How Hulk Hogan’s family life fell apart: From hit reality TV show with his children to cheating scandals, leaked sex tapes and a bitter divorce – with third wife set to take staggering share of WWE icon’s fortune after death

A larger-than-life character who became an undisputed legend of wrestling as a young man, Hulk Hogan captured the attention of the public in his later years for far different reasons. 

The maverick, who transcended his sport and became a household name across the globe, died last week at his home in Clearwater, Florida, after suffering cardiac arrest aged 71. 

He’d survived many a scandal in the years before his death and was arguably one of the most controversial figures in sporting history. 

There was a leaked sex-tape including a racist rant, an affair with his daughter’s best friend, and political stances which turned even some the Hulksters’ most avid fans against him. 

What left Hollywood Hogan ‘heartbroken’ in his final months, however, was a rift which tore him away from his family. At the time of his death, he hadn’t spoken to his daughter Brooke for more than two years, with his ex-wife Linda accusing him of tearing his own family apart. 

‘We’re in the worst mess,’ she claimed in an astonishing video in March. But how did a family so close-knit, who once starred in their own reality show, become so fractured? 

Six foot 8in Hogan, born Terry Bollea, began his journey into wrestling in 1976 when he was scouted to enter the sport after idolising Dusty Rhodes and ‘Superstar’ Billy Graham during his youth. 

It wasn’t until eight years later that the muscle mountain earned himself a full-time spot in the WWF, a platform which would shoot Hogan to stardom over the proceeding years. 

But 1983 wasn’t only significant in terms of the Georgia-born wrestler’s career – it was also the year he tied the knot with his first wife Linda. 

The pair hit it off immediately when they met two years earlier, as Hogan recalled in his 2009 autobiography: ‘There was just something about Linda. She didn’t care about the fame or the wrestling thing – she saw me, Terry, the person. That meant everything to me.’ 

‘The good ol’ days’ in the 1980s, as Linda referred them in a tribute to Hogan following his passing, were indeed seemingly filled with love between the newly-weds. 

As the blonde behemoth rose to the top of Wrestlemania donning his iconic red and white costume, he and Linda were raising their two children, Brooke (born in 1988) and Nick (born in 1990). 

The family became the subject of interest from a number of production companies as the kids grew older and the popularity of reality TV boomed.

After the astounding success of The Osbournes – which followed the late Ozzy Osbourne and his family at their Los Angeles home – Hogan was first pitched a television series in 2002, but turned the proposition down. 

The divisive superstar, then aged 50, agreed to allow cameras into his home three years later, with the first episode of the iconic ‘Hogan Knows Best’ airing in July 2005. 

The wrestler later revealed that he only agreed to the show in a bid help his children kickstart their own careers. 

‘I was offered lots of reality shows when I was making my career comeback against The Rock,’ he told Fox News. ‘But I kept saying no. Years later, it was my daughter’s career and my son’s racing career that we were thinking about it.’

While warning his family ‘what they were getting themselves into’, Hogan hoped the series could show a different side to the bellowing wrestler the public had become accustomed to. 

‘They (fans) don’t realise that I go to soccer games, play frisbee, watch The Lion King and start crying,’ he candidly revealed in one of the show’s early episodes. 

Producers tried to portray Hogan as a gentle giant, with the wrestler devoting himself to his daughter’s career. Cameras would follow him and Brooke at label meetings, recording studios and their family home. 

But while Hogan may have thought he was helping his aspiring popstar spouse, viewers branded him overbearing and controlling. He monitored her phone calls, interrogated her boyfriends and, in one shocking scene, attached a tracker to her car. 

He seemed far more of a hinderance to Brooke’s singing career than a help. The blundering blonde was often an embarrassment to his daughter as he tried to secure her a record deal. 

In one amusing scene, he even hired an airplane banner to send a message to American producer Scott Storch. ‘YO STORCH, SIGN MY DAUGHTER ALREADY, SHE’S THE BOMB!’, it read. 

The series garnered a huge wave of attention, but it ultimately came crashing down as quickly as it rose to prominence.

