Hulk Hogan Talks About WWE Dropping Him In The Wake Of His Racism Controversy

WWE Hulk Hogan was recently interviewed for Sports Illustrated’s Extra Mustard blog and says he believes pressure from the USA Network is the reason WWE distanced themselves from him so forcefully in the wake of his racism controversy.

Hogan told Justin Barasso that he WWE told him that the USA Network was putting heavy pressure on them to immediately distance themselves from him. “Triple H was telling me the USA Network was reacting very badly, and they had to make a quick decision, and that was to put me out to pasture.” Hogan said. “[WWE] were under heavy fire and they were scrambling.”

“The only person I talked to was Triple H. I called him and told him there was some old news coming out from when TMZ first reported the tape and there were some racial slurs on it. Triple H said, ‘Okay, thanks for calling. Let me talk to Vince,’” Hogan recalled.

Triple H called Hogan a half hour later and said Vince gave the word he needs to resign. He never spoke to Vince directly and can’t believe he got fired “in the middle of the night.”

Hogan said he and his attorney, David Houston, requested a meeting with WWE to work things out, but the request was denied. Hogan feels the company he helped build is unfairly banishing him from the WWE Universe. “They’ve known me for over 30 years and they know I’m not a racist, so they should have went to the source. I don’t use the word, ever, except for in that moment of anger, so I wish WWE went to the source instead of the symptoms. I could have explained I’ve tried every day since then to be a better man,” Hogan said.

Hogan was hopeful that he’d get a chance to address the WWE Universe, ask them for forgiveness, but it never panned out. The 62 wrestling icon hoped to use the WWE platform to rebuild his situation.

“The only place for me to be would be the WWE. That’s where my home is. I thought I’d go step-by-step, crawling uphill with WWE, to explain how wrong I was, but that opportunity wasn’t there.”