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July 25, 2023 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von

01:48:53

E455 Hulk Hogan

Hulk Hogan is a professional wrestler, actor and entrepreneur. He is a 12x World Champion and 8-time headliner of WrestleMania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. Theo Von catches up with wrestling icon Hulk Hogan in Clearwater, FL for a special episode of This Past Weekend. They chat about his tough early days in Tampa, quitting a rock band to pursue wrestling, becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, almost getting killed by Andre the Giant, figuring out the business of wrestling, his lifelong friendship with Ric Flair, and much more. Hulk Hogan: https://www.instagram.com/hulkhogan/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ ExpressVPN: Go to http://expressvpn.com/theo to get an extra 3 months free on a 12-month plan. Füm Head to http://tryfum.com/THEO to save an additional 10% off your order today. BetterHelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/theo to get 10% off your first month. Factor: Go to http://factormeals.com/theo50 and use code theo50 to get 50% off. Liquid IV: Go to http://liquidiv.com and use code THEO to get 20% off. ------------------------------------------------- Music: "Shine" by Bishop Gunn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3A_coTcUek&ab_channel=BishopGunn ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: tpwproducer@gmail.com Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey guys, we've got some brand new merch to tell you about the tie-dye be good to yourself teas are now available.
	You can get those in Aqua, Creamsicle, and Indigo.
	Get that and more at TheoVonStore.com.
	And I have some new tour dates to announce.
	I will be in Lincoln, California on September 15th at the venue at Thunder Valley and Las Vegas, Nevada on October 27th and 28th at Resorts World Las Vegas.
	Tickets for these shows are available starting Wednesday, July 26th with Code Ratking.
	We've also got some new shows in Toronto, Ontario on August 31st.
	We've added that new show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 8th at the Miller High Life Theater.
	Today's guest is a native of Tampa, Florida.
	He's one of the most known human beings in the entire world.
	He's one of the most recognizable figures.
	He headlined eight WrestleManias, and he headlined my childhood, if I'm really honest with you.
	I'm grateful to get to spend time with him today.
	He's an entertainer, an athlete, a movie star.
	Today's guest is Mr. Hulk Hogan.
	Brother.
	I love the stage.
	I'm chewing my non-nuts.
	You just eat one of your own teeth?
	If you did, that's the toughest thing I've ever seen anybody do.
	No, but I did buy a piece of bacon when these veneers fell off.
	I almost ate it.
	Yeah.
	I could just see you just having one.
	You want to sneak it up.
	How was Flare?
	Did you behave at all?
	Dude, the guy, I'm going to just go out on a limb and say the guy's got some issues.
	You think?
	Yeah.
	I mean, he just, he'd drink his own blood if you told him it had gin in it, I think.
	Yeah.
	You know, are we filming?
	Huh?
	Are we filming?
	We don't have to.
	I don't care.
	You can film everyone.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if we're filming yet.
	Are we recording?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah, because 30 years, I never saw him take a drink of water.
	Yeah.
	Brother, breakfast, hard liquor, vitamins, hard liquor.
	Yeah.
	Lunch, a couple beers, hard liquor at night wine.
	I love him to death.
	Oh, yeah.
	I never saw him drink any water until recently.
	Now I think he's back off the water, back on the roll again.
	Yeah, he said he's back.
	Yeah, he said he did 30 days sober and then walked across the street to a bar and turned in his chip.
	Yeah.
	That's right.
	The funny part is- He's the man.
	The funny part is when he had that really serious health issue.
	Yeah.
	I got a call from Wendy and it didn't look good.
	So I flew up, got a plane right away, flew up to Atlanta.
	And I walked in, the doctor pulled me out.
	He goes, hey, your buddy here has destroyed his body, the inside of some of his intestines and stuff were dying and stuff.
	He goes, he's got a 5% chance of making it through the surgery.
	So he goes in.
	We wait.
	Jimmy Hart was with me.
	We waited, we waited, we waited.
	He comes out.
	He's still alive.
	His girl's crying.
	His daughter Ashley's crying.
	I'm sitting there holding his hand, holding his hand.
	5% chance to make it.
	He opens his eyes.
	He looks up at me.
	He goes, Hogan, get me a six-pack.
	I went, what?
	First thing he said to me, get me a six-pack when he woke up.
	Yeah, I'm not shocked, man.
	Oh, no.
	I was just tripping, man.
	Just kind of blew my mind, you know.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he's a good guy, bro.
	He's the best there ever was.
	He's a, well, he would, and he says that about you, you know?
	No, he's the best there ever was.
	Is he the better wrestler?
	Is he the better?
	Is he the best entertainer?
	Is he the best wrestler?
	He was more consistent because I quit and I really didn't care about the business.
	I came from playing in a rock and roll band, you know, and that whole attitude.
	But once he got in it, he was, you know, he was real consistent and he held it down.
	Like when I was doing the New York Madison Square Garden thing, he held the Southern Belt thing down, which was actually a little harder because he was going an hour every night.
	Sometimes they do like what they call it Broadways where nobody wins.
	You do like two-hour Broadways with Harley Race.
	Just those two in the ring.
	Yeah, because they didn't want to switch a belt.
	So they didn't want to make either wrestlers best.
	So okay, you go an hour Broadway tonight.
	Wow.
	If I somebody told me to go on an hour Broadway, that's it, just beat me.
	I'm out of here.
	I'm going to get room servers and a beer.
	No, I say he was the best serverless simply because he was so consistent.
	Now, if you're talking about who drew the most money or internationally, who saturated all the international markets over the years, I had more time and I had more seat time, like a good race car driver.
	I had more seat time in all these foreign markets.
	And Rick spent the majority of his career down south, and he didn't have that swing arm to plug into Mozambique, Zambawi, Malaysia, all these places where people will know who Hulk Hogan is, but they might not know who Tom Brady is.
	But yeah, he was the man.
	I love working with him.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he's a scrappy.
	He just will not be denied, really.
	There's something about him.
	And there was something about that whole NWA.
	I don't know if it was AWA or NWA at that time when he was really the king of it.
	But it came on, I think, on Sunday night.
	Like it was almost, like, I had friends that watched wrestling, right?
	They knew you, but I knew if they really watched wrestling if they knew about, if they knew about NWA.
	You know, that's when you could tell if they were that next level of fucking, you know, it was a lot of guys that just couldn't even read and they'd be in the stands yelling, the signs misspelled.
	Yeah, you had to be dialed in to be like that whole Crockett Southern belt promotion.
	You had to be a wrestling fan.
	Oh, you had to have rabies, I feel like.
	I was more accessible to the housewives and the kids that didn't know what wrestling was.
	So it was a whole different thing.
	But then Rick came our way.
	Yeah.
	And I'd been begging him to come up there for years.
	He wouldn't leave.
	And then once he came up, then we started rocking.
	Was it scary whenever he got over to WWE?
	Did you feel a little bit of like, holy shit, how's this going to go?
	Because that's a lot of ego.
	You know, at that point, there's a lot of ego.
	There can only be so many men on the top of the, you know, on the mountaintops.
	Well, it's kind of like, you know, it's hard to explain, but I play the dumb fox a lot, you know?
	And for me, I'm always looking who's got the big dollar sign on their chest.
	Yeah.
	And I don't mean to be an egomaniac, but I mean, I could actually wrestle anybody at that time and sell out.
	I mean, we sold out everywhere constantly for years.
	Yeah.
	It didn't matter if I wrestled Flair or Kamala or Paul Orndoff, Mr. Wonderful, or it didn't matter.
	You could wrestle fucking Hunter Biden, dude.
	I'd come on TV.
	But yeah, it wasn't that with me.
	It was, I wanted him to get over so I would have somebody to work with and chase, you know?
	So that was me.
	It was about, for me, it was like the old school thing, the money and the miles, you know.
	So, you know, I wasn't really that into being on the road or getting beat on every night.
	Yeah.
	But there was so much paper involved, bro.
	I was in.
	Yeah.
	Do you think that you felt more like an athlete?
	Did you feel, I mean, because you came from a music background, did you feel more like an athlete?
	Did you feel more like a, like this is just, did you almost make wrestling your music in a way?
	Does that make any sense kind of?
	You're hitting it on all these cylinders there.
	I really wasn't an elite athlete that was great on the football field or, you know, a great wrestler, you know, amateur wrestler.
	Or, you know, I had a baseball background, but I didn't, you know, play Major League Baseball.
	I had a couple of things that happened to me that stopped all that stuff.
	But I looked at myself more as, just you said, it's like an art form and extension of my music.
	And once I figured out what the business was about, because you can Google Hulk Hogan in Japan, you can see me get down to wrestle like Bret Hart and all the guys because that's how I started, you know, back in the day here.
	The guy I am here on that suit, broke my leg the first day, ran me off, put me in the dojo over two years, learned wrestling, took submissions.
	So you learned it all.
	Well, I went through the motions because back then, if you got your ass beat in the bar, brother, you were out of the wrestling business.
	Yeah.
	You know, back in the 70s.
	Back in the late 70s, a little bit different than the performance center now with the WWE.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I can only imagine.
	I mean, you had to live the lifestyle then.
	Yeah, and you had to protect the business.
	And if you wanted a job, there's a 300-pound guy over there with cauliflower.
	You had to take the food out of his wife and kids' mouth to get in the business.
	It wasn't like, you know, there's 40 wrestlers here that have been training, you know, at the performance center.
	We can pick one when one gets hurt and replace him.
	It wasn't that way.
	Right.
	It was way different back then.
	But yeah, it was something that once I figured the business out, you know, I kind of like watched a bunch of guys growing up.
	Like I watched Dusty Roselaw because I was from here.
	You know, and then I also watched superstar Billy Graham a lot.
	And I kind of like stole a little bit from both of them.
	And then I was digging and wrestling and digging and wrestling around here.
	And then I quit.
	Then I went up to, you know, northern Florida through Pecola and Mobile, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, wrestled and wrestled.
	Then I quit.
	Then I went up to Memphis for a while and I quit.
	And when you were quitting, what was it making you quit kind of?
	The money, bro.
	I was wrestling like 12, 13 times a week.
	And they were giving me a check for $125.
	Oh, yeah.
	When you're beating the shit out of somebody at a best western.
	Yeah, and I was gigging my head for five bucks a night.
	And then in between rock and roll bands, one of the lead singers in my band got me in the laborers union here because in between bands, we'd go to the labor hall and they pull your number.
	You may get a job for four days at the mall working with a pipe fitter or three days at a government shutdown working with electricians.
	And I got a call to go be a longshoreman, help a longshoreman.
	I get in the union down there.
	In where?
	In Florida?
	Yeah, on 22nd Street Causeway in Florida.
	Okay.
	So once I learned how to be, and it was a weird place because I was probably the first white guy ever in the longshoreman using here in Tampa.
	Oh, wow.
	These are mostly Latinos?
	Latinos and blacks, yeah.
	And so then I learned how to load the ships and I became a stevedore.
	But in between wrestling, I was like, man, 13, 14 times this week, twice on Wednesday, twice on Saturday, three times on Sunday.
	I wrestled for $125.
	I'm going back to the docks where I was making $400 a day.
	Yeah.
	You know, eating the gimmicks and working 14, 15 hours.
	It just didn't pay.
	No, so I quit, quit.
	I went back and forth, back and forth.
	But then I figured the business out.
	Then I went back and one time I slammed somebody.
	I went, I looked at the crowd and went like that.
	And the reaction got more response than the body slam.
	Yeah.
	Wait a minute.
	Let me hit somebody in the throat.
	And then look.
	And the reaction got, you know, more.
	I said, okay, now I got it.
	It took me a while to figure it out.
	And then when I got fired from the WWF the first time by Vince Senior, when I went to make the Rocky movie, I went and spent three years in Minnesota.
	And then I figured it out.
	Figured the whole mania thing out, the ripping the shirt, the Hulking up.
	But I wasn't an elite athlete, but I figured the business out and I got real good at instead of getting somebody in the corner and kicking them 20 times like the guys do, I'd kick somebody once and leave them laying.
	Yeah.
	And I'd say, don't get up.
	And I'd walk around and strut like a peacock and do my thing.
	And I figured out how to create emotion and drama and get people really pissed off at me or really happy with me.
	So I just kind of figured it out, man.
	But I had enough of an athletic ability to have balance and, you know, basically replacement and have a cadence in the ring, which, you know, a lot of guys can figure out.
	Yeah, man, it's just, it's really, it's, it's, uh, it's kind of fascinating to see like what, because I don't, as a fan, like, dude, I remember like you, we would try to stay up for a Saturday night main event, man, and we were a kid.
	It was like, fuck, I remember my brother and I holding each other's eyes open because we were, because it wouldn't come on until 10.30, right?
	And like, we were fucking sitting there and we would wake up in the morning and be like, what did you see?