Hogan Knows Best was cancelled after four seasons in 2007 amid the breakdown of Hulk and his wife Lisa’s 26-year marriage over the bombshell accusation that he had cheated with his daughter’s best friend, Christiane Plante. A ‘furious’ Linda filed for divorce after learning of her husband’s adultery, which came after rumours of various flings circulated. 

The pair’s relationship had reportedly been on the rocks for years, with Linda admitting ‘sometimes they hated each other’ during the filming of Hogan Knows Best. 

Hogan however denied allegations of cheating in his 2009 My Life Outside The Ring autobiography, despite Christiane confirming she and the sporting icon had enjoyed a brief romance.

‘My relationship with Hulk began at a time when he and Linda privately knew their marriage was ending,’ she said in an interview with the National Enquirer.

‘She had left him already, although no official papers had been filed. He is a good man, good father, and good friend, and he and I grew close at a time when he was going through a very difficult period. It seemed right then, but I know it was wrong.’ 

The scandalous affair marked the beginning of Hogan and his daughter’s long-lasting feud, with Brooke taking to MySpace accusing her father of ‘betrayal’. 

‘When your best friend and one of your closest family members that you have loved unconditionally since your first day on this earth, betray you together, you could MAYBE find it in yourself to forgive today,’ she posted. 

‘But you will NEVER forget the hurt they caused you and how it hurt the people who mean the most to you.’ 

Linda and Hulk’s divorce was finalised two years later in 2009. As part of the settlement, she took a huge portion of her former lover’s riches. Linda seized 70 per cent of their liquid assets, 40 per cent ownership of Hulk’s various business and the couple’s £2.23million Florida home.

But the confirmation of their divorce was far from the end of Hulk – who moved on just a year later with his second wife Jennifer McDaniel – and Linda’s troubles in court.

Hulk accused his ex-wife of being an abusive alcoholic who threatened to beat their son with a wine bottle in his 2009 memoir. By this time, news of 48-year-old Linda’s new ‘toyboy’ Charley Hill, just 19, had been made public. 

Her new lover also sparked a fiery response from Brooke, who accused her mother of ‘smoking all her cares away and having a play-date’ in her 2009 song Dear Mom…

Two years later however and it was time for Linda to have her say in her own autobiography, aptly titled Wrestling the Hulk: My Life Against the Ropes.

The reality star claimed she lived in fear of Hogan killing her in one of his drug-fueld rages during their marriage. She wrote: ‘He tore my shirt, held me down on the bed with his hands around my throat. I was afraid he would kill me in one his rages.’

Linda said she chose not to speak about the alleged abuse prior to the memoir as she didn’t want to end her husband’s glittering career at the forefront of WWE. 

In a bombshell allegation, she also accused Hogan of engaging in a sexual relationship with his fellow WWE star Brutus Beefcake – something the two wrestlers vehemently denied. 

The accusations of abuse prompted a lawsuit from Hogan, who sued for defamation claiming the abuse ‘exposed him to distrust, hatred, contempt and ridicule.’ The lawsuit was however dismissed in 2012 – the same year Hulk’s biggest controversy surfaced. 

It came when gossip blog Gawker posted a sex tape of Hulk and Heather Clem, the wife of his then-best friend Bubba the Love Sponge, which had been taken in 2006 without the star’s knowledge. 

Hulk, who said he’d been given the blessing of his pal ahead of the sexual encounter, claimed the video was taken at a ‘low point’ during his and Linda’s crumbling marriage. 

But what was most damning about the leaked video was that it captured a racist rant from Hogan about his daughter dating a black man. 

In 2015, several publications reported transcripts from court documents in which the blonde hunk could be heard saying: ‘I mean, I’d rather if she was going to f*** some n*****, I’d rather her marry an eight-foot-tall n***** worthy a hundred million dollars!

‘Like a basketball player. I guess we’re all a little racist. f*****g n*****!’

The tirade seriously tainted the WWE legend’s legacy, with him chucked out of the franchise and admitting he was left ‘at an all-time low’.  

