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Hulk Hogan's attorney David Houston appeared on the FOX News Network last night promising to bury Gawker (who, as we all know, Hogan has been suing for publishing a one minute clip and review of the sex tape of Hogan and Heather Clem) legally if it turns out to have been them who leaked the tape to The National Enquirer and Radar Online. There's no word on who had the tape but it's obviously been out there in someone's hands because years ago, TheDirty.com's Nik Ritchie referred to having seen it.
Just six days ago, Gawker CEO Nick Denton had teased that the Hogan lawsuit would feature, "a third act which we believe will center on the real story: the additional recordings held by the FBI, the information in them that is Hulk Hogan’s real secret, and irregularities in the recordings which indicate some sort of cover-up. In the way of so many news stories, the deeper you go, the more interesting it gets.”
In regard to the replacement of Hogan on Tough Enough, the latest is that something will be announced this Tuesday. As I wrote yesterday, Ric Flair's name has come up a lot. Some have asked me about Steve Austin, but to the best of my knowledge, his "Broken Skull Ranch" reality competition series is filming - although they have had some issues with the crew in the last week and at one point, had shut down production. As I noted yesterday, it's a Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn decision, although obviously they are going to run everything past The USA Network.
Since WWE pulled Hogan from everything on their website, an easy question to wonder about is what this might mean for his WWE Hall of Fame status. WWE has never removed anyone from their HOF and as of this writing, has not pulled Hogan (although he has been removed from their Hall Of Fame Roster page at WWE.com). We were given the impression that everything is up in the air.
While it's doubtful Hogan matches will be removed from complete shows featured on the WWE Network, the animated "Hulk Hogan's Rock N' Wrestling" series from the 1980s was pulled from WWE's VOD area. A "Beyond the Ring" feature on Hogan's Rarest Matches has also been pulled.
As already noted, all WWE licensees were told to pull Hogan material. The WWE 2K16 videogame will pull Hogan from the release this October. The action figures will stop production. Even streaming music of WWE theme songs immediately pulled anything related to Hogan.
WWE Studios will also feel the brunt of the Hogan issue as their forthcoming feature film "Celebrity Death Pool" starring Ken Jeong and David Hasselhoff, had an extended sequence featuring Hogan very early on in the film. With the Hogan fallout, there have already been discussions on what they can do to edit around (not likely) or re-shoot (more likely but far more costly) the Hogan-related scenes for the film.
TNA also pulled Hogan from their alumni section as well as pulled as related merchandise from their ShopTNA website. Earlier on Friday, they had marked down all his merchandise.
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