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In July, Hulk Hogan was fired from WWE for a racist rant, leading to the legendary pro wrestler being scrubbed from their media, removed from their video games, fired from Tough Enough and more. After more than a month, Hogan has decided to address it and the concerns of his fans in an emotional sit-down interview with Good Morning America.
Hogan:
“Oh, my gosh. Please forgive me. Please forgive me … I think if you look at the whole picture of who Hulk Hogan is, you can see over all the years that there’s not a racist bone in my body.”
In the original rant, Hogan says, “I am a racist, to a point, f*cking n*ggers. But then when it comes to nice people and sh*t, and whatever.” In the GMA interview, Hulk says that use of the word was part of his environment growing up.
“I’m not a racist but I never should have said what I said. It was wrong. I’m embarrassed by it,” he said, but added: “People need to realize that you inherit things from your environment. And where I grew up was south Tampa, Port Tampa, and it was a really rough neighborhood, very low income. And all my friends, we greeted each other saying that word.”
…
“The … the environment I grew up in in south Tampa and all my white friends, all my black friends, to hear the word on a daily basis when they’d greet me in the morning, that’s what they’d say to me, ‘Good morning,’ so-and-so,” he said. “I think that was part of the culture and the environment I grew up in and I think that’s fair to say.”
The apology gets a little questionable when he talks about the double standard of the word, and how other people can say it, but he can’t.
“So this can become the greatest day in my life if people understand there can’t be double standards, and you just can’t use the word. Let’s take it out of the dictionary. Let’s not use it in rap songs or movies. I mean, if it’s unacceptable, it’s unacceptable.”
Ultimately, Hulk says he’s gotten better, and that people shouldn’t be judged on the lower points of their past.
“If everybody at their lowest point was judged on one thing they said and let’s just say in high school, you may have said one bad thing and all of a sudden, your whole career was wiped out today because of something you said 10 or 20 years ago, it’d be a sad world. People get better every day. People get better.”
