How controversial Hulk Hogan really felt being booed at final WWE show

The man behind Netflix’s new Hulk Hogan documentary has revealed the truth behind his conversations with the late, controversial WWE icon.

Hogan, real name Terry Bollea, died aged 71 in July 2025, leaving behind a complicated legacy as one of the most recognisable names in wrestling.

Yet despite being one of wrestling’s biggest stars, Hogan was also a divisive figure who faced plenty of backlash in his lifetime and was booed during his final TV appearance.

Hulk Hogan: Real American, directed by Bryan Storkel, looks to explore the real man behind the legendary character through talking to his family, friends and rivals, as well as interviews with Hogan himself.

‘We spent two days together before we started filming, and it was clear that he wanted to actually go deep on this,’ the director exclusively told Metro before the April 22 release.

‘When we sat down for the interviews, he was just a lot more vulnerable than in other interviews I’ve seen him in. And, I think, open to discussing pretty much anything.’

Hulk Hogan: Real American, directed by Bryan Storkel, explores Hogan’s complicated legacy (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

That included bringing up his controversies and the moment Hogan was booed out of the building on Monday Night Raw in January 2025, which marked his final ever TV appearance.

At the time, Hogan blamed the reaction on his support of Donald Trump, while critics pointed to his 2015 racism scandal when a recording of him using the N-word was leaked during a sex tape lawsuit he filed against Gawker magazine.

In the recording leaked in 2015, Hogan was heard ranting about his daughter dating a Black man, and told a friend ‘I am racist, to a point’, while using racist slurs.

WWE cut ties with him in the wake of the incident, removing him from all areas of their website, including their online store and their WWE Network streaming platform.

Hogan was booed during his last TV appearance (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

It wasn’t until 2018 that he started making appearances again after apologising for the remarks. In 2024, he described the scandal as a ‘speed bump’, while fans and fellow wrestlers called on him to denounce the comments in stronger terms.

‘Somewhat,’ Bryan said when asked if Hogan fully understood the backlash from fans. ‘I think there’s multiple reasons too, and he was more into the political side in the last years. But I think he also understood there were other reasons.’

When it came to Hogan’s reactions to the boos, the director found that Hogan ‘deflected’ regarding his true feelings.

‘I asked him, “Certainly in real life, when you’re being booed, not for your character, but because of other things, that has to hurt, right?”

Hogan became a controversial figure late in his life (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

‘And that’s one where he kind of, I think, deflected a bit, and was like, “No, of course, it didn’t hurt”, but you talk to the people around him, and I think it did.

‘Everyone wants to be loved. And I think, at the end of the day, he does say, the cheers were obviously better than the boos.’

Despite the controversy, Bryan found Hogan to be ‘at peace with where he was at’, meeting fans at his Real American Beer events and trying to ‘be a good person’.

‘He was doing as much as he could in his everyday life to just be a good person and meet fans,’ he claimed. ‘Like he says, Terry Bollea was just a human, but the legend of Hulk Hogan, he was trying to live up to this character that did something amazing for people, that helped people.

‘He was trying to live up to this character that did something amazing for people, that helped people.’ (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

‘He was focused on that and trying to be more like the character than the human who was flawed.’

When it came to Hogan’s politics, he was a very public supporter of Donald Trump’s most recent presidential campaign, and even helped get him on board for the new documentary.

‘The last time I actually talked to him, I was at the White House, and he’d helped us set up an interview with Donald Trump, actually, to talk about wrestling and to talk about Hulk Hogan,’ Bryan recalled.

‘I was standing outside the Oval Office, and there’s an armed uniformed officer there, saluting and opening the doors, and I’m on the phone with Hulk Hogan. What world am I living in right now?’

Hogan passed away in 2025 (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

Hogan was hospitalised in May 2025 as his health deteriorated, and Bryan revealed they still stayed in touch at the time.

The day after his first surgery at the time, he texted the director saying: ‘I can feel my fingertips for the first time in 20 years.’

The former world champion’s health struggles were well documented, with dozens of operations over the years leaving him in excruciating pain.

‘His body was beat, and he’d had 40 surgeries or something,’ Bryan said, noting that it never stopped him in public appearances. ‘He never complained about it.’

The documentary features Hogan’s family, friends and rivals (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

Reflecting on the timing of what ended up being Hogan’s final ever interviews, the filmmaker wonders if the wrestling star knew what was to come.

‘After he passed, everything felt like it had so much more weight to it. But when I watched them again later, he would say little things like, “I can feel myself winding down. I just don’t know when the winding is going to stop,”‘ he said.

‘And you know, there’s several things that he said that I almost thought, “Man, did he know this was his last interview?” It feels like some of it feels like maybe he did.’

Storkel wonders if Hogan knew he was going to die (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)

He admitted some of the conversations seem ‘a little haunting’ given how soon after the interviews he died.

‘Another thing he said, it was towards the end of one of the interviews. He’s like, “Man, I’m just glad we’re doing this now. If we’re doing this another year or two from now, I don’t know if we’d be getting it,”‘ he recalled.

‘I don’t know if he was talking about specifically that he could see his health deteriorating, or even his mind, but he was reflecting on that and realising that this was the time to do it, which clearly it was.’

He added: ‘We filmed March, April, and then he went into the hospital in May and didn’t really recover, and passed away in July.

‘If we had waited any longer, we wouldn’t have captured his story in this way, on camera.’

Hulk Hogan: Real American launches April 22 on Netflix.

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