	Like, we missed it.
	We were like when you would come on, it was like, man, it didn't matter how poor we were.
	It didn't matter if my parents were too busy.
	It didn't matter if I wasn't a tough kid.
	It was like, yeah, I fell in love with you.
	It was like, I didn't care about the wrestling, you know, like I did.
	The wrestling was cool, but I cared about whoever that, like, whoever they made me, whatever they made me feel, you know, and when you, it was like, it made me feel like, man, this is an escape.
	Like, and I fell more in love with the, yeah, the person, not the moves.
	Like, it didn't matter who was the most athletic.
	Right, right.
	You know, Snooka was fun to watch because he had, you know, this hair coming off him and, you know, and these, you know, domestic charges or whatever just dangling off of him.
	But he was like, but otherwise it was like, yeah, it was about the person.
	It wasn't about as much the wrestling.
	Yeah, I figured that out, bro.
	And that whole thing I slid into, you know, that from Venice Beach, California, of course, I'm from here.
	I'm here my whole life.
	And that whole being tanner than everybody and having the blonde hair and just kind of like the training prayers and vitamins, that impeccable babyface character, you know, it kind of like was just perfect timing with everything.
	Oh, yeah.
	So I kind of figured out, you know, right away, you know, that the character worked.
	And I saw how I kind of like came up with a little better character than everybody else around me.
	And I just wrote it till it dropped.
	I picked it up and I wrote it some more and I spanked it and wrote it some more.
	And even when Vince told me, you know, your run's over and I think you're done with it.
	I said, okay, see you later.
	Let's work for Ted Turner for 10 years and taught everybody a lesson.
	That was NWO?
	Yeah.
	And then I went in and the red and yellow for a couple years.
	Then I kind of felt a little rumbly.
	I needed to do something evil, you know, and then that got red hot.
	So you had good instincts then?
	Yeah.
	Did you say that?
	You say you had good instincts?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I came into New York in 77 as a bad guy because I sold out Shea Stadium with Andre in 78. And then I went all around Japan.
	I spent 20 years in Japan, six months out of the year.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Google some of my matches.
	People don't know about that as much.
	No, not really.
	And what was that lifestyle?
	I mean, you guys get over there.
	First of all, you're twice as big as anybody there.
	You're as big as some families don't weigh as much as you there.
	Well, first off, I was single when I went over there.
	I didn't get married until 83, end of 83, December.
	So in 77, I went over there, and the guy that broke my leg the first day was a guy named Perl Matsuda.
	Matsuda, yeah.
	Right.
	And then they ran me off, you know, because I had real long blonde hair all the way down to my ass coming out of a rock and roll band thinking I could be a wrestler.
	Duh.
	And then I went back a few months later.
	When I got home, my dad beat my ass worse than Matsuda did.
	Damn.
	He said, don't you ever let anybody hurt you again.
	So, you know, it straighten me right up.
	So a few months later, when my leg was healed, I went back and I had that attitude, you know, because I was, when I was younger, I was real strong and, you know, kind of aggressive.
	And so I said, I'm not going to let these guys hurt me, you know.
	So I just didn't let him take my arm.
	Right.
	You know, and so I went back and, you know, then they couldn't run me off and they did everything they could to get rid of me.
	Finally, they just said, okay, we need to teach this guy.
	He ain't going nowhere.
	So I spent a couple of years in Japan learning the submissions hooks and all the UFC stuff and to protect myself.
	Not much, but I learned enough to protect myself.
	And, you know, then when I went to Japan, I had this mystique of here on that suit who broke me in.
	And so that carried a lot of weight.
	And then just like we had Elvis here, the Japanese at the time had a real famous Japanese singer.
	Like Elvis had his hair bleached out.
	And here I come.
	They knew I played music.
	So the first thing I did was I went in the studio and I cut an album with the most popular Japanese band called Pink Cloud.
	So I went and cut an album with them.
	And so right away I got over.
	So they love you.
	Then the other thing was I brought Freddie Blassey with me.
	I don't know if you know who he is.
	Classy Freddie Blassey.
	Right.
	And he used to wrestle a guy named Ricky Dozen in Japan who was a mafia guy because all the wrestling in Japan is run by the mafia TV assign.
	Everything's all mafia at the time.
	Right.
	I hope they're not listening.
	But it doesn't matter.
	But no, that's cool.
	It's cool.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, so now I show up with Blassey and Blassey had false teeth.
	He had a set of teeth he ate with.
	Then when he wrestled, he'd follow this other set of teeth down.
	Oh, that's what he would do.
	Yeah, and he would bite these guys in the head, suck the blood out of the head, then spit the blood in their face.
	Oh, yeah.
	And his first tour over there, three old ladies died watching TV.
	Oh, God.
	So now I come over with him.
	So I got Matt Sud under my belt.
	I cut this music so the Japanese think I'm some, you know, superstar because I just played music back in the day.
	And now I'm with Blassey.
	So you were a king there?
	As soon as I walked in there, you know, I was over.
	Was it interesting?
	What was it like?
	What was the fanhood like and how they treat fans different in America and Japan?
	Well, over in Japan, they treat you like, you know, you're royalty.
	You know, it's just like Brad Pitt and, you know, Tom Brady all in one.
	You know what I mean?
	Wow.
	That's how they treat their wrestlers.
	You know, and, you know, they've got the sumo wrestlers and they've got the pro wrestlers.
	And, you know, even the sumo wrestlers would be bowing down to us.
	It was just really a strange situation.
	Yokozunas and stuff.
	Yeah.
	Did you ever battle one of those?
	Did you guys ever?
	I almost did.
	I almost did.
	Because they're big dudes.
	Yeah.
	And they're mostly wrestle.
	Right.
	So when you go into the dressing room at night, wherever you're at, there'd be a sheet of paper on the wall.
	And it was in Japanese writing.
	Of course, I knew my name in Japanese, you know, Hulk Hogan Itchibon, number one.
	And I would know my name, but I couldn't read who I was wrestling.
	So all of a sudden in the Japanese dressing room, before I started living and traveling with the Japanese, I was still with the guy jeans with the Americans.
	All of a sudden, I hear all this crazy stuff going on next door because the walls are paper thin over there, you know?
	And all of a sudden, Peter Takahashi, the referee, comes up, he goes, oh, so-and-so, Fuji Shoot, whatever his name was, just beat up Kabuki, the booker.
	So this sumo wrestler, it was his first night.
	And apparently the booker told this Japanese guy that he wanted him to put me over, but go in and shoot with me for 10 minutes, not work, and I'll take it easy, but really go in and shoot and try to take me down and try to hurt me.
	But then at the end, let me win.
	He goes, no, I'm not letting him win.
	So they come over and tell me that.
	I go, boom, you know, just oh no, here we go.
	So I'm going out there, bro.
	You know, because that's, there is no choice.
	Yeah, you got to go out there.
	And there was a big guy there from Vancouver named John Tenta called Earthquake.
	I don't know if you ever remember him.
	Earthquake the wrestler?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I remember him.
	He used to be a sumo wrestler.
	And him and I were really good friends.
	He goes, No, Terry, you're not going out there.
	I am.
	I said, he's all yours, brother.
	Wow.
	And as soon as we're watching through the corner, as soon as Tenta went out there, this guy tried to hook his eye right away.
	And man, it pissed Tenta off.
	Tena beat the shit out of me.
	I was like, thank God I didn't go out there.
	Wow.
	Because I wouldn't have been ready for him to hook my eye right away.
	Yeah.
	You know, I wasn't thinking on that level.
	Yeah.
	But this guy was just really pissed and didn't, you know, he came from a sport where it's a shoot.
	You know, and the engine wasn't predetermined.
	And he did not want to hear any of it putting me over.
	Damn.
	You know, he thought he's going to wrestle me and beat the crap out of me, but John Tenta saved me.
	Dang.
	So you guys became friends after that?
	We were friends before that, but before the whole tour, I put him over.
	I was hiding behind him like scared, like a mouse, you know.
	I was droving crazy for the last three weeks I was with him.
	Was there a whole universe that you had going on over there that we didn't even know about?
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Actually, if I was like in Minnesota, for instance, and I would wrestle on a Friday night, if I had Saturday and Sunday off, I'd fly to Japan.
	Wow.
	Wrestle there in Tokyo and Osaka, then fly back from Monday TV.
	Because the money was good there.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Real good.
	Wow.
	You had Japan.
	We had, who do we have on?
	We had on Jesse Ventura.
	Oh, did you?
	This has already gone better, 7,000 times better than that.
	Jesse can be a little confrontational.
	The Baja.
	Yeah, he, he was like, I lived, you know, I was part of the one percenters.
	He's like, I lived on the seventh ring of Saturn.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You want to know why?
	Oh, he hates my guts.
	Does he?
	Oh, bro.
	I talked to him for three hours.
	I talked for 17 seconds.
	Yeah.
	He talked for all the other time.
	And he kept saying, I'm going to leave in just a minute.
	And then he would talk for 70 more minutes.
	Wow.
	But anyway.
	It was a trip.
	Yeah.
	That guy was just, it was the wildest interview, the chat, wildest conversation I ever had in my whole life.
	Wow.
	When you go to the bathroom, you close the door behind you, do you?
	Of course, yeah.
	You don't want somebody coming in there because you're doing things.
	You're doing what God wants you to do.
	You don't need help.
	But do you do that with your web browsing?
	Or are you leaving the bathroom door open?
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	It might not.
	It might, might not.
	Depends on if you even like it.
	But there's a better way to break your bad habits than cold turkey.
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	So whenever you look at a lot of guys have, you know, you're in, you seem really healthy, you know, do you feel healthier than, I mean, a lot of guys in your line of work haven't had a lot of the same blessings of health.
	I mean, I know you got a pretty bad spine, you know.
	What's bad on you?
	Like, where's your health at kind of now?
	Well, I think internally I'm healthy.
	It's just I abuse my body so bad, you know.
	In the last 10 or 12 years, I've had like 25 surgeries.
	You know, it's kind of weird because when I went to do Rocky 3 when my mother was still alive, if you would come to my house, she'd go, yo, T, come over here.
	First thing I want to do is measure you, you know?
	Oh, yeah.
	And that's what she did to me before I went to do the Rocky movie.
	I was like 335 pounds.
	I was 6'7 on the nose.
	Well, then right before my mother died a few years back, she wanted to measure me and I was 6'4 and a half.
	You know, between the 10 back surgeries and the two knee replacements and the two hip replacements and the abdominal stuff and the shoulders and all the surgeries I've had.
	And plus you get older, you shrink up a little bit.
	Yeah, you get a little bit of a.
	So, yeah, I mean, other than you know, like when I'm with Skye and we're walking, I lean on her.
	So it looks like we're in high school.
	I'm like, hey, baby, what's up?
	I'm really just kind of like hanging on, you know, for the ride.
	Or if I'm not with her, I can pretty much walk on my own from here to that door.
	But if it gets too far than that, I get like a walking stick, which is embarrassing and hell as hell.
	But Sky says, embrace it.
	You're a warrior.
	I say, you're right, baby.
	You're right.
	I am a warrior.
	That's a good way to look at it.
	Yeah.
	So I'm trying to adapt.
	But, you know, we're going in Monday, tomorrow morning for another monogram, you know, because I'm having some more issues with my back.
	And they're going to see if the disc is pushing the spine above the hardware.
	And if it is, then they want to go from the middle of my back up to my neck.
	But if the disc isn't pushing on the spinal cord, then they said, we don't want to cut on you anymore.
	And there's, because my left hip is like 25 or 26 years old, they think there might be a problem there.
	But we're going to find out.
	Yeah.
	But it's all from that damn fake wrestling business.
	Nobody told me it was fake.
	Yeah.
	Did it get more, did it get more the like, did the theater of it change over the years?
	How did the theater of wrestling evolve over the years?
	I hate to say that.
	When I first got in, if you kick somebody, leave lace prints on them.
	When you punch somebody, you know, we want to see black and blue marks.
	Yeah.
	That was the mindset when I was first in.
	And I was a medium-sized guy.
	I was like 310, 315.
	I was like medium-sized.
	Sweet Hanson, 360, King Kong Monster, 360, all these monsters, you know, that I was wrestling.
	And it's, you know, it was hard pushing them around.
	So it got to the point where, you know, these guys would beat the crap out of each other and it was real territorial, you know, and they'd work four or five days a week.
	But then once this thing blew up and I cut a deal with Vince Jr. after I was fired and I came back, it was like every single night there were three towns a night running, you know?
	And so we kind of lightened up with the work and it was always supposed to be light, but it never was because people were really laying it in and really, really.
	People get competitive.
	Yeah.
	I mean, would there be guys you had a real kind of like, you know, you just had a long day in the car with them and you're like, tonight, when we get out there, you're going to get it.
