FanHouse Hulk Hogan

It's 1986 up in here. Hulk Hogan is in Australia promoting Hulkamania (Saturday night in Melbourne ... tickets have to be still available) and during a Wednesday press conference things got out of control. (As out of control as one might expect at a press conference touting an event that involves people who fake fight for a living.)

In any event, Ric Flair, also apart of the spectacle, pimp-slapped Hogan as the two ironically "traded insults over women." And then things got, well, predictable. But there was plenty of blood to distract us from the banalities. Video proof after the jump.

A word of advice to Bobby Lashley's future MMA opponents: Better lay off the pro wrestling jokes.

The former World Wrestling Entertainment star improved to 3-0 in his MMA career on Friday night when he submitted Mike Cook via guillotine choke in just 24 seconds at Maximum Fighting Championship 21 in Alberta. It was by far Lashley's most impressive performance as an MMA fighter since turning pro late last year.

It's not easy being the bad guy in professional wrestling. Just take it from one of the legends of World Wrestling Entertainment, Honky Tonk Man, who drew the ire of thousands of fans as an infamous "heel" throughout the late '80s and early '90s.


I had a chance recently to talk with Honky Tonk Man about his thoughts on pro wrestling, Sunday night's 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania and THQ's new Legends of WrestleMania video game. We also touched on sensitive topics like heated feuds and pro wrestlers dying before their time.

Hulk Hogan is getting a divorce, and in a Florida courtroom this week, he confronted his wife's lawyer as if he were staring down Andre the Giant on a pre-Wrestlemania III segment on Piper's Pit.

When the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform decided to look into steroid and illegal drug use in pro wrestling, three members of the McMahon family were called to testify. We've already addressed the testimony of WWE head Vince McMahon and his wife Linda McMahon, but the appearance before the committee of daughter Stephanie McMahon Levesque may have been the most interesting.

In the early 1990s, the WWF (now WWE) made a concerted effort to combat a public perception that its stars were using steroids, with wrestlers like Hulk Hogan appearing in videos like this to praise the organization's drug testing policies:



But by the mid-90s, the professional wrestling landscape had changed significantly, with Ted Turner offering huge sums of money to lure wrestlers to his promotion, the WCW.

Even though Roger Clemens might not be calling players that use HGH and the like cheaters, there's quite the lot of baseball purists that are quick to call players as such. And I'm sure that was all learned by "Hulk Hogan's Rock N' Wrestling." Because let's face it: your parents never gave you your morals, wacky 80s cartoons did.

Watch the above clip and be amazed at the range of pitches tossed out by Hulk and the Iron Sheik -- the "triple scoop ball" and the "yo-yo ball" sure look pretty untouchable.

I have a feeling this is where Dice-K got his idea for the gyroball.

Part one is after the jump. (Chronology was never my strong suit.)

Terry Gene Bollea, the professional wrestler who is better known as Hulk Hogan, is getting divorced. He found out about it from a newspaper reporter.

Hogan's wife, Linda Bollea, filed a petition for dissolution of marriage from Terry Gene Bollea, 54, on Tuesday. The Tampa Tribune reports:

Reached by phone on Friday night, Terry Bollea said he had no idea she had filed for divorce. Informed by a reporter that the paperwork was submitted on Tuesday, Bollea said, "Thank you for the great information," and hung up.

He called back about five minutes later.

"I'm kind of shocked," he said. "You caught me off-guard. My wife has been in California for about three weeks. ... Holy smokes. Wow, you just knocked the bottom out of me. ... I just pulled over to the side of the road for five minutes to find out what was going here."

Asked whether he and his wife had discussed divorce, he said, "That's my private business."

It is, indeed, his private business, although it's a little strange for him to make the case that his private life should remain private, seeing as the status of his marriage and its possible dissolution was the subject of an episode of his VH1 reality show, "Hogan Knows Best."

Hat tip: The Big Lead.