FOX aired a highly anticipated documentary on Hulk Hogan last night, featuring several wrestling personalities, with a special focus on Vince McMahon, who made his first television appearance since January 2024. The former WWE Chairman spoke candidly about his relationship with Hulk Hogan, revisiting the 2015 controversy, the heated crowd reaction on Raw earlier this year, and the emotional blow of Hogan’s passing last month.
McMahon recalled the moment when the private recording resurfaced in which Hogan used racist language and even claimed to be “racist to a point”. His initial reaction was one of absolute rejection and immediate action from the company.
"It was unforgivable and I was stunned. What had happened? When those things came to light, I thought: ‘That’s not like him. What the hell is going on?’. As soon as it happened, the company cut ties with him. We removed him from the Hall of Fame. It’s something you just don’t do.”
Even so, he defended Hogan’s reinstatement in 2018, insisting he knew the man behind the persona.
I knew he wasn’t racist, I’d been around him for many years. He wasn’t racist. He said racist things and had to pay for it, and he did. But in the end, everyone saw the real Hulk Hogan—Terry Bollea—and thought: ‘Wait a minute, this guy doesn’t act like a racist.’ He’s not. We all make mistakes. That one was huge, but he wasn’t a racist.
McMahon was particularly upset with the way Hogan was presented in his final television appearance, in Los Angeles, where he was met with boos while promoting his Real American Beer brand.
"I was angry because we’ve known each other our whole lives, professionally and personally. When you introduce a superhero larger than life, you don’t just send him out there. He deserved something very, very special. More than anyone, they owed him something. It was like: ‘Okay, here comes Hulk Hogan’. It upset me because I wouldn’t have done it that way, and he deserved much more.
Hogan had said back in February that he expected that reaction, but his longtime manager, Jimmy Hart, later explained after his death that he was “devastated” and attributed the hostility to his appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
The most emotional moment came when speaking about Hogan’s death from cardiac arrest. McMahon compared it to the loss of a close family member. “You don’t think that someone so close, a family member or someone like that, is going to pass away,” Vince said. “Terry had managed to get through, so to speak, so many surgeries… he always pulled through. It was a tremendous shock, a direct blow to my heart.”