	It got a little crazy.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, I always had a little bit more of a target on my back because I was the guy.
	Right.
	You know, so that's true.
	So if you go and you break Hulk Hogan's arm, guess what?
	Your career's made.
	Right.
	And I ran with the pack a lot, but then I'd also fly to South Africa and wrestle the heavyweight champions in South Africa.
	And I'd fly to, you know, different places and be by myself.
	Yeah.
	You know, and Vince is going, don't you lose that belt, monster.
	I'm like, oh, great.
	You know, because you could get hooked real quick in there, you know, if you're not thinking.
	Yeah.
	And so there was all that.
	And then when I come back to the States, I do this wrestling, you know?
	And so it was all cool, but just about 1980, when I went to Minnesota, instead of digging and wrestling so much, I started playing to the crowd more.
	And then by the time I came back to New York to Wrestle the Chic, they didn't play any entrance music.
	They didn't sell any merchandise.
	And I pulled Vince aside.
	I said, bro, I'm making a ton of money in the Twin Cities selling t-shirts and headbands and frisbees and all kind of stuff.
	And he changed his thoughts.
	And on the way to the ring, don't, don't, don't, don't.
	The place explodes instead of just coming out with no music.
	So I cranked it in the garden that first night with the Iron Sheik.
	Don't, don't, don't, don't.
	And the place exploded.
	And Vince went, monster, you're right.
	So, you know, Jimmy Hart, my manager, sat down and wrote most of the entrance music for everybody.
	Really?
	He was a musician?
	He was a composer?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, he was in a way before your time, actually before my time, thank God.
	Jimmy's 79 years old, but Jimmy was in a band called The Gentries.
	And they had a hit song called Keep On Dancing.
	They recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis where Elvis recorded.
	Oh, sweet.
	Yeah, I've been over there.
	And so Jimmy knew everybody.
	And Jimmy's got the news told, Danny used one of those auto harps to record everything, you know.
	And not to record everything, but to write everything.
	I mean, yeah, write everything.
	And so, yeah, once Vince saw the music and, you know, got into the merchandising, it changed the game because, you know, when I went up there to work for Vince Jr., I lived right next door to him up there in Greenwich.
	And so I was in the office every day, you know, for the first three or four years.
	It was me and Vince in the office.
	So you really got dialed into the business side of it.
	Yeah, a long time, long time ago before I went back there.
	Right.
	The three years in Minnesota were a great education for me because I was with a guy named Vern Gagne.
	Yeah.
	And I was real tight with him and his son.
	He owned that area.
	Didn't he own that?
	Yeah, he owned everything.
	And I was single.
	I had nothing to do but just learn.
	And plus, I just, I just, you know, I took to it like a duct of water, man.
	I found a way to, you know, really, you know, progress and generate a ton of revenue.
	It was easy for me.
	You know, I had a feel for it, you know, and I could wrestle anybody.
	And I didn't even know if I was going to wrestle him.
	All he tells me, who's going to win or lose?
	I don't need to talk about anything.
	I never talked about a match.
	Really?
	Except one time with The Rock, and we didn't do anything we talked about.
	So a lot of times you're out there just kind of figuring out like you guys each at a certain point, especially if the guy's good enough or seasoned enough, you know, you can make it great.
	I could go out there with Randy Orton, not say a word.
	Matter of fact, when I wrestled in SummerSlam, we didn't even talk.
	Vince told us who we wanted to win or lose.
	And then I'm doing it.
	Randy Orton's old school.
	I could do that with Cena.
	I'd have to talk, listen.
	I mean, I'd have to lead the match, but I could do it with Cena because he's good enough.
	Rock all day long.
	Stone cold all day long.
	These guys are really good in the ring, bro.
	Flair all day long.
	Me and Flair never talked.
	Nothing to talk about.
	See you out there, brother.
	So that's how I learned.
	Andre, I'd go to Andre, hey, boss, is there anything I want to do out there tonight?
	Don't worry.
	Okay, well, how do you want to start the match?
	Don't worry.
	Okay, no, I ain't worried.
	Scared me to death.
	Did a guy like Andre, like, what kind of, like, if you guys were cruising in the car, like, what, did he have to sit in the back or did he have to like be under a tarp in the trunk or the truck or something?
	Or how would you even get like killing me, man?
	But how would you get something that big somewhere?
	Well, we didn't travel together, you know.
	yeah, because the car wouldn't go, yeah, yeah.
	Well, we drove for a lot of years, you know, like if I was a wrestler, if I was wrestling in Atlanta tonight and I had to be in Minneapolis tomorrow night, I'd drive, right?
	So if you guys drove, like you did, how could Andre be in a car?
	Could he be in a car?
	They had a van, they drove him in, but then we started flying early 80s.
	We started flying a lot, so it made it easier.
	But if you can imagine, there was never a chair he could sit in.
	He couldn't sit in that chair.
	Couldn't sit there.
	Oh, yeah.
	There was never a chair.
	There was never a bed.
	There was never a knife.
	There was never a fork.
	He was never comfortable.
	When he sat on a plane, his head would be sideways like this where the overhead is.
	He'd be flying like this.
	And every plane probably just goes to the Bahamas that he's on.
	But the hardest thing for me was, you know, the first eight or nine years, he didn't like me at all and tortured me.
	Why was he jealous?
	Well, I was hard-headed, bro, when I was younger.
	I thought I could beat anybody up and I thought I could beat him up.
	Did you keep that energy like when you were in person too, kind of?
	Like outside of the map?
	He just didn't like me.
	He just really didn't give me the time of day.
	But when we got in the ring, he showed me how much he didn't like me.
	Right.
	You know, and then I made the mistake of bringing a flight attendant to the Capitol Center in Washington.
	Oh, we've all done that.
	And I put her right in the first row, and I didn't tell Andre, I didn't tell anybody.
	And then I kind of kept rolling out of the ring where she was, you know, and had Andre chasing me out there.
	And then when he chased me, I'd turn around to catch him real quick.
	And then he heard her scream, come on, Terry, come on, Terry.
	And he goes, and he figured out she was with me.
	And he about killed me.
	He took me back in the ring.
	You know how you tie the ropes up?
	He tied the bottom rope in the second.
	I put my neck in it, put a size 26 foot on it.
	It was just almost broke my neck in the ropes.
	Then I had those yellow tights on.
	He picked me up like a damn stork with my balls and my ass hanging out and carried me around the ring in front of this girl with all my junk hanging out.
	No more girls.
	Yes, sir.
	No more girls.
	I get it.
	He just didn't want that energy there, huh?
	No, because he knew I was showing off.
	Oh, yeah.
	He didn't want to be used as part of this.
	And I was trying to get over by showing him off.
	And he beat my ass for that.
	That's awesome, dude.
	That's so much fun.
	We're up for you, maybe.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Was there a part where it started to like, where did it start to, because everything I noticed, like, there's a part where it's fun, it's beginning, and then it becomes work, you know?
	Yeah.
	Did it start to feel like that at a certain point?
	I mean, even if you're a hero to the world, it's still.
	Yeah, I hated it.
	I hated it.
	I hated the business because of the traveling and, you know, the no sleep.
	You have to make a choice between eating, sleeping, or working out.
	So the priorities were working out first.
	Yeah.
	Eating and sleep was the third priority.
	So like if we wrestled in Madison Square Garden tonight, you know, and all of a sudden we're supposed to fly to St. Louis, short flight, hour and a half to St. Louis.
	Well, all of a sudden you get the LaGuardia planes canceled.
	You know, oh my God, you can't, you know, now it's delayed.
	It's delayed.
	And it just, you spent all days in the, all day in the airport.
	And then when you landed in St. Louis, you know, do you go to the hotel first and check in and waste time?
	Or do you go to the gym first?
	So I'd always go straight to the gym and work out.
	And then usually I wouldn't have time to go to the hotel.
	I'd usually go to the arena.
	And I was always on last.
	So I'd miss room service and food.
	So that was always a scramble.
	And then I'd check in the room later at night, you know, so it was just potluck.
	Sometimes the flights would be on time and sometimes they wouldn't.
	But the traveling, I hated the traveling because it was, I was flying 300 days a year.
	And it burns you down.
	Oh, yeah, it's brutal.
	Even with stand-up comedy, it's like we get to, sometimes you take the overnight flight because it's the cheapest back then.
	So sometimes when I was living in California, we'd fly.
	So I'd get in at 5.30.
	You get in at 6.30 in the morning or something.
	So then they take you straight to radio.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So then you're there for two hours and then you get back to your hotel.
	Now it's around like 11 a.m., but you haven't slept really.
	So you try to get a few hours of sleep and then you get up and want to live.
	It's just that the traveling burns people out, man.
	Yeah, you get off stage last.
	The food call's already been done.
	You're like, fuck, man.
	I remember I used to tease John Belushi, you know, because we'd jump on a blower Friday night out of JFK.
	What do you mean a blower?
	All night, you know.
	Oh, non-stop.
	Oh, you mean an eight ball?
	That guy died of Coke, I think.
	Whatever.
	But I'd jump on the Pan Am, you know, to go to LA and we'd land.
	I said, all right, brother, I'll see you Monday, you know, because he was on the flight back Monday morning.
	I'd be on it.
	And he'd see me go, oh man, this is beef of this traveling.
	I said, since you got here Friday night, bro, I've already been back to New York and back once.
	I had to fly back to Wrestle at the Capitol Center.
	I've been back.
	So since you've been here wrestling for 48 hours, I made the trip there and back again.
	He goes, no, you didn't.
	I said, I swear to God, I did, bro.
	You know, because you're out of your mind.
	I said, well, so there was a lot of, but that's the part I hated was the traveling.
	The only thing that I really dug was, you know, being in the ring.
	Because when I was in the ring, you know, I was real present.
	You know, I didn't think about anything else.
	You know, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, kids, business problems, money problems, three or four guys that wanted to kill me in the back.
	I didn't think about anything.
	You know, when I was in the ring, I was completely in the moment.
	Yeah.
	You know, and the one thing that really worked for me was once I clicked, I was not Terry Boleya.
	When I went to that ring, I was Hall Pogan, brother, and I believed it.
	I mean, I believed when I was in there, I wasn't afraid of anybody or anything.
	And I just, that was my attitude, you know, because if I didn't believe it, you're not going to get them to believe it.
	They're watching.
	I believed it.
	So I was so dialed into that character, man.
	I lived through that thing.
	And it got me through a lot of craziness.
	You know, it helped a lot.
	Yeah.
	How tough was it?
	Cause you have a family.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And how tough was it?
	I always wondered like to your kids, like, to be, because you're everybody's hero.
	Like you were like, you know, you were a hero to so many people, right?
	I wonder if it's tough for a child to be like, oh, how do I make my dad seem like my hero?
	You know, like, how do I make my dad seem like my hero if he's everybody else's hero?
	You know, I wonder if that's tough for a kid, you know?
	I'm sure it is.
	You know, the kids were real aware of who I was, but, you know, the moment I would come home, bro, that Hulk Hogan thing was dropped.
	Really?
	At the front door.
	I didn't have any pictures in my house of me, no wrestling crap in the house at all.
	I didn't want it in my house.
	Some guys have belts hanging and pictures of themselves and stuff.
	Would you ever mess up?
	Would you ever be like, go to your room and don't come out till the bell rings or something like that?
	Like, would you ever like.
	No, no, brother.
	I didn't do that.
	But the thing was, you know, I was, I dropped that whole cooking persona.
	And the moment I'd walk in the house, I'd take the bandana off the bald head and I was just dad or Terry.
	And I was, you know, I could switch gears pretty easy because I just didn't live that character like, ooh, yeah, brother.
	Bret Hart thinks he's the greatest wrestler and all this crazy crap that these guys think.
	You know, I just let it go, man.
	It was a job.
	And I was real good at what I was doing.
	There had to be a degree of separation with me because you'll end up killing yourself.
	You know, you can't live up to that character.
	I mean, all my guys are dead and I was a ring leader.
	You know, I was a ring leader.
	I was running them all hard.
	And I'd come to the edge.
	I'd stop after about four days.
	You guys keep going.
	I'm out.
	So I had to draw a line in the sand.
	So you were able to do that pretty, it came naturally for you.
	It was pretty easy to do.
	I'm really good at stopping things or starting things.
	And she's been around me a little while now.
	She's beautiful.
	Yeah, she is.
	I mean, you're handsome, but she's better.
	Well, you're not my type, brother.
	You just hold your horses back, all right?
	And same, brother.
	Same, brother.
	Yeah.
	But with that baby, I got me a whole new family, too, so I'm good.
	Nice.
	Congratulations.
	What are we talking about?
	I look at her and I forgot what I was talking about.
	Look, I feel you.
	I look.
	I agree with you.
	You just look.
	That's all you get.
	I'm not going to look again.
