Hulk Hogan: Gawker Media founder Nick Denton 'scared the hell out of me'

Six-foot-five-inch former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan said he was “scared” of Gawker Media founder Nick Denton and had to use a technique of affirming his own greatness in order to get through the controversial privacy trial that landed him with a $140m payout. Hogan – whose real name is Terry Bollea – told The New York Post that during the trial of Gawker Media’s distribution of his sex tape: “All I did was write for 11 days affirmations: ‘I am victorious. I am grateful. I am highly favored by God and His universe.’” Hogan said he was shaken by the events of his court battle with Gawker, which ended with a guilty verdict from a Florida jury. The organization is sentenced to pay Hogan $140m. In particular, he confessed he was afraid of Denton: “He scared the hell out of me,’’ said Hogan. “Denton and I had a stare-down. He scared me staring at me, man. He just sat there staring. It was right after his cross-examination. He stood up and stared. It was like he was going to call me out at Wrestlemania. Yikes!” Of the sum ordered to him in the verdict, Hogan received $65m for emotional distress. He said the spiritual toll inflicted by the publication of the sex tape was considerable: “I would run into kids who would say, ‘I’d downloaded the Hulk Hogan Wrestlemania video, and Hulk Hogan sex tape came up.’” On Gawker Tuesday afternoon, Denton characterized the trial as unfair and says Gawker is bound to win on appeal, citing several legal opinions, among them a reversal of the injunction Hogan sought to bar Gawker from posting the tape in the first place. Denton also said Hogan’s claim that he’d been distressed emotionally by seeing the tape on Gawker was disingenuous, pointing out that Hogan had discussed his sexual exploits in public at length, notably on the Howard Stern show, and that his attempt to separate his alter ego from his own person was a sham. Denton said the former wrestler’s testimony that Hulk Hogan has a larger penis than Terry Bollea rang particularly false. “Hogan did not sue us, as he has claimed, to recover damages from the emotional distress he purportedly experienced upon our revelation in 2012 of a sexual encounter with his best friend’s wife, Heather Cole (then Heather Clem),” Denton said. “It turns out this case was never about the sex on the tape Gawker received, but about racist language on another, unpublished tape that threatened Hogan’s reputation and career.” Indeed, when the slur-laced recording of Hogan voicing his disapproval of his daughter’s relationship with a black man became public, the WWE fired Hogan – arguably the highest-profile member of his profession in history – and scrubbed all mention of him from its website. He has since called his use of racial slurs “a huge mistake”. Thanks for reading.

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