TAMPA, Fla. — Like Bigfoot in a bandana, Hulk Hogan was the stuff of Tampa Bay legend.

Locals traded stories of seeing the WWE hall of famer around town, locking eyes with him over the eggs at Nature’s Food Patch in Clearwater or spotting his glistening blond mustache as he zipped across a causeway in a convertible.

Fans — of both wrestling and celebrity gossip — rushed to ogle Hogan slinging cans of his Real American Beer at Doc Ford’s in St. Petersburg in 2024. When a teenager flipped her car on the Veterans Expressway earlier that year, two men pulled over, stabbed her airbags with a ballpoint pen and dragged her from the wreckage. One of them was Hogan.

Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, died Thursday morning in Clearwater, according to city officials. He was 71.

To some, Hogan was a campy cartoon superhero come to life. He sprung off television screens to T-shirts and action figures and lunch boxes, so popular in the 1980s and ‘90s that Make-A-Wish sent him to visit 20 sick kids per week.

To others, he was a polarizing figure known for his vaccine denialism and his racial slurs caught on tape. He dabbled in politics, hopping onstage at Madison Square Garden in New York in October in a feather boa to cheer for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump with a throaty “Let’s win this, brother!”

Through it all, Hogan always belonged to Tampa Bay.

“He made his home here for so many years. He was a local celebrity for so many years,” said Barry Rose, who archives professional wrestling history in Florida. “He was always portrayed as a kind of Florida guy.”

A very Tampa childhood

Like many Floridians, Hogan was born somewhere else. He entered the world at a Georgia hospital in August 1953, weighing 10 pounds, 7 ounces.

He moved to Tampa as a child, where he became a junior bowling champion and imposing Little League pitcher. According to a story from Knight-Ridder Newspapers in 1987, Hogan weighed 190 pounds by the time he was 12 years old.

Hogan told the Tampa Bay Times in 2014 that he grew up “south of Gandy by like two blocks, right behind the ABC Liquors.” On many a Fourth of July, he lit sparklers and watched fireworks through the palm trees at Ballast Point Pier.

When an elbow injury ended his sports career at age 14, Hogan swapped his bat for a guitar.

“He rocked, playing bass guitar in bands called Koco, Ruckus and Infinity’s End,” the Knight-Ridder story said. “One memorable evening his junior year, he streaked stark naked across the dimly lit football field where Robinson High seniors were receiving their diplomas.”

After graduating from Robinson High School, Hogan studied music and business at the University of South Florida. It was his bass guitar that brought him back to sports.

Wrestling brothers Jerry and Jack Brisco saw Hogan slapping the bass at a Tampa bar. They recognized the bronzed behemoth, who was a regular in the audience at local wrestling matches.

“It looked really strange,” Jerry Brisco told Knight-Ridder Newspapers. “Here was this huge guy, 6 foot 8, with what looked like a toothpick in his hands, playing bass guitar. He had blond hair, plenty of it and a headband.”

Hogan started working out at the Tampa Sportatorium, a wrestling training center.

“They exercised me till I was ready to faint,” Hogan told the Tampa Bay Times in 2021. “And then they got me in the ring, and Hiro Matsuda sat between my legs. He put his elbow in the middle of my shin, and he grabbed my toe, and he broke my leg. He just snapped my leg in half. So that was my introduction to wrestling.“

By the mid-1980s, Vince McMahon had brought wrestling from a regional phenomenon to the national level. Hogan was the perfect star to unite the country, with his matches airing on MTV and soundtracked by Cyndi Lauper.

“The other aspect was the merchandise,” Rose said. “So you’re bringing a lot of kids to professional wrestling. They’ve got a Hulk Hogan T-shirt, they’ve got the giant foam fingers, they’re eating ice cream bars.”

He was able to create a persona that people bought into right away, Rose said.

“I think if he had lived another 20 years or so, he would have still been ‘Hulk Hogan.’”

When he was wrestling, Hogan easily charmed crowds as the “babyface,” or the good guy. He also could just as well play the “heel,” wrestling’s bad guy.

The same could be said for his life outside the ring.

A muddled legacy

If Orlando has Mickey Mouse, Clearwater had the Hulkster.

That was the thinking behind the wrestler’s decision to open Hogan’s Beach, a restaurant on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. After the VH1 reality show “Hogan Knows Best“ showcased Hogan’s life in 2005, swarms of fans started showing up to get a peek at his Clearwater house.

“My partner, Ben Mallah, has put his heart and soul into this place,” Hogan told the Times in 2014. “He goes, ‘You need a presence in Tampa. The tourists all come to Universal and Disney, and they’re all looking for you.’ And it’s true.”

Other local businesses followed. Hogan himself flexed his oily muscles at every “brother!” that passed by. He posed for photographs and signed autographs (one viral photo, not necessarily taken in Clearwater, shows his signature in a copy of “The Iliad”). Hogan told the Times that he didn’t want people to come all the way to his restaurant and not get a photo with him.

“This whole Hulkamania thing is international,” Hogan said in 2014. “Sometimes that doesn’t sink in with me. I think, ‘American icon? Oh, OK.’ To me, I’m still Terry from Tampa.”

Then came the scandals. Among them: a leaked 2006 sex tape with the wife of Todd Clem, aka radio host Bubba the Love Sponge, that Gawker posted in 2012. Then another bombshell tape was posted in 2015.

The second video, according to former Times columnist Daniel Ruth, showed Hogan “engaging in a profanity F-bomb (laden) rant in which he repeatedly dropped more racist N-bombs than an Aryan Nation convention.”

When online news outlets posted the clip, World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. severed ties with Hogan.

But the local sightings — and signings — continued.

Hogan ventured to Sunset Music Festival (he liked to work out to dubstep music). He apologized profusely and publicly, with a special nod to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Tampa Bay, who he often worked with locally.

Not everyone accepted his words, but within a few years, Hogan had patched up his public image enough to rejoin wrestling royalty. He once again became the face of WWE and WrestleMania.

“This is special to me because I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ve traveled the whole world, lived in California, lived in Japan. This place, the quality of life, the people that live here, this is the greatest-kept secret,” Hogan told the Times in 2021, after being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and before hosting WrestleMania 37 with Titus O’Neil.

In fall 2023, Hogan wed yoga instructor Sky Daily at Indian Rocks Baptist Church. His engagement announcement at downtown St. Petersburg’s Birchwood Inn two months prior had gone viral.

“The 70–year–old wore a black tuxedo with a black headband as he greeted his bride, 45, who was clad in a strapless lace gown," wrote the Times.

“My new life starts now,” Hogan posted on social media.

In the hours following reports of Hogan’s death, reporters, tourists and locals flooded Clearwater Beach.

At Hogan’s Beach Shop, supporters laid bouquets as tribute.

Some passersby stopped to take pictures of the shop and its large Hogan mannequin inside. A woman held the hand of a young child, and stopped in front of the doors.

“Say goodbye?” the woman asked. The toddler looked up at the Hogan mannequin.

“Goodbye,” the toddler said.

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(Times staff writers Lizzy Alspach, Alexa Coultoff and Christopher Spata contributed to this report. Information from the Tampa Bay Times archive was used.)

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