	Don't look again.
	Don't look again, brother.
	I'm over here, brother.
	Cool, we're good now.
	What Did you go to some of the guys' funerals?
	What was it?
	Yeah, and I quit doing funerals and weddings because I walked in on so many hotel rooms where the guys were passed away, you know?
	Oh, over the years, just.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, if you, I don't know the numbers now, but you could probably Google it.
	One of the guys could tell you right away.
	But, you know, with baseball, let's say over the last 20 years, what do you got?
	20 guys died or basketball, 20. Maybe it's 30 or 40. I don't know.
	You know, hockey, maybe 10, 15, 20. Wrestling, 350.
	Yeah.
	I mean, everybody's dead.
	Yeah.
	You know, I got a retail store right down on Clearwater Beach.
	And, you know, we sell pictures and posters.
	And I, okay, that, okay, there's six guys in the picture.
	I'm the only one still alive.
	It's freaky, man.
	I'm sure.
	You know, especially because my mom and dad are dead.
	My brother's dead.
	All my friends are dead.
	So it kind of like the mortality thing can get to you after a while.
	So when you ask how my health is, I'm cool, you know, with all the backs.
	I mean, you can have one back surgery and end up in a wheelchair.
	I've had 10, you know, and so I'm very blessed, very lucky, bro.
	You know, and just like I said, I'm either all the way in or I'm all the way out.
	If we're going to party, bro, we're going to party.
	Yeah.
	If I'm going to go straight, I'm going to go straight, you know.
	And right now I'm on a straight run.
	No alcohol, no, I actually did take two Tylenols.
	I was hurting so bad today.
	But I didn't take Tylenols, Advil, or Lee for months now.
	And I haven't drank since January 1st.
	But when I go to the other side, when I go the other way, you can ask Flair.
	It gets ugly.
	You're going in, huh?
	Ugly and hard.
	Yeah, well, Flair, I mean, yeah, Flair definitely.
	He can say whatever he wants about me, but I put his ass to bed every time.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I believe because he's at 9 o'clock.
	Vogue, come on.
	9 o'clock.
	He's down.
	Last night he invites us out, right?
	So we get out of work.
	We had a show last night.
	We get out.
	We text his lady, his assistant or whatever.
	She's like, oh, he just.
	Who's that now?
	Who's the new victim?
	Her name's Gia.
	I mean, I'll tell you this.
	She lifts chest a lot.
	I'll tell you that.
	There you go.
	I'll say that.
	Typical flavor.
	I love it.
	She skips arm and leg day, but she really.
	Yeah.
	And she said, oh, it's not it.
	He just went to bed.
	You know, I just put him to sleep.
	But he lives that thing.
	He usually sneaks off on you, though.
	Really?
	I could see it.
	You'll be drinking at the bar, drinking at the bar, and you'll think he's going to the bathroom.
	You don't come back.
	Yeah.
	And there's usually this huge tab that he leaves.
	So he's got it down, brother.
	Believe me, I know.
	Yeah, that's crazy.
	Short story, Flair story.
	Yeah.
	In between back surgery number four or five or six, whatever it was, I booked this Hulkamania tour.
	First time I've ever booked a tour on my own overseas, right?
	Australia.
	So I hire Flair and I hire a bunch of wrestlers to come with me.
	Flair goes, hey, I need my money up front.
	Okay, Rick, sure.
	Prior for one of his wives, I bet.
	He brought one of them with him.
	Actually, he divorced her right up there.
	He's always got a wife on him somewhere.
	Yeah.
	And so I paid him up front.
	And all of a sudden, we're getting ready to go to Australia.
	Oh, wow, my back, you know, goes out again.
	And now the tour is booked.
	I'm following Britney Spears around.
	I'm a day behind her tour, picking up leftovers.
	I thought, I thought.
	And so my back went on, I had to have another back surgery right before I left.
	And I had stitches in my back when I went over there.
	That's how crazy I used to be.
	Yeah, we traveled stitches.
	You need to lay in bed about six months after your back surgery.
	I was gone.
	Let's go.
	We're Wednesday.
	We're out of here.
	That's I told Flair.
	Yeah, thank you.
	So we get over there.
	And the greatest thing was the first night in Sydney, Australia, Britney Spears got mad and shot the crowd a bird, right?
	So nobody came to our tours, right?
	The rest of the tours.
	So we bounced around and picked everybody up, you know?
	And I wrestled Flair a bunch over there.
	And every night he'd come to me, he goes, hey, I need another five grand tonight.
	What?
	I already paid you.
	oh, no, I need another five grand.
	I said, okay, well, here's five grand.
	And then he kept doing it.
	I said, Rick, why am I giving you five grand?
	Well, you know, we're drawing such big crowds.
	You know, you need to pay me another five grand.
	So I paid another five grand.
	I went down to the bar.
	He's buying drinks for everybody.
	I mean, paying for everything.
	That's what he's doing with the five grand.
	He's keeping everybody in the bar to party with him all night, you know?
	And he wasn't going to bed at nine o'clock back then.
	He doesn't like to be alone, he said.
	He said there's been times in his life where he didn't, he couldn't, absolutely couldn't stand to be alone.
	Yeah.
	I thought that was interesting.
	Yeah.
	Because some people, they like their piece.
	They like their space.
	Yeah, he just, it was interesting even talking to him, he just is who he.
	It seems like there's, there's not a lot of getting, he's just the nature boy.
	That's who he is, bro.
	That's who he is.
	It's very admirable and it's interesting, you know?
	But I mean, that is who he is.
	He likes to have a good time and he will find it no matter what.
	And he wants you to have a good time too.
	I don't think I could be Hulk Hogan 24 hours a day.
	Yeah.
	I don't think I could, I wouldn't make it.
	Yeah.
	I wouldn't make it.
	Well, that's why I can't imagine.
	Yeah, being a hero to so many people and how it is, yeah, to be able to be, then, to then be a dad would also seem like tough, you know?
	What about if you could, when you look back on kind of your career, because you've had a lot of different angles.
	You've had wrestling.
	You've had entertainment, right?
	You've had movies.
	We went and I remember seeing, what was one with you against no holds?
	Yeah.
	No holds barred.
	Yeah, dude.
	That was fucking crazy when you did that, dude.
	That was a wild one.
	Yeah, we went and see you had the thing and we're like, what is going on here?
	That tiny construct, man.
	Tiny host.
	Yeah, I was sorry to see that.
	He's my boy.
	That was a couple years ago, right?
	Yeah.
	Do you start to get like, why didn't you, why have you had better luck than some of these guys?
	I kind of reeled it in, bro.
	You mean, you mean, why am I still alive?
	Yeah.
	Is that what you're asking me?
	Yeah, I didn't want to say it like that.
	No, no, that's cool.
	It's cool.
	I think, honestly, if we stayed up for three, four nights in a row partying, I would still go work out.
	Right.
	Nobody else would.
	I would still go train.
	I would still eat good.
	The training prayers and vitamins, I was actually doing that, you know, praying that I wouldn't die.
	Still a prayer.
	Even if the vitamins are Percocets on it.
	Yeah, whatever.
	Maybe a couple were.
	But a couple, more than a couple.
	I mean, look, they came out with Somas, dude.
	I drove a car into an invisible driveway.
	Yeah.
	And went to get kicked in.
	That was one of the drugs of choice for the wrestlers.
	Yeah, it was very dangerous for them because it would shut people's throat down.
	My buddy Richard died.
	He choked on some chicken that he didn't even know he was eating.
	But he took some of those muscle relaxes.
	They relax your throat so much it doesn't pull the food down.
	A lot of people choke today.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	A lot of guys who get the soma shakes.
	I don't know if you ever saw that, but that's scary.
	God, it sounds like a TikTok trend almost.
	It's just like somebody beating it just like, and they can't stop, or they'll be walking and they freeze.
	I mean, I've seen it happen so many times when you're eating 10, 20 of them at a time, you know.
	And people were taking that much pain pills to feel okay, huh?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	And, you know, for me, I would always, I never went down that road.
	Yeah.
	You know, if there, if you're supposed to take one or two, that would be it.
	I never went down that road, five or ten.
	I never did that, you know, never.
	We didn't have addiction.
	It doesn't sound like, man.
	No, I, and, you know, when it came to weed or this and that and the other, I could quit and not do it for three, four, five years.
	It wouldn't matter.
	Yeah.
	You know, so it's like, but, you know, I just think because I was real consistent with the training and actually trying to eat good in between all the craziness of the drinking and raising hell, I kind of like stayed on track where I would see these guys defect for weeks and not go to the gym and just drink constantly and just not eat and not sleep.
	And I was just, I can't handle it, man.
	I had to be the lead dog, man.
	Right.
	I still had to be the main event where they'd be on the match underneath me and be slacking.
	Right.
	I had to, I had to blow the tickets.
	Yeah, man.
	I had to deliver.
	You know, I didn't want anybody stealing my spot because they were all trying, you know, every night.
	Yeah, I guess it's strange because your teammates, but at the same time, they're low-key trying to take your throne.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I slipped on a banana peel and got hurt.
	They'd be more than happy to replace me.
	And how much do you have to make sure the promoter and the owners that you stay in their good graces so that you also stay the lead dog?
	Is that like a whole nother thing going on?
	That helps.
	That helps.
	I just got myself in a position that the character became so powerful, even if I really did piss somebody off, they still had to use me.
	Yeah.
	Because if I went somewhere else, I'd put them out of business.
	So the character, it had a long run.
	I mean, you know, it was still red and yellow, bro, through the 80s and all through the 90s.
	And then when I went back, you know, that last time when I wrestled The Rock and a couple other people, I was still red hot, man.
	Oh, yeah.
	I remember seeing a poster.
	It said, it said, fuck Ronald McDonald and had him with red and yellow.
	And then it said Hulkamania on it.
	And that's when I knew you had just done it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	There was a real iffy thing when I came back to the WWE the last time because I'd spent 10 years trying to put him out of business, you know, with Ted Turner.
	And we were beating the crap out of him for a long time.
	And then there were a bunch of business decisions and American Online and Turner Broadcasting merged.
	And they didn't want wrestling as part of their portfolio.
	They wanted Turner Classics, movies of the week and new programming.
	Was that AOL they merged with?
	And they took my boss, Ted Turner, and kicked him to the curb.
	He had some office way in the back of the building where I couldn't even find him half the time.
	And they just didn't want wrestling, even though on TBS and TNT, we had three to one ratings at the highest shows they had.
	And so when all that started to decline and demise, you know, I get a call from Vince, you know, and he says, hey, man, I want you to come back and, you know, put the red and yellow rub on the rock.
	You know, I said, well, I don't want to come back as a good guy.
	I'm going to come back as Hollywood Hogan, you know, because if I'm going to do it right, I want to put this kid over right.
	And plus, I knew his dad.
	I traveled with his father for years.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You guys, you started with the father.
	Yeah, I started with his dad.
	We traveled whenever we were together.
	And I mean, I remember when Rock was like seven or eight years old, I threw my headband and he caught it in the crowd in the garden.
	So I had a long history with the family and all the Simoan brothers.
	They're all my guys.
	Yeah, I was there when The Rock came back, dude.
	I was there.
	Yeah.
	He came back.
	I think it was 2014.
	But anyway, go on.
	So, yeah, so when I wrestled him, you know, I did everything I could to get heat.
	You know, I hit him in the back of the head with a hammer.
	I put him in an ambulance chain, the ambulance, I ran him over with a semi.
	I mean, I did everything I could to make people hate me.
	Then when I went out at WrestleMania 18, they cheered me out of the building.
	Whenever The Rock would punch me, they'd boo him.
	I was like, oh, my God.
	You know, so I said, all that stuff we talked about, we ain't doing it.
	Just listen.
	We're going.
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	So I guess in the end, the crowd is the real determinant of whatever script they're writing, if it's going to play or not.
	Ah, that's so interesting.
	Yeah, because, you know, like I said, we'd never, I had never talked with anybody about having a match before.
	And when I went back, Vince was worried.
	Well, things have changed, monster.
	You know, if you're going to come back here, you got to really bring it.
	I didn't say anything, but in my mind, I'm saying, if I bring my shit, you're going to ask me to take it back.
	You know, because I can still go.
	And so I didn't say anything.
	And then all of a sudden, I get a call from Vince.
	You know, we'd really feel comfortable if you'd go down to Miami and rehearse the match.
	I said, Vince, I've never rehearsed a match in my life.
	What are we going to talk about?
	Yeah.
	I don't know what I'm going to do until I listen to the people.
	You know, this is my ear and my heart.
	I don't.
	Yeah.
	You know, so I go out of respect.
	Vince asked me to go down there.
	So I go down there.
	And Rocky Johnson's there, his dad.
	Oh, yeah, he played football at Miami, didn't he?
