Does Hulk Hogan Still Use the N-Word?

Hulk Hogan’s infamous sex tape contained a little more than love and tenderness. In the video’s pillow talk segment, Hogan was caught using racial epithets. Gratuitously. What followed was a rightful avalanche of outrage and the excommunication of Hogan from WWE.

With all that’s transpired, does Hulk Hogan still use this type of incendiary language? Hogan was asked this explicitly on a FOX show, OBJECTified.

“No. I tried to clean up my whole life. I made a whole switch, almost a shift from being negative… I moved forward so I’m in check with myself,” said Hogan.

Hogan’s rationale for using that word lies within the culture of his youth. The WWE icon claims that even though the times changed, he did not.

“As far as the black community and using that word, it’s not part of who I am now,” Hogan explained. “It’s not part of my language because I understand how powerful words are. You know, growing up in South Tampa where we came from, it was a situation where when you played baseball and basketball and ran around in South Tampa, it was just common knowledge 45 – 50 years ago [that people said that word], but it’s not that way anymore,” he said.

While the question is an attention grabber, it’s mostly useless. Of course, Hulk Hogan is going to say he’s eradicated the word from his vocabulary. And hey, maybe he has, but asking such a blunt question in a pre-taped show is not exactly the best way to get the most genuine of answers. However, we have to take Hogan’s word for it and hope that he’s purified himself of ignorance and prejudice.

Hogan is amidst an image rehabilitation tour, likely leading to some kind of WWE comeback. However thanks to his recent scandal, many folks aren’t too excited about seeing the Hulkster back on the big stage.

Professional sports is littered with moral (sometimes mortal) atrocities. Whether it’s a DUI, battery, gun possession, steroid scandals, or manslaughter, there’s something within the human disposition that is willing to forgive. We actually may crave it. But only after due time. Perpetrators must learn their lessons before we allow them to return. This kind of moral incarceration has been embedded in our culture through centuries of storytelling. Sports find themselves filling this narrative void and we watch these athletes as if they were characters in a story.

The Hulk Hogan character finds himself crawling out of his lowest valley to date. The prison door will open one day and the question won’t be if Hogan can help wrestling, but if we will allow it.