There was something deeply American in Hulk Hogan, who passed away at 71 in Florida for cardiac arrest, an epic mask that had its roots in the lost rhodes of the Rodei and in the screams of the evangelical curtain preachers. Hogan, whose real name was Terry Gene Bollea, born in Augusta, Georgia, to his father of Italian origins who worked as a bricklayer, Peter Bollea, and as a mother of Scottish and French origin, Ruth Moody, dance teacher and housewife, unlike other wrestler, Tony D’Angelo type, he never built his public image on the Italian origin, but on American identity: he was the hero. Biondo, the symbol of Marvel comics patriotism.
Hogan was a giant carved in the myth, muscles that seemed smooth by the fury of a god of television wrestling, the man of frozen beers and sunsets in Floridawhere he retired and from which he left last year to participate in the republican convention, giving life from the stage to a furious celebration of the candidacy of Donald Trump to President of the United States. With the blond mustache and the scarf worn as a motorcyclist relic, Hogan did not just fight, he celebrated a pagan Eucharist, a liturgy of the body. Each move in the ring was an explosion of ritualized testosterone, but also a blessing of cable TV.
But behind that theatricality from giant, behind the “Brother” repeated as a car preacher mantra, There was also the tragic echo of a man who could never get out of the character he had built and that his audience never wanted to put aside. The wrestler was the messiah of a nation looking for fathers, simple and invincible heroes, and America asked him every day, until the last day, when he was caught by cardiac arrest, urgently brought to the hospital where he then died, without resuming knowledge. They told him: Hulk, you must be the greatest of all. And it was until he disappeared, with news that came like a flash in silence.
In the end Hogan was the rough and radioactive version of the American superman, Impastato of cultural amphetamines, plasticized glory and solitude as a dressing room, idol of generations of fans all over the world, model for millions of children, but also controversial character, involved in the 90s in the great Steroids scandal. Hogan admitted the use of anabolic and this story obscured the image for a while. And then sexual scandals, like a stolen sexual video, racist phrases that led to his expulsion from the WWE, the largest organization of Wrestler. Only in 2018 he had been gradually readmitted.
The cinema also had its part: Hogan was the protagonist of a series of films that have become cult, especially “Rocky III”, “Suburban Commando” (in Italy with the title “Things of the other world”), “Mr. Nanny” (“Missiles for the house”) and “No Holds Barred” (“Without exclusion of blows”), and had his reality show, entitled “Hogan Knows Best”. In his career also a musical album, recorded in ’95, “Hulk Rules”, a mixture of Hard Rock and Hard Rock and motivational propaganda, artistic dough that could appear surreal but tailored to a man who was all and its opposite, and never in moderation.