The long saga of Gawker Media vs Hulk Hogan has finally come to an end, with Hogan getting his money, just not as much as originally expected.
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Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, recently took to his blog about the situation, with Bankruptcy documents confirming that Gawker has come to a settlement resolution with Hogan for $31 million in cash. In addition to the money, Hogan will also get a percentage of the final sale amount when Gawker gets sold.
Denton added that while he was confident in the appeals process, he decided to bite the bullet and settle (via CageSideSeats).
“Yes, we were confident the appeals court would reduce or eliminate the runaway Florida judgment against Gawker, the writer of the Hogan story and myself personally. And we expected to prevail in those other two lawsuits by clients of Charles Harder, the lawyer backed by Peter Thiel.”
“But all-out legal war with Thiel would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight. The Valley billionaire, famously relentless, had committed publicly to support Hulk Hogan beyond the appeal and “until his final victory.”
Denton also revealed that part of the agreement involves taking down the original Hogan post that started this whole mess, along with two others.
“As the most unpalatable part of the deal, three true stories — about Hulk Hogan, the claim by Shiva Ayyadurai that he invented email and the feud between the founders of Tinder — are being removed from the web.” You can read the full blog post here.
After the tape of Hogan made the rounds, he was let go by WWE, but his lawsuit resulted in him winning a ruling of $115 million. While $36 is nowhere near that, the company itself went bankrupt because of the verdict. Hogan has also been rumored to be in talks to make a return to the WWE, but nothing concrete has been announced yet.
