Brutus Beefcake Says He And Hulk Hogan Were ‘Friends to the End’, Regrets Not Seeing Him Before His Passing

As previously reported, WWE Hall of Famer and entertainment icon Hulk Hogan passed away on Thursday at the age of 71. In an interview with TMZ (via Fightful), Brutus Beefcake spoke about his friendship with the Hulkster and said that he regrets not going to see Hogan one last time before his death. Here are highlights:

On owing his career to Hogan: “Here’s the thing, when he said to me, ‘You’re going to be a wrestler kid,’ and I was like, ‘Holy cow.’ I used to go watch wrestling when I was a kid, but nothing I ever thought about getting involved with. He and I became so close starting together and coming through the trenches and training. There’s so much that nobody knows about, really, our beginnings, our past. I owe him everything. I’m grateful to have known him, to have been there many times for him, as he was for me.”

On what he’d say to Hogan if he could give him one last message: “I love you, brother, and we truly are friends to the end. I don’t even know what else to say about that. I know his family and mine were close for many years, and I wish the best for them, and they’re having a horrible, difficult time, and I just want to say to them, keep your chins up. He would have wanted us to fight on and move forward.”

On wishing he could have went to see him one last time: “That’s hopefully what we’re all going to do. I was going to try to go to his house a couple days ago, and my wife said, ‘Just go over there. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ But if I go to the house and they say, ‘No, you can’t come in,’ It would have crushed me. So I didn’t. Now I wish maybe that I had tried to get in and tried to see him before he passed… Jimmy Hart and I, like I said, we’ve been friends for 45-50 years. Jimmy and I have talked every day. Jimmy told me that he was doing okay, but that things were not good. So this did kind of catch us off guard.”