d like to propose a prize pool. Who comes back to the WWE first: Hulk Hogan or CM Punk?

Mike Hammerlock: I guess my main thought on Hogan’s dismissal is has he hired the worst lawyers on the planet? It seems inconceivable to me that he’s been pursuing a lawsuit, knowing this footage is out there. This had been kept under wraps until he went forward with his $100 million lawsuit against Gawker. Before you send some ambulance chasers after pie-in-the-sky money, shouldn’t you understand what risks that might hold for you? Hogan had himself a comfortable gig with the WWE and now it’s gone for what seem like completely preventable reasons. Hogan only has himself and the goofs he hired to blame. He should have hired some old money lawyers who know how to make this sort of thing go away. You know, the sort of folks Kennedys and Bushes call when they’ve got a problem.

As for the WWE end of things, it didn’t have much choice. Public relations is not a field full of nuance. Trying to explain context, situation and intent is an exercise in futility. Hogan said some colossally stupid things and the blowback is inevitable. Smart move to cut its ties with Hogan for the time being. After he gets washed through the news cycle and perhaps sits down with Oprah Winfrey to reveal he was heavily self-medicating in those days, then perhaps they can mend that fence. For the time being, the WWE needs to stay clear of the opprobrium headed Hogan’s way.

As for wrestling fans, didn’t we all know Hogan was a flawed creature by now? I can’t believe this is shattering anyone’s world. Hard to feel sorry for him. If you don’t want to get in trouble for spewing a bunch of racist garbage, then don’t spew a bunch of racist garbage. File that one right next to maybe don’t bang your best friend’s wife. All the little Hulkamaniacs from back in the day are grown and surely understand adults can be profoundly messed up. For kids today, Hogan is little more than an animatronic museum piece. The world will move on, though I doubt this is his last chapter in the business.

Jeremy Thomas: I have a lot of thoughts about this and about Hogan himself, and you’ll be able to see more of them elsewhere. For now, I’m focusing on the present and the scandal at hand, which is just a messed-up situation in every way that you look at it. First of all, anyone defending Hulk Hogan or blaming “PC Culture” can knock it off right now. Look at what he said, actually read the reports instead of skimming them for the highlights and get the full context of the story. He practically dropped the N-bomb with the frequency of an N.W.A. track, and not in anything even approaching a way that doesn’t seem so bad in context. He also, according to other reporters who have seen the transcripts, dropped it in terms of The Rock, also calling him a “sambo” which is another offensive term for a black person. And he said he “doesn’t like wrestling people who aren’t white.” I don’t care if it was eight years ago; that’s beyond the pale. That’s just short of Mel Gibson territory, folks. And it’s above Donald Sterling by about a notch on the “over the top racism” scale.

Now, the deeper question is in reference to WWE’s response. Yes, clearly his firing was necessary. That almost goes without saying. Hogan just became nuclear and they had absolutely no other option. I commend them for acting as quickly as they did and trying to get ahead of the story; it makes them look proactive and not reactionary, even if anyone with half a brain cell knew how this was going to play out once it got out. I know that people are talking about the hypocrisy of Michael Hayes having a job, and I don’t disagree; how they handled the Hayes situation was not correct. But doing the wrong thing with Hayes doesn’t preclude them from doing the right thing with Hogan, and that’s what happened here. What’s more, it is (right or wrong) a publicity issue too. The Hayes story never got too far into the mainstream media. Right now you can’t throw a rock without hitting a report on the Hogan story in just about any medium, and this is the day after a freaking theater shooting that should be crowding out absolutely any other story.

There is a bigger question about erasing him as much as possible from WWE.com, including the Hall of Fame page. I don’t believe for a second that Hogan has been kicked out of the Hall of Fame. That’s unprecedented and when you consider the likes of Sunny still being in (and in fact, still on the page), I don’t think that Hogan will be “revoked” in that way. After a certain amount of time he will be put back on that page, but I don’t honestly know if the time will come in the near future that we’ll be seeing Hogan merchandise again. He’s been yanked from WWE 2K16, the Funko Pop! figures for this year will be pulled, et cetera.

And that absolutely should be the case. We’re at a point in society where that kind of racism is no longer tolerable. We may scoff at it, but there are still people (mostly kids, of course) who look up to Hogan as a role model, just like they look up to Cena. They aren’t part of the IWC who scour sites like 411 and know what a jackass Hogan is in real life, and hearing that he thinks less of African-Americans will have an influence on them. No matter how much I loved Hogan growing up — and no matter how strongly ingrained he is to my identity as a wrestling fan, because he is — this is a situation where he has to be cast out by the industry. Let’s not forget how the mainstream views professional wrestling: the sport for dumb rednecks. No matter how much the industry has evolved, that view still lingers. Now you have the poster boy for the industry in the minds of most people around the world being identified as a full-on, all-out racist. Fair or not, that’s the situation we’re faced with.

