Hulk Hogan: My Life Outside The Ring - Book Review - November 15, 2009

I got a full day of reading in on Saturday and finished the entire Hulk Hogan: My Life Outside The Ring autobiography. I should first point out that I’ve been a Hulkamaniac for over 20 years now and he was the reason that I started watching wrestling. I saw him on TV and that was it for me. This bigger than life superhero that always fought for good. Interesting read. The book covers his childhood, getting into wrestling, and then finishes with the tough times in his personal life over the last couple of years. As far as wrestling goes, the book covers a lot of his getting involved in the business with the story of Matsuda and the crew down in Florida doing all they could to get him to go away. If you haven’t heard the story, Hogan was all the time trying to talk to the people around Florida Championship Wrestling wanting to learn to be a wrestler. Matsuda finally got him into the ring but his intention was to chase him away. Basically, he broke Hogan’s leg in the ring on that first day expecting that he would never come back. Hogan came back and continued to keep going. However, Hogan went to other territories and continued to make bigger money. He covers the story of going to the then WWWF and working for Vince McMahon Sr. Sylvester Stallone got in touch with Hogan about wanting him to be in Rocky III. He tells the story of their meeting which was funny with how Stallone knew that Hogan was the right guy for the role. McMahon blew up over it saying that he wouldn’t allow it. Hogan went for the movie role and said he’d make money elsewhere. That would be the AWA. Hogan worked his way up there and Hulkamania was taking off. Later, Hogan got a call from Vince McMahon Jr. about returning to the WWF saying that he was taking over the company and had big plans for Hogan. The two paired up and took off. The book just kind of stops there as far as mainly covering the wrestling portion of his career. It does keep hitting some big points every so often as far as happenings or injuries but the rest of the book mostly focuses on his personal life. It does cover the steroid trial from the mid 90’s against Vince McMahon where Hogan took the stand during it. The last half of the book is mostly covering the last couple of years with Nick’s accident, the divorce, and the inner battle that he had with himself. It was interesting to get his side of the story on a lot of the things that the media reported over the last couple of years. Given how I’ve seen the media cover stories that I knew about including wrestling stories in the last couple of years, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the media have their own agenda on things. Anyway, Hogan got very low with all that he was dealing with and not knowing how to fix things. It was inspiring to read about how he found God and how it turned his life around. He used this positive swing in his life to finally change things and be happy. The finish of the book definitely has this comeback feel to it where he is ready to move on with his life and continue that happiness and peace that he has finally found in his life. As I read these final chapters, I turned to the thought of what does he have planned for working at TNA? Maybe professionally this will be the cap on his comeback. Like I said, it is an interesting read and you get to see his point of view on the things in the last couple of years including how the Hogan Knows Best series was done and how things were already falling apart before the series started. If you’re a Hogan fan, you’ll likely enjoy the book. Keep in mind that most of this book is personal life stuff so if you’re wanting to read more wrestling kind of things, you’ll want to pick up his WWE book that was released several years ago.