Vince McMahon has acknowledged Hulk Hogan ‘said some racist things’, but insisted that doesn’t mean the late WWE was ‘a racist’.
The former WWE chief has opened up about his longtime friend – who died on July 24 aged 71 following a cardiac arrest – in a very rare interview weeks after his death.
It marks McMahon’s first public chat since resigning from WWE’s parent company TKO amid a lawsuit accusing him of sex trafficking and sexual assault, which he has denied.
In TMZ Presents: The Real Hulk Hogan, the 79-year-old businessman reflected on Hogan’s 2015 scandal when he was heard using racist language in a tape leaked 10 years to the day before his death.
Speaking about why he brought Hogan back to WWE in 2018 after cutting ties with him over the footage, he said: ‘I knew he wasn’t a racist, I’d been with him for so many years.
‘He wasn’t a racist. He said some racist things, and he should pay for that, and he did. But in the end, I think that everyone saw the real Hulk Hogan, Terry Bollea and they felt:
‘”Wait a minute. This guy, he doesn’t act like a racist, he’s not a racist.” We all make mistakes. That was a big one, but he wasn’t a racist.’
In the recording leaked in 2015, Hogan was heard ranting about his daughter Brooke dating a Black man, and told a friend: ‘I am racist, to a point’ while using racist slurs.
Regarding the recording, McMahon admitted: ‘It was unforgivable and I was aghast, “What happened?” When those things occurred, that’s not like him. “What in God’s name is going on?”
‘As soon as it happened, obviously, the company didn’t have anything to do with him anymore. We took him out of the Hall of Fame. You just don’t do those things.’
Hogan was brought back into the fold three years later, and made occasional appearances over the last seven years.
His final WWE TV appearance came in January, when he was loudly jeered and booed by fans, with many feeling he hadn’t done enough to atone for the racism storm.
McMahon said of the appearance and crowd reaction: ‘It wasn’t set up properly. I’m sure he was probably despondent after that.
‘I was angry because we’ve known each other for a lifetime, professionally and personally. And setting up, so to speak, this larger than life superhero, you don’t just let him walk out there.’
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He argued that Hogan ‘deserved something very, very special’, insisting WWE owed him that.
McMahon added: ‘It’s just like, okay, here comes Hulk Hogan. I got angry because that’s not the way I would have done it and he deserved much more.’
Elsewhere in the documentary, McMahon revealed his reaction to Hogan’s death.
‘You just don’t think about someone, a family member or someone that close to you, you don’t think about them passing away,’ he said.
‘Terry had kicked out, so to speak, of so many surgeries… and, you know, he overcame that. It was a tremendous shot. It was a blow to my heart.’
On the day Hogan died, before the news broke, McMahon was involved in a car crash on a Connecticut highway.
He was accused of causing the accident, which left his Bentley wrecked and two other cars damaged, while no one was injured in the incident.
McMahon was cited for reckless driving and following too closely, and he after being released on a $500 bond, he will appear in Stamford Superior Court on August 26.
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