	Yeah, and it's hot as a bitch in this warehouse they had, middle of summer.
	And this other guy named Pat Patterson, who knows a lot about wrestling and kind of helped me when I first started.
	So I get in the ring with Rock, and he kind of told me what he wanted to do, you know, and kind of walked me through what he wanted to do.
	And I was thinking, man, if, you know, what if the crowd doesn't like what we're doing?
	Are we just going to keep doing this?
	You know, so out of respect, I listen to him, you know, because, you know, of his dad and him and the family.
	I listen to everything I want to do.
	And then Pat Patterson goes, okay, let's go through the match.
	I said, you fucking crazy.
	So if I fall down here, I'm going to get hurt.
	I need 80,000 people, bro.
	I mean, I'm a one-time around-the-block guy.
	I ain't going to reverse this.
	He's too, dude.
	Yeah, so anyway, I said, look, just we're cool.
	And Dwayne's father, I mean, Rock's father's going, Dwayne, listen to Hogan.
	He's just yelling at him from outside.
	Just listen to Hogan.
	So we get up to Toronto, right?
	And, you know, everybody thinks I'm going to get booed out of the building and they're going to cheer him because he's been the number one babyface guy there forever.
	So we're in the dressing room and Rock starts going over.
	What we kind of planned, I'm listening and listening.
	So, okay, brother, if it's there, we'll do it.
	If it's there, we'll do it.
	If it's there, we'll do it.
	And his dad's going, Dwayne, listen to Hogan.
	So we get out there, bro, and it was booing him, cheering me.
	I said, this ain't going to work.
	So we kind of flipped things around in the ring and he was so good in the ring, bro.
	He's on audible, man.
	He's like that second generation, third generation wrestler instinct, man.
	He was there.
	So it was fun.
	But it took me about 10 minutes to get things turned around to where they were pissed at me and halfway pissed at me and halfway for each of us.
	But it was an amazing night.
	I've never experienced anything like that with a crowd.
	That was a lot of quick thinking on our feet out there.
	That's cool, man.
	But that's how it always was with me.
	I never wanted to talk about anything.
	I want to go out there and see what these people want.
	We start deciding for them.
	Oh, I remember screaming so loud, I thought you could hear me through my television, you know?
	Well, you know what?
	What you're talking about, that main event, that night at WrestleAndry, we had 33 million people watch that night.
	Still the largest TV audience for NBC.
	Dude, oh, I can't imagine how many younger siblings are in wheelchairs because of you guys.
	Oh, thanks, brother.
	And look, and proudly in wheelchairs, too.
	Thanks, brother.
	Can we get some class action lawsuits on the US board?
	Thanks, brother.
	I remember once Wrestle came on, I knew to put on my knee and elbow pads.
	Because I was a younger brother, dude.
	And we were going to get it, brother.
	That's cool, man.
	That's cool.
	What's been a tough thing?
	Like, a lot of you guys travel so much.
	A lot of it's tough on families.
	What was the toughest part?
	Like, was it tough on your family?
	I'm sure with the dad being gone, it's got to be really tough.
	You know, looking back, was there ways you think that you could manage it better?
	Or like Flair said the career just takes so much time.
	You just can't be home.
	I had kind of a, and this just sounds terrible to say, but I have to say it, I had a luxury that a lot of guys didn't have.
	I kind of like got myself in a position where like if I took time off for a movie, Vince would go, my God, I can't write your name down.
	It's hard to book.
	Because, you know, Vince had a book, old school book, and he'd put Hogan versus Kamala or Hogan versus Andre the Giant.
	And then, you know, there's A, B, and C Town.
	There's the A Town I was on, the B town the Warriors on, the C Town would be like a tag team.
	Like Greg Valentine and Brutus.
	And everybody wanted to be on the A Town.
	You know, because if you're in the first match in my town, you make like $2,000, $3,000, $5,000.
	You're making money.
	And if you're in the C-town, you know, the first match, you make $250,000 or $350,000.
	So Vince would go, oh, man, it's just so hard to book when you take time off to do a movie or whatever.
	Like I did 16 or 17 Blue Budget Kids movies, you know, and TV series and all kind of weird stuff.
	But, you know, so I put most of my time in and the luxury that I was afforded was the character was so powerful.
	Honestly, you could put my name down.
	I said, it don't even matter.
	Just put my name down and say, Hulk Mania is coming to Washington, D.C. If you want to put an opponent, they're fine, but you don't have to.
	And the character was so powerful as far as the drawing power that once my daughter Brooke was about two, about three years old, and she started noticing I was gone, I started winding down a little bit.
	And I started working more part-time, but I was chartering planes all the time.
	Right.
	So you're using your time the best you can.
	Right.
	So if I was at Four Square Garden one night and I had Tuesday off, I'd fly home.
	Right.
	Then Wednesday, if I had to be in Mexico City, I'd fly to Mexico.
	And it got to the point where I had to buy my own plane to get this done.
	Oh, wow.
	You were really doing some business.
	Yeah.
	I was doing real good.
	And, you know, so when my kids got up, and Nick was two years behind, so by the time Brooke was four or five and Nick was two or three, I started to slow down.
	So I spent a lot of time at home, you know, the last 15 or 20 years of my career, but I still banged it out, man.
	I still had some crazy deals going where I still generated a lot of revenue.
	Yeah.
	And did you have full ownership of your own, of your own character?
	How did that work out with because it's you create it within the WWF?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So was there partnerships in it and stuff like that?
	You ready for this story?
	Maybe.
	If it's uncomfortable, I don't want to.
	No, no, no, it's way cool.
	It's just really a little twist here.
	I own everything.
	I own Hulk Hogan.
	I own Hulse, Many, I own Hulster.
	Congratulations.
	I'm one of the few guys that own their name and the rights and the trademarks and licenses.
	I own everything.
	Yeah.
	So when I first, the name I was wrestling, I had several names.
	Super Destroyer, Terry Boulder, Sterling Golden, Terry the Hulk Boulder, different people.
	Sterling Golden sounds.
	No offense.
	I know it's you, but yeah, I don't love that one.
	I know.
	Well, that was a guy named Jim Barnett who's a very nice man.
	Yes, Jim Barnett was cool.
	Yeah, he was cool.
	Okay.
	A little light in the loafers, but he's a good guy.
	Hey, yeah, not everybody.
	Loved him to death.
	Loved him to death.
	But yeah, he called me Sterling, my ball.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's what I was saying, Dave.
	That freaked me out, man.
	But anyway, so anyway, I went through all these different things.
	And finally, when I quit and I was working on the docks, I'll never wrestle again.
	I'm done.
	five or six times I've quit.
	I'm over this crap.
	I get a call from Vince McMahon and a couple local wrestlers, Jack and Jerry Briscoe, who are here in Florida.
	Jack was an NCAA champion, World Heavyweight Championship.
	Yeah, they said, you know, Vince McMahon, this is perfect for you.
	This is Madison Square Garden.
	This is where all the really big wrestlers go.
	And they kept pounding on me, pounding on me.
	I said, okay, well, I'll go up there, but I'm not taking my wrestling stuff with me.
	Like, what kind of a horse's ass is that?
	So I fly up there, and they had just got rid of superstar Billy Graham because he'd kind of like, they'd had some problems with him.
	As soon as I walked in, I mean, I was jacked.
	I was all yoked up on something.
	I was like 330 pounds.
	I was working on the docks, running game on the docks, arm wrestling, everybody and stuff.
	So I walk up there and the whole building's, I came, slid through the building.
	I didn't know how to get in correctly.
	So I had to cut through the crowd for about 20 or 30 feet and the whole building started yelling, superstar, superstar.
	I thought I was Billy Graham.
	I had a tie-dye tank top on.
	I didn't even think about it.
	And Vince McMahon Sr. goes, don't you ever wear that tie-dye in here again?
	I guess he just had a blowout with Billy Graham.
	So anyway, I met with him and they talked about what they wanted to pay me, you know, because I just get tired of getting screwed over.
	And they talked about getting me a place to live and having a guy travel with me, which was one of the worst decisions they ever made.
	They hooked me up with one of the biggest con men ever.
	Really?
	I don't know if you know who Lou Albano was.
	Yeah, Captain Lou Albano.
	They were his partner, Tony Altimore.
	They were the Sicilians, tag team champions.
	I don't remember Tony.
	Okay, well, Tony was the biggest carn he ever met.
	Wow.
	He taught me everything, how to slip and fall in a grocery store and walk out with two, three grand, how to do everything.
	Yeah.
	So it just, it was horrible to put me with him, but smarten me up to what the world's all about.
	So anyway, as I'm talking, he goes, you know what?
	I want you to be Hulk Hogan.
	I said, well, what does Hulk Hogan mean?
	He goes, well, I got Ivan Pusky for the Polish Americans, Bruno San Martino for the Italian Americans, Chief Jay Strongbow for the Native American Indian Americans.
	And I want you to be Hulk Hogan for the Irish Americans.
	And here's two bottles of red dye.
	I want your hair red.
	And, you know, and they put me with Fred Blassey.
	And I told Fred, I said, brother, I'm going ballheaded as it is.
	If I put this red dye in my hair, the party's over.
	So dye goes down to the toilet.
	Oh, my God, he's going to fire you.
	I said, I could care less.
	And they didn't fire me.
	Yeah.
	But that's how I get the name.
	Right.
	Paul Kogan to represent the Irish Americans.
	Dang.
	And Vince gave you the name.
	So now Vince died.
	The Irish goodbye.
	That could have been your finishing move.
	Ooh, strong, brother.
	I like that.
	Sorry.
	That would have been really good.
	Not trying to tell you what to do, but it could have been neat.
	But what you did worked great.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, Vince dies.
	Vince, his son takes over.
	And right when this whole Hogan thing takes off, we get a call from Marvel Comics.
	You're infringing our mark.
	Reasonably similar.
	Lou Ferrigno's character.
	The cartoon character in the magazine.
	It was before the TV series.
	Right.
	You know, you're infringing on our mark.
	We're going to sue you, put you in litigation.
	So we went ahead and let them have the name.
	Didn't license the name, but I only had to pay them one tenth of 1%.
	Oh, wow.
	So out of a dollar, if I got a penny, I only had to pay them one-tenth of a penny.
	And that went from 85 to 2005, 20 years.
	Fast forward to 2005, it's over.
	Now I can't use Hulk Hogan anymore.
	I'm red hot in 2005, man.
	I'm still jamming.
	So I went to my attorney.
	I said, I don't give a damn what deal you make.
	You're going to make that deal because I need the name.
	So what happened was we went and I got a one-year extension.
	I had to pay them 30% of everything I made.
	Movies, TV, wrestling.
	They got 30% of everything.
	But if they decided to sell the name, they had to give me first shot at it.
	They couldn't sell the name or do anything at a fair market value.
	So all of a sudden, Marvel Comics gets in a bitch fest with the WWE about intellectual properties, that they can't re-air old Hulk Hogan matches, which Vince was re-airing all that stuff.
	They lost.
	Marvel Comics lost.
	And they owe Vince like $35 million.
	And they made the huge mistake.
	Of including that in the deal.
	And they said, no, instead of paying you $35 million, how about if we give you the Hulk Hogan name?
	And I heard about it.
	And I went, you guys screwed up now because now I don't have to pay $35 million for the name.
	You have to sell it to me at a fair market value, which is only like $750,000.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	So I bought the name back and Vince wanted to buy the name for me.
	I went, nah, I think I got this one.
	Let me get this.
	Yeah, I got this one.
	Wow.
	Did that feel pretty?
	That must have been a cool moment because then it's almost like you own yourself.
	Yeah, so I bought the name back and I just own everything.
	Wow, congratulations.
	It's really hard to do in these.
	There's not many guys, you know, that have that can say that.
	Yeah.
	Was there ever some products?
	Like people sometimes will try to get me involved with different types of things.
	You know, have there been interesting products or something you got or things that you got involved with?
	Like I did some pyramid schemes or I lost money in pyramid schemes when I was younger, but that was just like somebody tried to do like a, somebody sold us like glitter mining or something.
	Like some guy came in our town and said they were selling like some shares of like glitter mining or something.
	But have you ever had crazy products over the years?
	You're like, what the fuck?
	What is this that we're even doing?
	Well, I mean, we've, we've, I mean, you've had a lot of very successful stuff, but if you ever just been anything crazy, like we're going to make Hulk Hogan like Ferris wheels or something.
	And you're like.
	Well, I mean, I think I've had like 70 or 80 action figures made.
	Yeah.
	I got a couple in my still childhood room.
	Yeah.
	Well, the one they made that kind of got a little wonky and got a little weird was they made a Hulk Hogan vibrating action figure, which got real funky, you know.
	Brother, yeah.
	Yeah, I got a little scary brother.
	Damn.
	Hulk Hogan.
