People always expect Hulk Hogan to be standing up straight, or to have the bandanna on, or to not have my arms covered up. If I have an extra large shirt on people go 'oh yeah you look small.' It kind of ruins the mystique.
Then as I was wrestling as Terry Boulder. I was on a talk show with Lou Ferrigno, and I was actually bigger than he was! I went back to the dressing room that night and all of the wrestlers go 'Oh my God you're bigger than the hulk on TV' so they started calling me Terry 'The Hulk' Boulder.
The only time I'm not Hulk Hogan is when I'm behind closed doors because as soon as I walk out the front door, and somebody says hello to me, I can't just say 'hello' like Terry. When they see me, they see the blond hair, the mustache, and the bald head, they instantly think Hulk Hogan.
I'm 58 years old and I just went through 8 back surgeries. They started cutting on me in February 2009, and I was basically bed ridden for almost two years. I got a real dose of reality that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.
Hopefully I can become the Babe Ruth of the World Wrestling Federation and be the champion at the same time.
I've always felt from everyone I talk to that the fans feel like I'm tangible and they can talk to me and they know me.
I train all the time and the weird thing is I'm in the gym with people between 20 and 25 years old and I look in the mirror and I look better than they do and they are young kids - either they haven't trained hard enough or they aren't serious enough.
After watching wrestling for 20 years, I thought I had enough confidence to do it. There were no wrestling schools at the time.
I'm real critical of myself and if I take the bandana off my head I'm completely bald headed and go from being 58 to looking 68 instantly.
If anybody dared say wrestling was fake, you'd punch 'em. And you never used the word show. If you used the word show it was an insult.
Be a father first. Don't put a priority of being a friend with your wife first, or a friend with your kids first.
If I do hit that rope and do a hop, skip and a jump and get up as high as I can, I'm just going to hold my breath, because I know i'm going to hear all kinds of scar tissue popping.
I feel really good right now. It will really be a tough decision. It's so hard to give up what you love doing. Hanging up the boots will not be an easy thing to do.
People are really nice in the world. The majority of every single person I meet is really nice. Some people get excited, and some people freak out when they accidentally run into me, but across the board most people are really nice, so I just like to treat people how they treat me.
Wrestling needs to be about the art form again. It needs to be about painting a picture and having a really good match.
There's a lot of gimmick infringement out there, but that's cool. It's a compliment. But it all started right when I first came into the Garden. I came down to Eye of the Tiger and when I hit the ring with the Sheik, I just put my hand up to my ear by accident, and the crowd got louder. I was like "Oh, that works."
If I have a problem with someone I talk about them. I don't pick on their kids.
The best wrestlers, whether its a Hulk Hogan or a Rey Mysterio, are the ones who have psychology and can understand this business.
As far as my divorce goes, I love my family and I love my wife to death and I just don't know what tomorrow's going to bring.
When you start out in the wrestling business, you make a lot of mistakes, tripping over your own feet and looking like a fool.
We're probably the opposite of the Osbournes. We run a very tight ship.
I know what happens every time I get in front of a UK crowd - they just go nuts and they are so nice and excited and crazy and they won't sit down.
You can have a wrestling idea, but you need to have these momentum-shifting moves. We had the Hulkamania movement, then it shifted to the beer-drinking, Stone Cold era, we reinvented the business with growing the black beard and becoming the bad guy, what's that next level.
The coolest thing, and I have it at home, is a huge Hulk Hogan, normal-sized pinball machine. When people come over they play it for hours. When you hit the bumpers and the bells ring it goes, 'Oh yeah!' The whole time you're playing this machine it's yelling and screaming at you, 'What you gonna do, brother?!' I think that's the coolest.
A lot of people didn't realize that with the carpet being pulled out from under me in such a short time frame I got to such a bad place.
