i grew up watching it. but you never joined the wrestling team in high school. no, sir. i had a really good band. and right when we were getting ready to hit the road, one guy was getting married, one guy s wife had a baby and nobody wanted to go. i said, that s it, i m done, i m gonna go be a wrestler. so the worst thing that i did was i went all around tampa telling everybody i was gonna be a wrestler. the first day they took me down there, they broke my leg on purpose the first day. if wrestling were not fake, would you have done it? at the time, i didn t know - you thought it was real. - oh, yeah. i didn t know it was predetermined back then. i guess when they break your leg, that kind of confirms it, right? but yet you didn t like contact sports. that s right. so i don t understand that. i don t either. - ( laughter ) - i just love wrestling. i was intertwined in society americana. i was americana at the time. so why flip it and become a bad guy? well, a lot of reasons. you ha
i grew up watching it. but you never joined the wrestling team in high school. no, sir. i had a really good band. and right when we were getting ready to hit the road, one guy was getting married, one guy s wife had a baby and nobody wanted to go. i said, that s it, i m done, i m gonna go be a wrestler. so the worst thing that i did was i went all around tampa telling everybody i was gonna be a wrestler. the first day they took me down there, they broke my leg on purpose the first day. if wrestling were not fake, would you have done it? at the time, i didn t know - you thought it was real. - oh, yeah. i didn t know it was predetermined back then. i guess when they break your leg, that kind of confirms it, right? but yet you didn t like contact sports. that s right. so i don t understand that. i don t either. - ( laughter ) - i just love wrestling. i was intertwined in society americana. i was americana at the time. so why flip it and become a bad guy? well, a lot of reasons. you ha
i could make these good guys hulk hogans. i would get booed so much that i could give them my oomph. that s when i reinvented myself. that s when i said, all the training, the prayers, the vitamins, all the stuff i did for the kids, i did it for the money. you fans can stick it, brother! yeah! because. if it wasn t for hulk hogan, you people wouldn t be here! hulk: i thought i d be the ultimate bad guy, which i was. i d beat guys up and then i d cower like a chicken and beg for forgiveness and wanna shake hands and blow cheap shot em, you know? but the people cheered me and it backfired on me. i became hollywood hogan, that bad guy, in the back, with the black beard. and people were cheering me out of the building. it was amazing. the lines had gotten blurred at the time, so there was this big gray area in entertainment that the fans thought it was cool to cheer for the bad guy, hollywood hulk hogan, so i became bigger than ever again. ( announcer shouting indistinctly )
had to be air-lifted to a nearby hospital. the passenger in the car was john graziano, former marine, who, to this day, is in a vegetative state after the car crashed. do you, at all, partly blame yourself? there was a time when i did, you know? i ve learned to forgive myself, nick, everybody, part of the race team, everybody that lived in my house, everybody that was there and wasn t there. everybody that pointed the finger and blamed, you know. it was a very tough situation, all the specifics, the no seat belt, the rain, all of it added up to just a very bad, tragic situation. you know, i just had to forgive everybody, even myself. john graziano s dad did not. august 26, 2007. everything changed because of the senseless, reckless acts of nick bollea. what al-qaeda could not do to my son, nick bollea did in a matter of minutes. i can only imagine the things john could have accomplished
high school, college kid, older adult, came from a family that was divorced, scar. parents were alcoholics, scar. boyfriend broke up with me, scar. dui, scar. someone bullied you, scar. there are so many people out there just like me that have scars. things you said that you shouldn t. right, exactly. scar. they look at me i didn t call myself a hero. i didn t call myself a role model. my fans did. and i think i m tangible, they relate to me because i ve got so many scars on me, you know, and i m still standing. like stallone said, it s not about how hard you get hit. it s about getting hit, getting back up and moving forward. what s the one thing you want to do before you kind of go into the sunset? the one thing i want to do before i go into the sunset. wow. ( laughs ) i m tapping out. cut.