	Now, look, if you keep one for the lady, that's.
	Jesus.
	Okay.
	I thought I told you not to look for me.
	No, I didn't look at it.
	I didn't say nothing, sir.
	I don't even know what's over there.
	What do you guys do for fun dates now?
	Because you guys seem like you have a nice rapport.
	What do you guys like to go do together?
	We love to eat.
	Yeah.
	We love to eat.
	We used to love to drink, but that's over for now.
	I just love spending time with him, man.
	I'm a beach bum.
	I lived on the beach my whole life.
	The only reason I leave the beach is to make money.
	You can't get me off this beach.
	Yeah.
	I just live right up the street, maybe two blocks.
	Oh, that's awesome.
	Yeah.
	yeah, it's a really cool area.
	I've never been to Clearwater before.
	I know, I heard crazy stories that John Daly used to live in a Hooters here.
	Yeah.
	Did you ever know about that?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	I know Ed Drossy, the guy that owns Hooters.
	Oh, that's cool.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I always heard that he used to live inside of a Hooters somewhere, and that always blew my mind.
	That's funny.
	There's some great stories about him and John Gruden.
	Yeah, Gruden was across the street.
	Does he?
	Yeah, and does apartments are he's at a penthouse over there.
	I hear he's a really neat guy.
	He's cool.
	He's cool.
	He's a pretty intense dude.
	He's a good guy.
	Yeah, I just know him from being around here.
	I mean, I've got him back home a couple of times, you know, when he's been out running around.
	So, you know, make sure he's home safe.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	He's a good guy.
	Yeah, it was funny.
	If you said you quit drinking, I haven't drank for, let me see, 14 months.
	I'm 14 months sober, so I don't do drugs or alcohol.
	But what made you quit?
	Were you just or taking a break?
	I'd been with my girl Skye for a while, and everything that I've ever had happen in my life, both of my two marriages, everything that's ever bad happened to me has had to do with alcohol.
	Oh, yeah.
	You know, and during those marriages, there was a lot of alcohol use at times, which caused major issues, major problems.
	And so for me, it was real easy to eat a couple of Percocets and drink a couple shots of tequila and a couple 8% white claws and go, okay, brother, I'm ready.
	Yeah.
	But then, you know, when I got with Sky, I started getting an edge.
	You know, if things weren't said correctly or I didn't like the way things sounded, I would pick.
	You know, I'd kind of like dig and start shit.
	And all of a sudden, I started losing something I didn't want to lose again.
	So I said, I'm done drinking.
	That made it made just communication a little bit hectic at times.
	Well, it made me not go off like a hot pocket whenever I didn't hear something I didn't like.
	You know, because I could be very, when I drink, I could be a prick.
	Yeah.
	You know, and real quick on the trigger finger, especially with men.
	Yeah.
	You know, and men have probably tried you a lot over the years, huh?
	Because you were.
	I've had some issues, yeah, but I got to tone my thing down.
	I'm tired of getting sued all the time, you know.
	So the main thing was that.
	Is there other stuff that you want to do with your life?
	You've had a really amazing life.
	Do you feel like it went by so fast sometimes?
	Or do you have, when you look back on your life, like, and you still have, I mean, you could still probably live for another 25 years, you know, but, or maybe 30, I don't know.
	You could live forever.
	Maybe I don't know what your plan is.
	But do you feel like, did you ever, was it like you were always looking for like a sense of accomplishment?
	Or what do you think like was like your driving force a lot of the times?
	Probably the thing that really pushed me more than anything was, you know, I didn't want to do the what was me story, but I grew up and I didn't know we were, I don't even want to say poor.
	I don't even want to say that.
	I grew up not knowing that we didn't have money.
	You know, my mom was a housewife.
	My dad worked construction.
	And I had one bicycle that got stolen.
	I never got another one.
	Yeah.
	And I had two little trucks to play with.
	I still had this little pink truck that I had.
	And then I had a big yellow Tonka truck.
	And I played with that in the dirt all day because my dad was a construction worker.
	Oh, you want to be like him?
	Yeah.
	And so I kind of grew up, you know, and then when I got older, I realized, you know, once a month on a Friday, we had one of those little minute stakes, you know.
	And I just kind of grew up and I started realizing, you know, looking around that, okay, you know, I guess they did the best they could, but I don't want to live like this when I grow up.
	So I had this crazy thing.
	I didn't even know it was an affirmation.
	I started telling myself money comes quick and easy to me.
	And I just kept, would always say that in my head.
	And I said, I'm not going to die the Port Tampa death.
	Because in Tampa, there's a road called Gandhi Boulevard.
	And if you're south of Gandhi, you're a SOG south of Gandhi.
	Okay.
	And I grew up south of Gandhi.
	And everybody from south of Gandhi either becomes a professional athlete or a drug dealer or you die or you work construction your whole life.
	And I didn't want to die the Port Tampa death.
	Right.
	You wanted to get Nog.
	You wanted to get on the other side.
	Right.
	So I wanted to fight my way out of that town.
	Yeah.
	I didn't want to be a drug dealer.
	I didn't want to die.
	I didn't want to work construction because I tried construction.
	It was a bitch.
	It wasn't me.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So I said, I'm going to fight my way out of this town.
	Plus, I played music because I would do anything to avoid working a real job.
	So I played music for 10 years and did real well at that.
	But then it got to the point where I was playing the same clubs and just, am I going to do this forever?
	Right.
	You know, and so I just switched gears and went after the wrestling thing.
	And it took me a while to adapt to it.
	Yeah.
	It sounds like that.
	But I was pretty aggressive when I was a kid, you know, and I just kept pushing.
	You know, I made the big mistake of telling everybody in this town I was going to be a wrestler.
	Did you really?
	Yeah, that's what got my leg broke the first day.
	But that's such a scary, you know who did that?
	The Miz.
	I'm friends with The Miz, right?
	Yeah.
	Hey, by the way, that brother is keep this art form alive.
	Every time I see him, I tell him how much I love him for what he's done, but because he understands his business a lot more than most of the guys do.
	There's probably two or three guys that I can pick out that understand that business.
	He's one of them.
	Yeah.
	And he gets it.
	He lived.
	I mean, he's always been that.
	I remember him telling us before he was a wrestler.
	He's like, I'm going to be a wrestler.
	And we thought he was crazy.
	And then he proved us all wrong.
	Dude, I was down in Ybor City, and there was an old track, Blues Image called Ride Captain Ride, an old song.
	I just walked over to the other studio and laid the scratch bass line down for Mike Piner and the Blues Image Band way before your time.
	But then I went back over to the studio and we had a chance to go on a national tour with Blackfoot, you know.
	And I just came off tour with this lady named Jeannie Conroy.
	And we came back to the studio and everybody was screwing around.
	One guy was getting married and one guy's girlfriend was having a baby.
	And I said, well, we can leave in two weeks and go on the road with these guys.
	And Mother's Finest, I don't know if you know who they are.
	That's Song of CM Punk comes out to personality, that band Mother's Finest out of Atlanta.
	We were going to go with them at Blackfoot.
	We were going to open for them.
	I said, bro, this is our chance because our shit is straight right now.
	Two of the guys didn't want to leave.
	Fuck.
	And I was so pissed off.
	So let me tell you guys something.
	I'm done.
	I've been doing this for 10 years.
	I've been doing this for 10 years with a couple of you guys.
	And I'm done.
	I'm quitting.
	I'm going to go be the greatest wrestler that ever lived.
	And all five of these guys fell on the ground laughing.
	They busted out laughing.
	And it pissed me off so bad, I didn't know what I was talking about.
	I just said it because I was mad at them because they wouldn't go on the road.
	Yeah.
	And then I said, okay, damn it, I'm going to go be a wrestler.
	You know, it was just the whole thing was crazy.
	But I had a couple altercations with wrestlers in bars and had met a few of them.
	So I wasn't scared to death of them like I was.
	Because back in the 70s, they all had cauliflower ears and teeth knocked out and noses brought.
	I was scared to death of a wrestler.
	Yeah.
	Because back in the day when Eddie Graham here had the promotion, if you said wrestling was fake, they'd punch you right in the mouth.
	Wow.
	I mean, there was no lawsuits, no lawyers or nothing like that.
	Yeah, I love that.
	I wish I was alive then.
	So I was scared to death of them.
	But then I kind of got used to seeing them come in the bar because we had a really hot local band at the time.
	They would come in to hear us play, you know, and then I kind of would watch them.
	I wasn't so afraid of them, you know, as I used to be.
	But yeah, it just all changed, man.
	Was your, so your father did construction?
	Were you at one time able to like say, hey, dad, you don't have to work anymore?
	Was he always a worker his whole life?
	Yeah, well, the sun burned him up, bro, because he worked outside here in this Florida heat.
	Oh, God.
	He started out in the Panama Canal.
	It was where he met my mother.
	My father's Italian.
	My mother's Panamanian.
	Oh, cool, man.
	Yeah, so I don't have to really go on the sun too often.
	Yeah, my father's from Nicaragua.
	So I have to be careful how I say that word, but also I don't have to go in the sun all the time.
	Yeah, if you go out there for 10 minutes, you turn fucking awesome.
	Yeah, I'm on that team.
	Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of like, what was the question?
	Was your father pretty proud of you?
	I guess that's the question.
	Oh, the question.
	It got to a point where my family was kind of like not the most feely, touchy, loving family, you know?
	Oh, yeah.
	You know, I had a couple brothers, one half-brother, and then another middle brother that didn't do too well in life, you know, and he got killed.
	He was riding with a bunch of motorcycle clubs and stuff and didn't do too well.
	But, you know, my dad and mom, I don't ever, ever remember my dad, you know, really being affectionate until later on in life, you know, when I started doing good.
	And I quit college after four years, which I should have had a degree, but I quit, go play music again.
	And that really didn't work too well.
	Probably made him nervous, huh?
	Yeah, and then when I told him I was going to be a wrestler, that really upset him, you know.
	And then later on, I brought him up to Madison.
	Actually, the night I beat the chic, I brought my mom and dad up to Madison Square Garden to see that.
	And my dad had just retired, so I just, from that point on, I just paid for everything.
	And then when my brother got killed, I was real young at the time, and I got three kids, you know, that were his.
	His wife got murdered first here in Texas.
	He was in the motorcycle gang guy?
	Yeah, yeah.
	My brother was riding with a club, and he'd done a couple of years in Rayford here.
	And then when he got out, he got in trouble again.
	He moved to Houston, changed the name, and then he was riding with the, I don't even want to say the club, but the Oakland chapter out in California.
	But while he was riding in Oakland, his wife was running a hotel, managing a hotel, and she was dating this mafia guy.
	And she was on the dance floor after work, just danced with a customer.
	He came in and shot her in the chest twice, killed her.
	So then shortly after that, my brother had a little problem with one of the clubs, and they killed him.
	And so actually, it's not true.
	He died of an overdose and nobody helped him.
	That's the real truth.
	I don't want to say it that way.
	But so I ended up with three kids, you know, kind of like having to support them.
	Right.
	And so I was running so hard, I had to let my parents help and then the other side of the family help.
	But I was the guy, you know, and taking care of the kids and my parents.
	Well, so you had a lot of responsibility then suddenly to really to be the guy who's helping find keep things going.
	Basically, I couldn't quit wrestling anymore.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	I had to make it work.
	I had to make it work.
	So it's been a test, you know, test of faith.
	So, you know, it's all good.
	Did y'all go to church and stuff growing up or was there any faith in y'all's home?
	I went to Ballast Point Baptist Church.
	I went to Ballast Point Elementary School over in South Tampa.
	And I went to Ballast Point Baptist Church with my mom once.
	And then one of my buddies was there that I went to elementary school with, and I started going with his family every Sunday.
	Oh, yeah.
	Did they have donuts and stuff over there?
	Yeah, I have everything, man.
	God, I love that, dude.
	The Lord will freaking get you with that.
	Yeah.
	And so I didn't get it because I was so young.
	But then later on, I was like 13 or 14 years old.
	I was playing guitar.
	A buddy of mine who I played football with in junior high school, he had a little Christian youth group.
	And he said, we need somebody to play guitar.
	So I went up there with this guy named Hank Lindstrom.
	And I started playing guitar.
	And then that's when I started listening to scripture.
	And then when I heard the John 3, 16, God so loved the Lord, he gave only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
	Bam, it hit me, you know.
	And I accepted Christ as my Savior when I was 14. I was saved.
	But then, of course, I derailed for a long time, you know, and went back and forth to church every once in a while.
	And my first wife was a Catholic, and that really wasn't my thing.
	You know, my kids went to a Catholic school and went to a Catholic church.
	I didn't feel, it didn't resonate with me.
	And then my second wife was spiritual, but she wasn't a believer, so that didn't work for me.
	And so this lady here is on the team.
	So we go to church every Sunday.
