Well, as Parade highlighted, Hogan claims that he tried to join the legendary rock band, Metallica, and was prepared to leave life as a wrestling icon behind to do so. “When Metallica was looking for a bass player, I called and never heard a word back from them either,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2009.

Hulk Hogan’s back had weakened, a failed early attempt at slamming all 525 pounds of Andre the Giant left the “Immortal One" unsteady as the World Wrestling Federation champion once more needed to rally to beat another of wrestling’s baddest bad guys.

But in the 1980s, Hogan popularized a brash and cartoonish style that became swiftly synonymous with the form, at least in America. When the promoter Vince McMahon built up the company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE),