Hulk Hogan begs for forgiveness after N-word rant that cost him his career

A teary Hulk Hogan begged for forgiveness Monday as he opened up about how his caught-on-tape racial slurs cost him his legacy and drove him to contemplate suicide.

The WWE fired Hogan last month after the wrestling icon admitted he repeatedly used the N-word in a 2006 sex tape after it leaked.

Hogan, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, said he became suicidal after the tape’s release.

“I was to the point where I wanted to kill myself, you know?” he said on Good Morning America Monday.  “I was completely broken and destroyed and said, ‘what’s the easiest way out of this?’ I mean, I was lost.”

 

The 62-year-old — who called his daughter Brooke’s then-boyfriend the N-word during the secretly recorded 2006 rant — regretfully admitted that he used the word.

He was mad at Brooke, and unfairly lost his temper when speaking about her beau, he explained.

“Oh, my gosh. Please forgive me. Please forgive me," he said. “I think if you look at the whole picture of who Hulk Hogan is, you can see over all the years that there's not a racist bone in my body.”

But even though he owned up to the bigoted rant, Hogan insisted he is not a racist. He grew up in a poor Tampa neighborhood where the word was “part of the culture and the environment,” he said.

“I'm not a racist, but I never should have said what I said. It was wrong. I'm embarrassed by it,” he said. “People need to realize that you inherit things from your environment. And where I grew up was south Tampa, Port Tampa, and it was a really rough neighborhood, very low income. And all my friends, we greeted each other saying that word.”

The WWE legend — who claimed he was secretly filmed during a 2006 romp with sex partner Heather Clem and the tape was published without his knowledge — said the comments have wrecked his career.

 

“I've worked for the WWE for almost 30 years off and on ... and then all of a sudden, everything I've done my whole career and my whole life was like it never happened,” he said. “Just because a person makes a mistake, just don't throw them away. You don't throw good people away.”

He added: “If everybody at their lowest point was judged on one thing they said and let's just say in high school, you may have said one bad thing and all of a sudden, your whole career was wiped out today because of something you said 10 or 20 years ago, it'd be a sad world. People get better every day. People get better.”

But despite his tarnished reputation, Hogan called the day he was fired from the WWE “the greatest day of his life.” He wants to use his mistake to teach others that racial slurs are unacceptable.

“This can become the greatest day in my life if people understand there can't be double standards," he said. "And you just can't use the word. Let's take it out of the dictionary. Let's not use it in rap songs or movies. I mean, if it's unacceptable, it's unacceptable.”

Hogan said he’s relied on support from his 27-year-old daughter Brooke, who has never wavered from her father’s side even though his racist remarks were targeted at her then-boyfriend.

“For me to vent and be so angry at her, she should have been the one — she should have been the one to throw me out like the trash. But instead, she showed me more love than anybody,” he said. “She instantly said, ‘I don't even need to forgive you ‘cause I'm not mad at you. I love you. You're my dad.' ”

Hogan is suing Gawker Media, which published parts of the sex tape in question, but not the racist rant. The slurs were reported by The National Enquirer.