Hulk Hogan had an exceptionally productive weekend, winning around $140 million dollars (counting the punitive damages that were added later) in his lawsuit against Gawker Media. Nick Denton (Gawker’s owner) and his lawyers have already said that they’ll appeal the decision, but that hasn’t stopped Hogan from going on a celebratory media tour. He first appeared in a taped interview on Good Morning America earlier today, during which he explained that he knew he was “doing what was right” when he sued Gawker, noting that it would’ve been worth it even if he had lost just so “everybody would have known what Gawker is all about.” He said he would have been happy to have “exposed them and what they do and how they look at the world,” which Hogan says is “very, very scary.”
Hogan also told a story about a time he and Denton were in the restroom together during the trial, and the famous wrestler was terrified that the website owner would “pretend to be hurt.” Still, Hogan thinks it would’ve been “fun” if the two had met in the ring at WrestleMania, which is a weird thing to say about someone right after you accuse them of faking an injury in a scenario you imagined. Overall, though, Hogan is really happy about the verdict, saying that he made an “involuntary snort, like a 900-pound pig” when the jury announced that it had sided with him.
Later on, Hogan made his way over to The View for a live interview, and that’s where things got a bit more real (not to be confused with The Real, a competitor of The View). On that show, Hogan reiterated his points about exposing the evil that is Gawker, saying that he “made people aware that this shouldn’t happen to normal people, especially any kids that are on social media,” with the “this” presumably referring to a video of you having sex with your friend’s wife being posted online. He also said that he got an e-mail from a woman whose husband killed himself after he “had this happen to him,” though that “this” is even less clear than the previous “this,” since the circumstances in that scenario had to be at least somewhat different from what happened to Hogan.
However, the real problem here isn’t Gawker posting people’s sex tapes online. It’s the fact that people can’t search for Hulk Hogan videos anymore without that sex tape coming up. He says kids go online and look for “Hulk Hogan videos” because that’s a thing kids do in 2016, but all they get is “Hulk Hogan sex tape” instead of his WrestleMania highlights. Also, in what is definitely the biggest tragedy in all of this, Hogan says that whenever he shakes a Hulkamaniac’s hand, he can’t help but wonder what that person thinks of him now and whether or not they’ve seen the tape. Hogan doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that some of us would rather not see a video of a wrinkly old wrestler having sex.