Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan dies aged 71
Terry Bollea, a professional wrestler best known as Hulk Hogan, died on Thursday at the age of 71.
The Clearwater Police Department in Florida announced Hogan's death on July 24. Officials claimed that at 9:51 a.m. ET, fire and police officers went to Clearwater Beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida, near Tampa, to answer a medical emergency.
Authorities reported that the call was about a heart attack, and Hogan was declared dead at 11:17 a.m.
Hogan, whose full name was Terry Gene Bollea, became famous for his wrestling performances in plays.
His career started in 1977. He spent his early years wrestling for regional companies all across the U.S., including the World Wrestling Federation, and even in Japan.
Bollea is known to be the biggest wrestling star ever, and he helped WWE grow into the huge company it is now. Bollea's larger-than-life demeanor, both in and out of the ring, gave him a household figure in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a crossover mainstream celebrity, starring in movies and being known all over the world.
“WWE is saddened to learn WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan has passed away. One of pop culture’s most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s,” the company said in a post on X. “WWE extends its condolences to Hogan’s family, friends, and fans.”
Hogan was already famous among wrestling enthusiasts, but he became a household name after appearing in a number of movies and TV series that made him more popular in the general public.
He fought Sylvester Stallone's character, Rocky, in the third movie in the "Rocky" series. He was a wrestler and a boxer.
Bollea's fame and his fights with "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, André Rene Roussimoff (better known as André the Giant), "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and many others made professional wrestling a multi-billion-dollar business in the 1980s and early 1990s.
He won the WWE Championship six times and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame twice, once in 2005 and again in 2020 as part of the New World Order.
Bollea's stint with WCW would finally go bad when he took part in the "Finger Poke of Doom," a moment that showed how fake professional wrestling really is in a way that had never been witnessed before.
That event, in which Kevin Nash fell on his back after being poked by Bollea, let the evil Hollywood Hogan become the WCW champion again. It caused the company to go through a crisis that turned off fans so much that WWE was able to buy its competition for a small amount of money.
Bollea eventually returned to WWE as a full-time performer in the early 2000s, having a celebrated match with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at WrestleMania X8 in which two of wrestling’s biggest-ever stars created a cauldron of noise at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, then known as the SkyDome.
Bollea died just over a month before the debut event for his new wrestling promotion, Real American Freestyle. That organization wants to provide classical wrestling, like what you would see in the Olympics instead of WWE, a greater stage. Its first event was planned for August 30.