This is a terrible situation for just about everyone. Hogan is now a pariah, the WWE is going to be criticized by various groups and professional wrestling and its fans will be viewed as ignorant relics of the past by some. And for us as wrestling fans, the question becomes: can we watch his matches and feel the same? That’s a question we all have to answer for ourselves. While this is obviously not a Chris Benoit situation in the sense of severity by any stretch, it’s still deeply affecting. Try to watch Hogan vs. Rock with the same eyes knowing that he said what he did about the Rock. Try not to think about how he supposedly said he doesn’t like wrestling non-white people when seeing Hogan vs. Zeus, or his team up with Mr. T. I’ve always been very adamant about separating the artist from the man, the “death of the artist” theory as it’s known; I can still watch Austin matches despite the domestic abuse allegations, and I still have an appreciation for Roman Polanski movies even though he is a rapist. I don’t like Chris Brown’s music, but not because he’s an abuser. But that isn’t the same for everyone, and I respect that.

Ultimately, the realization that we have to come to is the fact that Hulk Hogan — whether he thought he was being recorded or not — said the things that have put us in this situation. And whether they were in the heat of the moment (or came from a place of pain as Brooke claims) or not is irrelevant. At the time, he seems to have meant them. And he’ll have to pay for that. I just think it’s unfortunate that he’s put the rest of us, whether we’re fans of his or not, in a difficult position as well.

Jack McGee: I do not know Hulk Hogan, before anyone says anything about this whole situation they need to stop pretending that they know the man personally. I loved Ric Flair the wrestler, and after years of worship discovered that he was pretty much a pike of shit as a human being goes. I loved Chris Benoit as a wrestler, and then something caused him to kill his wife and kid. I don’t know what that was, but as a man that was a huge fan and supported of him it taught me that I need to stop getting so emotionally invested in these guys. But then we come to Hulk Hogan, a man considered one of if not the biggest star in the history of pro wrestling. Children idolized him in the 80s, adults hated him in the 90s and then many of those people fell in love with him when he became less active and got settled into his role as a wrestling legend. I was never a Hogan guy, I have discussed this before I was a Randy Savage guy, but as someone who ha watched wrestling for 35 years and writes about it from time to time, I completely respect what he did in the wrestling business.

It’s a shame how this all came to light, because it reminds me of the Donald Sterling situation. Hogan, in a private setting, is illegally taped and caught saying racial slurs. It’s a shame how it came out, it shouldn’t have come out that way, but the facts are that it did. I do not hate Hulk Hogan, because I do not even know the man. But in my opinion, he is the exact kind of person that can fuck off. The fact that “n*gger” is part of anyone’s lexicon in the year 2015 is pathetic. The only time words of that nature should be used are in historical teachings or written works describing bullshit like this. The fact that people are still caught up on race, religion and or sexuality is pathetic and reflects on all that is wrong with this world. It’s not that people need a “thicker skin” to deal with things like this, people shouldn’t have to deal with baseless hate. People shouldn’t have to deal with private conversations being recorded and then released to the public. Hulk Hogan appears to be a racist, and to me that makes him a bad person; but he’s never done this sort of thing in the open, not when he was meeting with sick kids or raising money for charity and not when he was working. If that was the issue, then it’s even worse, but his privacy was invaded, and now we know the dirty secret. His apology was half assed, and felt as if he was apologizing for a one off thing, but these comments feel like those of a person with hate for African Americans. I am so sick of “I made a mistake” or “he made a mistake,” how about, “Hey, that was me, I fucked up” or “hey, that was me, the real me, I hate n*ggers”. Take some accountability, brother.

I strongly feel that WWE did the right thing in firing Hogan; they had no choice as a publicly traded company. They had to cancel all of the marketing and licensing moving forward because of their family friendly mantra, they had to banish him from WWE.com and essentially remove him from the hall of fame; they did the right thing.

So with that being said, I hope that the WWE looks at the hall of fame and removes the rest of the filth with Hogan. Mike Tyson was convicted of rape and went to jail banish him. Donald Trump hates Mexicans and has a bigger platform than anyone to spout off his rhetoric, banish him. Scott Hall shot a man in 1983, banish him. People still blame Carlos Colón for Bruiser Brody’s murder, banish him! Sunny does paid Skype calls where strips (and other things) for cash and is rumored to do porn soon. Banish her, because Chyna isn’t allowed in the HOF, and part of that is her porn history. THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR SAID THAT QUEERIN DON’T MAKE THE WORLD WORK AND HE IS IN THE HALL AND HAS AN AWARD NAMED AFTER HIM… BANISH THIS MAN!

If Hulk Hogan, who gave so much to the sport, can be banished for being a racist and using the word “n*gger” too many times, then we need to purge the rest of these assholes from the fine halls. Unfortunately if that’s the case, a true wrestling hall of fame will be pretty empty, because the world of wrestling isn’t filled with angels…