	Oh, nice.
	And it's a Christian, Indy Rock's Christian Church.
	It's nice having faith, huh?
	Actually, I took a buddy of mine with me today, a guy named Mel Chancy.
	He was the president of the Hell's Angels chapter from Chicago.
	Really, the Baja?
	He was a 1%er.
	Yeah, I took him, and he was.
	This guy was, too?
	Yeah, oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Sorry, Ventura just told me that so many times.
	Yeah, but Mel, you know.
	And he went with you guys today?
	Yeah, he'll tell you the story.
	He told my minister today.
	He went away for nine years.
	Oh, he was incarcerated.
	Yeah, for Rico and for a couple attempted murders.
	And then he came out and he found the Lord and we reconnected.
	and he's got his own little ministry thing on the internet.
	He does really, what's it called, Mel Chancy?
	Is his name, yeah, Mel Chancy?
	It's John 316 Devotional.
	Okay, is that the name of both John 316 Devotional?
	You have to check him out.
	Is he pretty cool?
	Is he pretty interesting?
	Oh, you're digging, bro.
	He's straight, man.
	He's really cool.
	Well, what's interesting because a lot of you, a lot of wrestlers, some of them were almost like pastors to us as kids.
	They were, you know, it was like, it's where you got your message of hope, you know?
	I think that's a lot of what faith is for people.
	I know it is for me.
	You know, it's like, where do I get a message for hope, you know?
	And, and yeah, sometimes just hearing like, yeah, somebody like, you can do it, you know, like take your vitamins, say your prayer, you know, like, or just anything that inspires like, where do you find your hope as you go along through life, you know?
	And a lot of times for when we were kids, it was, I mean, wrestling is really what hit me first.
	It was probably my most favorite sport until I started watching UFC.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Which I really love.
	You know, UFC is awesome.
	Do you ever watch any of that?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	There was, there was an opportunity to buy it a long time ago, and Vince and I passed on it.
	You know, it was before the referees stopped things.
	Yeah.
	And they were kicking people in there on the ground.
	And it just was so violent when it was brought to us.
	We went.
	And that was a huge mistake.
	But yeah, no, it's an entertaining sport.
	Yeah.
	So many guys, you know, that I know, you know, finally start believing more in the unseen than the seen.
	And they kind of like figure this life out, you know.
	Yeah.
	Hopefully not too late.
	But it's pretty amazing once you kind of figure it out.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's nice to not feel alone, I think.
	I think a lot of people are looking for that these days.
	You know, I wonder like societally, have we taken, like, I wonder if our society will look back and be like, what a weird detour we took, like thinking that we could find happiness in so many different things, you know?
	I don't know.
	I like thinking about that stuff sometimes.
	That's pretty crazy, man.
	A lot of people just, in this human incarnation, bro, they're just all about materialistic stuff, you know?
	Yeah.
	And as soon as they have a glitch with their health or something, they change their title.
	Yeah.
	Oh, definitely.
	You'll start drawing pictures of the Lord immediately.
	Shoot you, man.
	I get one bad blood test, dude, and I'm on, you know, I'm on Bible.org or whatever.
	There you go.
	There you go.
	Do you guys take any vacations?
	You and your lady do all of a vacation plan for the summer?
	We don't have one yet.
	I guess you live in a vacation.
	Yeah, we do.
	We don't have one yet.
	We're talking about going some places.
	Last year on her birthday, we were going to go to Miami, but I was sick as a dog or something.
	But, you know, we're planning some stuff now.
	Things have kind of straightened out.
	It's been a really busy year this last year.
	Has it been?
	Yeah, it's been crazy, man.
	I'm decided to go back to work again.
	Are you going to wrestle again?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	But I mean, business-wise.
	Okay, understood.
	I mean, no disrespect to Vo and Darren Prince and stuff, but they can tell you, you know, or anybody that, you know, they call me for stuff all the time.
	And I think in the last couple of years, I've made just like one appearance.
	Yeah.
	Maybe, maybe one.
	But, you know, I did one this year already.
	But for years and years, they'd call me to do stuff and, you know, don't, just wasn't interested.
	And once I shut down, I shut down, brother.
	You know what I mean?
	Yeah.
	Because I'm like a beach bum.
	You know, I'm not really into it.
	Good for you.
	You know, so I mean, it's kind of like I've turned down a bunch of movies, whole bunch of movies, whole bunch of TV.
	I mean, you know, I get calls all the time.
	TV, yeah, TV.
	Yeah.
	Because, you know, with the content I have now with the bar and the restaurant, the retail store here, in the retail store in Atlanta, and my son's back here, and my daughter's here.
	And my new baby here has got three kids.
	And there's all kind of content, bro.
	And everybody's banging me all the time to do reality shows and stuff.
	And I'm just like, I just shut it all down.
	And even with appearances and autograph sessions, you know, I mean, I use Vo and Prince Marketing, you know, when I do do stuff.
	And, you know, sometimes the WWE will call me to do stuff.
	And I'll just kind of, and I still work for them, you know, and, you know, I'll kind of pass on that.
	And, or I'll do it, you know, it just depends on what the weather's like, you know, out back.
	Oh, yeah.
	But no, no, I got in business with Tyson and all these guys to, you know, for this whole wellness thing that we're moving forward on.
	You guys have a CBD line?
	Yeah, we do.
	When's it come out?
	Vote help me.
	August.
	August?
	Okay.
	Yeah, and this is some of the packaging and stuff, man.
	Oh, sweet.
	Let me see.
	Yeah.
	So it's a good one.
	Oh, nice as a vape.
	Yeah, we're going for the whole wellness aspect of it.
	After being in so much.
	Yeah, look at you, bro.
	What is he going to do?
	Yeah, sorry.
	What if every time I hit it, it made it so that's how I talked?
	It would work.
	That would be awesome.
	It would work.
	Dude, this is a vibe, man.
	Yeah, because the ones they have are so generic.
	I've vaped on and off for about a year and a half.
	I've been at the bottom of one of these bitches.
	I've been through it all.
	I can't even sleep.
	Yeah, this thing will fucking make you drive all night.
	You're too much, man.
	So if it's wellness, like what type of stuff?
	So CBD?
	Yeah, well, we got CBD for energy and for sleep.
	And we're also going down the THC road.
	Okay, yeah.
	Because there's so many people that got hooked on prescription pain pills and prescription drugs and different drugs to sleep, you know, halcyons and Xanax that, you know, it seems like going down that road with the THC is an option for people.
	It's a healthier option.
	And so, you know, I partnered with, you know, and what I didn't understand at the time is to sell the THC, you know, you have to partner with somebody from the same state.
	Oh, you know, so we're starting.
	Yeah, I didn't know that.
	You know, so if you're in Michigan, you got to partner with a grower in Michigan.
	So in Florida, we partnered with Sunburn.
	And they've got 150 dispensaries around the state, and we start August 1st with them.
	So I'm really excited because, you know, it's kind of like a gradual transition.
	It's a way to back out slowly from, you know, stuff that can be really addictive, such as the perks, the pain pills, whatever else, you know, people, you know, numb themselves with the alcohol and everything else.
	So I just think it's a more realistic way to wind down and get healthier.
	So I'm on the team, man.
	I'm really excited about it.
	And will you be featured on their products?
	Is it like Hulk's meta?
	Yeah.
	And then we're going to going to with the Delta 8 and a couple of things.
	We came up with a kind of cool little thing, kind of like an inside joke that, you know, when I was the bad guy, Hollywood Hogan, we were always riding dirty.
	We always had beer in the car.
	We were partying in the car.
	Me and Ash and Hall doing all kind of crazy stuff.
	So when you go with Hollywood Hogan, you know, and you're going to go ride dirty, we're going to have something called the mustache rides.
	Oh, yeah, boy.
	Ride dirty, get a mustache ride with Hollywood.
	I've given a couple.
	I think I've given a couple.
	I don't even know what it is.
	I'll have to Google it.
	You need to grow the mustache bro.
	Okay, well, yeah.
	Those were lip rides.
	Oh, yeah.
	There we go.
	Yeah, those were lip rides.
	Yeah.
	Those are front teeth rides.
	Some of them really, I'm pretty uncoordinated.
	So that's awesome, though.
	Congrats, man.
	Yeah, so it should be interesting to see how my brand performs in the arena.
	Well, I'm sure, look, in anything you've gotten into, you've performed well.
	So I'm sure this shouldn't be different.
	Yeah, well, it makes sense.
	You know, it's a logical extension of where I'm going and where I've already been.
	So just the whole thing makes sense at this point.
	You know, everybody's kind of aware on how much this will help certain individuals.
	Let's get some healing.
	Yeah, thank God, brother.
	Thank God.
	But yeah, I love them.
	But that's nice.
	You have your whole family here now.
	Yeah.
	Your whole family's in town.
	Nick moved back, yeah, and he helps me a lot.
	He's real good on the stick, man.
	He runs Monday nights for us.
	I don't know if you're around tomorrow.
	I might actually be staying till Tuesday.
	So if I do.
	You have to come to my bar tomorrow night.
	It is insanity.
	Really?
	It is insane what goes on in there.
	Karaoke is unbelievable, isn't it?
	Well, my partner said karaoke wouldn't work.
	I said, that depends on who's doing it, bro.
	You know, so it gets really sick over there.
	They've got some real singers in this town, huh?
	Well, it's either really good or it's really bad.
	Oh, yeah.
	There's no in between.
	So, yeah, but if you're around, please come over, man.
	Yeah, maybe I will because I think I'm going to stay.
	I was going to go maybe.
	It's right across the street.
	We watched it yesterday.
	No, we're staying in.
	We got shows in Tampa.
	I won't watch tonight.
	Okay.
	But I wanted to come to the beach tomorrow.
	So maybe I would make that work and I wouldn't leave till Tuesday.
	No, that'd be cool.
	Yeah.
	Who's somebody that you miss wrestling or just spending time with?
	Like, who's somebody that like that you miss?
	Well, I mean, across the street, there used to be right where my restaurant's at, across the street, that plaza right next door to it, there used to be a gym upstairs and the Bushwhackers had a gym up there.
	Oh, really?
	So for a long time, the wrestlers would come there.
	And then right down the street, there was a World's Gym.
	And during the 80s and 90s, every morning there'd be like 30 or 40 wrestlers in there.
	Wow.
	And they all lived up and down the beach.
	I'd bring them here to hang out for a couple of days.
	Next thing I knew, they'd move.
	It was like crazy.
	And then the whole wrestling was based out of here for a long time.
	All the travel from Connecticut.
	Everybody's flying out of Tampa.
	It was like crazy to go to Tampa airport and see 20 or 30 guys on the same plane.
	Wow.
	But my guys that were here all the time that I really miss was Randy, the macho man.
	We were together every single day.
	Were y'all really?
	Yeah, every day, man.
	And it's kind of like, I miss him a lot, you know.
	And so I spent years and years and years with him.
	And he used to babysit my kids for me.
	He did?
	Yeah.
	Well, him and Elizabeth.
	Yeah.
	But sorry, not just Randy, him and Liz.
	And the other brother that I missed was one of the Road Warriors, Hawk.
	Oh, yeah.
	I introduced him to his wife here.
	Was Hulk the longer hair?
	Yeah.
	And well, they both wore the spikes.
	God, they were good, man.
	Yeah.
	And so Hawk was a Minnesota boy.
	And when I was in Minnesota, I used to train at a gym with Brad Riggins, the head Olympic coach.
	And Brock Lesnar used to come down and work out with us back in the day.
	And another guy named Kevin Kelly, who was a real tough kid, man.
	And so I would tell those guys, I'd tell Lesnar, I'd tell Kevin Kelly, look, bro, I'm the main event guy.
	Brad Riggins, the Olympic coach, he's in the preliminary matches.
	You guys beat him.
	You can try me.
	So Brad saved me from these guys, right?
	But I used to watch Brad torture him.
	It was great.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	So Hawk was up there in Minnesota.
	And when I was training up there, he was just some high school kid in the gym, him and Animal.
	He would watch us like hawks and watch us like hawks.
	Next thing I knew, I come back like two years later and go to that gym and they're jacked up.
	They've each gained 100 pounds.
	I was like, holy crap.
	Yeah.
	You know, we're going to be wrestlers.
	I said, good luck.
	Don't touch me.
	And they went down to Atlanta and broke in.
	They had a good gimmick.
	The road warrior thing worked.
	But Hawk moved down here.
	I introduced him to his wife.
	She was an aerobic instructor.
	I said, look, I'm going to introduce you to her.
	Then I'm out.
	Yeah.
	Because she's a wild one.
	And so no matter what happens, we're cool because I got nothing to do with this point on.
	You want to meet her?
	Here she is.
	Dale, here's Hawk.
	They ended up getting married.
	And so he was always here.
