The Undertaker was amused that WWE fans booed Hulk Hogan at a “Monday Night Raw” event for Netflix last month, saying on his “Six Feet Under” podcast that “sometimes in life, things come back.”
The wrestler, whose real name is Mark Calaway, said that the moment was an “ego pop” for Hogan, who was trying to promote his Real American Beer at the Los Angeles event on Jan. 6.
“Did you feel like giving him a hug?” guest Justin Danger Nunle asked, prompting Calaway to laugh before responding: “No.”
Watch a clip from the interview below:
When asked if he felt bad for Hogan, Calaway added, “I got feelings. I got feelings for people, like sometimes in life, things come back.”
Calaway. who himself has a longstanding at-best-complicated relationship with the wrestling star, was referring to Hogan’s infamous Gawker tape from 2015, in which he went on a racist rant against his daughter’s then-boyfriend.
Among those booing Hogan at the Los Angeles event at the Intuit Dome were actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. and comedian Eric Andre. Jackson later explained, “The racism, bro. It’s just hard to forget how detailed that rant was … Bringing him out here? What’d you think was going to happen?”
Elsewhere on the episode, the podcast hosts posited that fans had become disillusioned to Hogan, because he “wasn’t the guy that he was portrayed to be.”
“We grew up seeing Hogan as an Americana kind of deal. And then he gets caught on tape saying some derogatory, racist things,” Calaway said. “In this day and age, where all of that is such a hot-button deal, I don’t know what you expect. I think you know they’re going to react, and they’re not going to react in a positive way.”
The Undertaker also thought the Los Angeles audience was not very receptive to Hogan, who enthusiastically supported Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in July and again at the Madison Square Garden rally in October.
“And it was L.A.,” he said. “They had kind of a different mindset.”
WWE removed Hogan from their Hall of Fame in 2015, but reinstated him in 2018. Upon his return to the company, Hogan spoke to the WWE locker room and apologized for his use of racist slurs.