‘Please forgive me,’ the 12-time world champ pleaded – both to America as a whole and to his daughter Brooke, whose boyfriend was the focus of the then 62-year-old’s racist tirade.

‘If anybody should have disowned me it should have been her,’ said Hogan. ‘I was upset about something that happened between her and her boyfriend.’

Just days after the video sent shockwaves through the world of Showbiz, Hogan filed a lawsuit against Gawker claiming emotional distress and invasion of privacy. 

He was secretly being backed by billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who is thought to have paid for the lawsuit in the first place. Theil allegedly involved himself with the aim of destroying Gawker, a publication which outed him as homosexual in 2007. 

And Hogan managed to do just that, with a Florida jury awarding him $115million in compensatory damages and $25m in punitive damages. Both parties however later agreed to a $31m settlement, which left Gawker bankrupt. 

While dealing with the tainting of his public image, Hulk was too contending with the the breakdown of his relationship with his daughter in the years before his death. 

Following his scandalous affair with her best-friend and a number of ‘separate reasons’, Brooke ultimately became estranged from her father in 2023.

She had supported Hulk through ‘almost 25 surgeries’ as his health declined in his latter years, but the wrestling icon apparently ‘didn’t want’ her by his side anymore. 

‘All of a sudden he didn’t want me at surgeries… everything started getting covered in a thick veil,’ she wrote in a tribute to her father following his death. 

‘We never had a “big fight”. My father and I never “fought”. It was a series of private phone calls no one will ever hear, know, or understand.’

Brooke and Hulk had their final conversation over the phone a couple of weeks before he married his third wife Sky Daily in 2023. 

On that call, Brooke expressed her love and concern for him – telling Hogan that he shouldn’t be working so hard due to his declining health. Despite her pleas for him to enjoy more of his life, those requests fell on deaf ears. The pair didn’t speak again. 

Despite multiple attempts from her husband, Steven Oleksy, to fix their relationship, including when Brooke almost died in childbirth in January of this year, Hulk ‘responded coldly and never made an effort to meet Brooke’s kids,’ per TMZ.

The final public rift in the Hogan family came just a couple months before Hulk’s death when his ex-wife Linda accused him of being a ‘complete liar’ and ‘sex addict’. She too claimed that the family was in ‘the worst mess’. 

Brooke later retaliated, hitting back at her mother by alleging that her father was not the only reason behind the shocking family divide, claiming she was ‘verbally and mentally abused’ during her childhood.

After Brooke’s stunning response, Linda then took a dramatic U-turn by defending Hogan and branding her daughter a ‘narcissist.’

The family didn’t get the chance to reconcile before Hogan passed away earlier this month. 

A source told the Daily Mail in April that he was ‘heartbroken’ over the deterioration of his and Brooke’s relationship. 

Both Brooke and Linda paid tribute to their father following his passing, with his daughter hailing their ‘deeper than words connection’ and his former wife of 26 years admitting ‘I loved Hulkster more than he loved me!’

His son Nick, who took a neutral stance on the fallout and spent time with his father in his final years, also paid tribute. He wrote: ‘Thank you for being the best dad in the world and thank you for being my best friend. I love you so much Big Dog and will miss you forever.’ 

The question that now persists is, who will inherit Hulk’s fortune?

He’s estimated to have left behind an estate worth around $25million, which includes high-value assets such as his $11.5m Clearwater mansion and a number of business ventures including his Hogan’s Hangout restaurant and the recently launched Real American Beer. 

Under Florida’s spousal elective share statute, Hogan’s third third wife Sky is entitled to 30 per cent of his assets despite the couple only being married two years. 

It remains unclear where the rest of the fortune will land but, according to TMZ, Brooke won’t inherit a penny. 

The 37-year-old mother-of-two reportedly asked to be removed from Hogan’s will in 2023 over fears she would be caught in a bitter financial battle in the wake of her father’s death. 

Brooke, who apparently did not trust anyone in the wrestler’s inner circle, said she’s never been motivated by her father’s fortune.