Vince McMahon on Hulk Hogan: ‘He wasn’t a racist. He said some racist things’
Vince McMahon doesn’t feel Hulk Hogan was racist.
In an interview with TMZ that aired on Fox Tuesday, McMahon recounted when a Hulk Hogan sex tape resurfaced in 2015 featuring racist language from the WWE Hall of Famer, including Hogan saying he was a racist “to a point.”
“It was unforgivable, and I was like, aghast. What happened? And when those things occourred, that’s not like him. What is 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,” he said.
Despite this, Hogan was welcomed back into the WWE in 2018 and continued his relationship with the company through his death last month. McMahon defended the decision during the interview.
“I knew he wasn’t a racist, I’ve been with him for so many years,” he said. “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 everyone saw the real Hulk Hogan, Terry Bollea, and they felt, well 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.”
The interview is the first McMahon has given publicly since his resignation from TKO in January of last year following a lawsuit that accused him of sexual assault and trafficking.
Bryan Rose is an editor from California that has been covering professional wrestling for well over a decade. He officially joined F4WOnline as an editor in 2017.