Earlier this week, AEW CEO Tony Khan made it clear that Hulk Hogan and his ex-wife are both banned from the new wrestling company. Khan told Linda that she would join Hulk in his banning after she posted an in-sensitive comment in regards to the recent happenings with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. She has since deleted the tweet in question. However, Hulk’s ban from AEW goes back to long before this week, though the rationale or it wasn’t exactly known (although we could have made an educated guess).
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In a statement to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Khan explained his reasoning. He said it goes back long before the death of George Floyd, noting that Hogan’s racist remarks on a 2015 leaked sex tape made his choice obvious.
“What he said on the tape, long before George Floyd, I’ve told people I can’t work with Hulk Hogan,” Khan said.
He continued, “How can I look my Black friends, football players, employees in the face or myself in the mirror after the things [Hulk] said and has never given an adequate apology for? He can’t blame what he said on tape on the dangers of social media.”
Following Hogan’s leaked 2015 comments, he was banned from WWE for several years. He eventually returned to the company and gave a speech to the locker room backstage prior to the Extreme Rules 2018 PPV event. That apology was not well received at the time, as numerous people in attendance Hogan sounded more like he was sorry he was caught than sorry for the actual comments as he began his speech by noting that he didn’t know he was being recorded at the time and told talent to watch themselves because they know when they could be being filmed.
Later, Hogan had several more personal meetings with some of WWE’s top African-American stars, including Big E and Titus O’Neil who have since said that they have mended fences with Hogan and forgiven him.
Khan isn’t the only name in the wrestling industry who has recently been critical of Hogan. The Undertaker told a story about his famous match with Hogan at Survivor Series 1990 during an interview with ESPN last week. In the process, Taker called out Hogan for allegedly falsely claiming that he hurt his neck taking the Tombstone Piledriver at the show.
