(LifeSiteNews) — Legendary Hulk Hogan, one of the greatest wrestling professionals of all time, died Thursday at age 71, about 19 months after being baptized.
Hogan suffered cardiac arrest Thursday morning at his home in Clearwater, Florida. As a video clip shows, paramedics treated Hogan before taking him to a hospital, where he died at 11:17 a.m., according to Clearwater Police Maj. Nate Burnside.
Born Terry Gene Bollea, Hogan became a wrestling icon of superstar status in the 1980s when he regularly defeated opponents portrayed as “unstoppable” beasts and began his ritual of ripping his shirt off his body as he entered the ring. He became so popular, the enthusiasm of his fans was dubbed “Hulkamania,” and “he sold more tickets to wrestling shows than any man who ever lived,” according to wrestling historian and journalist Dave Meltzer.
Hogan became the face of professional wrestling, and his iconic status led to many cameos in movies. During the 1990s and 2000s, Hogan helped professional wrestling achieve its highest ever ratings on cable television.
While Hogan has shared that he accepted Jesus Christ into his life at age 14, it appears he neglected the formal practice of religion for most of his life. However, he has spoken out at various times about his faith in God, and in December 2023, he was baptized at age 70 at Indian Rocks Baptist Church in Florida, describing it as the “greatest day” of his life.
In an Instagram post showing a video clip of his baptism and that of his wife, he wrote the caption, “Total surrender and dedication to Jesus is the greatest day of my life. No worries, no hate, no judgment … only love!”
In 2020, Hogan joined the chorus of voices across the world calling on people to turn to God amid the coronavirus outbreak. He sent out two tweets encouraging his followers to do penance, with one tweet depicting the Scripture verse 2 Chronicles 7:13-14:
“Whenever I hold back the rain or send locusts to eat up the crops or send an epidemic on my people, if they pray to me and repent and turn away from the evil they have been doing, then I will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins, and make their land prosperous again.”
In the second tweet, Hogan added an image of a message that has gone viral on social media in recent weeks. It’s unclear who its original author is. The message read:
“In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship. God said, ‘you want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadiums. You want to worship musicians, I will shut down Civic Centers. You want to worship actors, I will shut down theaters. You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You don’t want to go to church and worship me, I will make it where you can’t go to church.’”
“If my people who are called by my name,” it continues, “will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
“Maybe we don’t need a vaccine. Maybe we need to take this time of isolation from the distractions of the world and have a personal revival where we focus on the ONLY thing in the world that really matters. Jesus.”
As many superstars do, Hogan has a checkered past, involving at least one alleged affair that led to a divorce from his first wife, Linda Claridge, in 2009, a leaked sex tape in 2012, and a second divorce in 2021. His first divorce was so devastating that it led to his contemplation of suicide, as he had previously revealed.
“I chose to keep going on and leaned on my religion,” Hogan shared with TMZ at the time.
X account CatholicSat tweeted this afternoon, “May God have mercy on his soul.”