	And I miss seeing him a lot because I hung out with him a lot.
	And they moved away?
	He died.
	Oh, he passed away.
	He passed.
	He overdosed.
	Yeah.
	And she's still around the neighborhood somewhere.
	I haven't seen her forever.
	And then another one of the guys that I traveled with for 40 years on the road, Brutus Beefcake.
	Yeah.
	Him and I had a falling out.
	The barber, huh?
	Was he a real bar?
	Somebody said he went to...
	He didn't really go to Redken or something, or was it...
	And we had a little bit of a falling out.
	And so we don't even talk anymore.
	I mean, there's nothing to talk about.
	Yeah.
	Do you think y'all will ever patch that up?
	It's got a lot to do with the lady he's married to.
	Oh, it does.
	Yeah.
	Nothing really to do with him.
	Yeah.
	So I'll pass.
	Yeah.
	I'll pass.
	What was the drug?
	You know, what was, yeah, this is one thing.
	The last thing I was about, what was the steroid use?
	Because I used steroids when I was in high school.
	You know, we would get test 200 or 400.
	I don't know.
	Somebody made us, I think made us some 700 one time.
	One time we snuck it back from Mexico in like shampoo bottles and stuff.
	So we'd had like, we'd have like soap, like we'd, there would be like soap in it a little bit, dude, but we were using it, you know?
	Was it pretty hectic?
	Was it pretty just a normal thing that people were using?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you know, it's like, I think it was 1990, it became illegal.
	Oh, it was legal before that?
	Oh, yeah.
	You'd go to the doctor and get a prescription for it.
	Oh, wow.
	You know, that was another thing the guys had a problem with.
	They would take so much of it, they would ramp their system.
	I think they stressed their system, their hearts out.
	I don't know if anybody ever really died from just steroids, but if you had the steroids or the somas and the perks and the alcohol and the coke, okay, you're going to create a fire.
	Yeah.
	So for me, you know, up until the 90s, I was always street legal.
	I mean, if I had a bottle of DECA or a bottle of test on me, it was a prescription from the doctor and it was legal.
	Oh, so the doctors used to prescribe me?
	Oh, God, yes.
	I'd have my blood checked, my levels checked, everything.
	Wow.
	To make sure I didn't.
	Right.
	So you were trying to use it as safely as possible.
	Yeah, because when you turn 30, that's the peak of your biological clock.
	And then from that point on, it's down.
	Oh, shit.
	So I don't know how old you are.
	I'm 43, man.
	You're on the way down.
	Fuck, man.
	So there's a bunch of good HRT doctors around hormone placement doctors that can hook you up.
	I've thought about that.
	I don't want to lose my hair, though.
	That's the scary part.
	You won't lose your hair.
	You don't think?
	No.
	Maybe I'll start looking into that.
	Yeah.
	But anyway, make a long story short, about 1990, and before then, everybody I knew, because I knew a lot of baseball players, I knew a whole lot of football players, I knew a lot of hockey players, all professional guys, they all used steroids.
	There was only one guy I actually knew that didn't use them, and that was Bob Backlund.
	Bob Backlund.
	Yeah.
	He was a champion before I came on in the red-haired kid.
	I've heard of him.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, but everybody I knew dabbled in it, and they said they didn't.
	They did, believe me.
	And so at the end of the day, when it became illegal, we kept yoking up because we were out tearing biceps like this that wouldn't get fixed and muscle tears everywhere.
	And your thumb gets broken in the Philadelphia spectrum at one o'clock, you go to Brussels and Madison Square Garden that night.
	You don't want 10 weeks.
	It's got to be healed in six weeks.
	So we just never really stopped.
	And then Vince McMahon was on his major role with his company doing great.
	And the federal government targeted him.
	So we had to clean things up.
	Well, yeah, eventually they targeted him and they drugged the poster boy in.
	Well, if you're going to go for Vince, let's get Hogan.
	And so we had a rough go of it for a few years with the federal government, but Vince went to trial and all the stuff they said he did, he didn't do.
	He didn't distribute it.
	He didn't sell it.
	I mean, you did it on your own.
	I'm not going to get it from my boss.
	Yeah, so that's what they were trying to paint him in a corner.
	It wasn't true.
	And they tried to get me to testify otherwise.
	Wow.
	You know, which I said I would.
	And then when I got on the witness stand, I told the truth and made a quick exit and didn't go back to New York for five years.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah.
	Because that's where the feds were, because that's where Vince was.
	They were trying to prosecute him out of Brooklyn.
	Wow.
	So when I went to work for Ted Turner, I couldn't even wrestle anywhere in New York for five years.
	So they thought you were going to rat on him.
	Yeah.
	And you just said he didn't do it.
	Well, I became a government witness.
	Wow.
	Because to avoid prosecution, you know, because they were going to get somebody and they were going for Vince.
	And then if they weren't going for Vince, they pulled me aside and actually told me what was going to happen to me if I didn't say this.
	And I went, I got it.
	No problem.
	No problem, brother.
	You got it.
	So when I got on the witness stand there in Brooklyn, I had a Learjet waiting at Teterborough Airport.
	I had Alec Isaacman, one of my attorneys that handled the Larry Flint trial.
	I had another attorney, Henry Holmes, with me.
	And when I got off that witness stand, I didn't even go sit in the courtroom.
	I went out the side door, got in the car, went to Teterborough Airport and didn't come back for five years until the three prosecutors, Charlie Rose, or either Charlie Rose or Sean O'Shea.
	One of them got busted with a bunch of kilos of Coke.
	And then the other one died of cancer.
	I can't remember who was who.
	But the third guy, the head of the FBI, flagged, him and I became good friends.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	So once that was over, then I went back to New York.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, it was a crazy run.
	They were just trying to target Vince and trying to do what the government always does to people.
	Oh, yeah.
	And he just basically didn't do anything they said he did.
	He was not that guy.
	Yeah.
	Did you ever get to meet Michael Jackson?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	I was asked to get off a Disney bus because of him.
	No way.
	Why?
	Because what happened?
	Well, they have these little buses they'll cart tourists around on at Disney.
	Oh, yeah.
	Like little trolleys is what they look like.
	But not the carts that are hooked together.
	It actually looks like a little mini bus, a little red trolley.
	Okay.
	And so all of a sudden, I was sitting there with my family, my first wife and my two kids, watching the fireworks at Disney.
	And all of a sudden, security guards come in and go, well, you need to scoot down.
	You need to move the far side of the cart.
	And they moved the far side of the cart.
	And then Michael Jackson came in.
	He's by himself?
	He's by himself with a couple security guards.
	And he came over and goes, I'm very sorry about them making you move.
	And I said, it's okay, brother.
	Not a big deal, man.
	It's all cool, I guess.
	Did you know it was him?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	And so I really didn't talk to him other than that to say it was cool.
	But that's the only time I've met him was when they made us move down and get out of his way.
	I don't think they wanted us looking at him or anything.
	But he came down and apologized.
	Oh, he did?
	Did he look like a little or did he seem like kind of not?
	What did he seem like?
	I don't know.
	I was just sitting down.
	He just, he looks like he does on TV to me.
	You know, he had the black hat on and he was all covered up and had the glove, the thin glove on.
	Because he was like an, I mean, that must have been interesting for you to see.
	Yeah, my daughter Brooke was flipping.
	Yeah.
	She was like seven or eight years old.
	I can't remember.
	But yeah, but that's the only time I ever met him.
	He just was real polite, but the security guards are pricks.
	Yeah.
	But I understand why they had to do it.
	I get it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	He's probably paying him a lot.
	Yeah, plus, say, he didn't want his picture taken and didn't want to be astro autographed, so I get it.
	Yeah.
	And what about Michael Landon?
	Did you ever meet him?
	No, I didn't.
	Why would you bring that up?
	I love Michael Landon.
	So do I. Yeah.
	Really?
	A little joke.
	Oh, dude.
	He was my favorite.
	Highway to heaven, even that show.
	Little House on the Prairie.
	I love Michael Landon.
	I was more of a bonanza guy before your time.
	I respect that.
	Yeah.
	You seem like a little more bonanza.
	But, yeah, I loved Michael Landon, man.
	There was just something about, I just, yeah, I don't know.
	He played like that father, like the hero.
	You know, he was like, I mean, you probably looked at him the way we looked at you, you know?
	It was like, man, that guy.
	Not really.
	I was looking more like a hoss.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, maybe not.
	That's great.
	But yeah, Hulk, it's nice to meet you, man.
	And it's an honor.
	And thank you so much for just being a great entertainer all these years, man.
	I'm glad you were a fan.
	I had no idea.
	Oh, yeah, man.
	I had no idea.
	We needed you, dude.
	We fucking, I don't even know our TV.
	We would fucking balance the shit on the back and we would fucking hold each other's eyes open.
	Like, don't you fucking miss this, boy.
	And we would fucking miss it, dude, sometimes.
	But sometimes we wouldn't, man.
	When Gene Okerlund would be on there, God, and we were ready, boy.
	We would fucking wear tuxedo.
	We didn't have tuxedos, but we had like these like, we would cut us black sweatshirts with like the white shirt under them and pretend like we were the guys, you know?
	Yeah.
	He was my guy, Gino, and I brought him from Minnesota with me.
	Yeah.
	Because I was in Minnesota and met him there.
	Baja.
	And then when I went back to New York, when they wanted me to come back and do this crazy international thing with Vince Jr., I brought me and Gene with me.
	He was my guy.
	Yeah, he seemed like a cool guy to have around.
	And was he just a little bitty guy?
	Yeah, he was a little bit.
	When I moved to Minnesota, I was single and I had an apartment behind the Meth Center where the Mall of America is.
	There was a place called the Meth Center there.
	And there were the Visaya apartments behind there, and that's where all the Northwest stewardess lives, right?
	So I got an apartment there.
	Me and Gene came over one time and he was married and he wouldn't go home.
	He stayed in my apartment for like a year and a half.
	I said, dude, aren't you ever going to go home?
	He wouldn't leave.
	He just stayed there and lived with me.
	I said, okay, fine, whatever.
	You know, he just wouldn't go home.
	He's just interviewing stewardesses.
	Hey, Claire, you're headed to work today.
	He was brutal, man.
	That's hilarious.
	Did you see Prince over there in town?
	Yes.
	God, yes.
	Yeah.
	I used to go down and play at a bar called The Caboose.
	There was another bar that they was that the bar you played at all the time?
	Yeah, downtown Minnesota.
	Okay.
	Minneapolis.
	And then I played at Boyds in the River all the time.
	There's a band called Fragile there.
	Bonkers is a place we used to.
	Are you familiar with Minnesota?
	Yeah, some.
	We used to go to, what's that place we went to?
	Bonkers?
	Boyds on the River?
	I can't remember.
	Burnsville Bowl, any of these places?
	I mean, I'm talking in the 80s.
	Okay.
	But they had real pimps.
	I'm at my first real pimp in Minnesota.
	Yeah, oh, no doubt.
	Yeah, but right on Hennepin Avenue where Moby Dix was, there was a bar called the Caboose.
	And I used to always go in there, you know, after I wrestled or whatever since I was single, I didn't have anything to do.
	So I'd just go down there and drink beer and play guitar all night with all these bands.
	And, you know, I was fresh off playing, so I could still play.
	Yeah.
	You know, like my fingers hadn't been broken and screwed up and so many times.
	I could still play pretty well.
	So I'd go down there and I always go into Prince's Club, you know, First Avenue there.
	And the first day I went in there, he walked on stage and started playing.
	Wow.
	You know, the very first time I walked in the place.
	And so, you know, that got me coming back a lot.
	Yeah.
	You know, and I only saw him two more times there, but he would come in there and just play like for three hours because it was his club.
	Yeah.
	And we just sit there and listen to him, man.
	It was, it was amazing to watch him.
	You know, I met him one time, said hello to him.
	It was just a brief passing.
	He goes, yeah, I'm a wrestling fan.
	I said, oh, thank you, man.
	Cool.
	Yeah, I just never sat and talked with him or anything.
	Pretty magnificent, though.
	Just to even see him, you know?
	Yeah, he was cool, man.
	He was cool.
	But, you know, I just really dug his music, man.
	Oh, yeah, man.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he could do it.
	You could do it, man.
	Thank you for all the music you put out in the world, you know?
	It's all good, brothers.
	We're not done yet.
	No, yeah, and you're not.
	I mean, didn't mean to make it seem like that.
	But thank you for it.
	I'm still here for a reason.
	I just haven't figured it out yet.
	Well, all right, Honduras.
	Well, we're glad you are.
	And thanks for all you've done so far, man.
	Well, thank you, brother.
	Very cool.
	It's been awesome to witness and to be a fan of.
	Thank you, brother.
	Very cool.
	Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
	I must be cornerstone.
	Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind I found I can feel it in my bones.

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