Hulk Hogan Considered Suicide As Life Spiraled Out of Control

Former wrestling star Hulk Hogan says in a new interview that he came close to killing himself in late 2007, with his son sentenced to jail, his marriage falling apart, and his television show suddenly canceled.

“After the show I kinda hit rock bottom,” Hogan said on "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" “Everything got dark, everything happened at once. I was drinking alcohol very heavily. It just all kept piling up, it all kept mounting and mounting I didn’t know how to handle it. I always wondered how could someone possibly take their own life, and so I got to that point where I said, 'You know what, maybe this would be easy. You know, maybe this would be an easy way to fix things.'”

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Hogan says his life turned around on New Year’s Eve in Miami. “I was with my family and a bunch of friends at a table," he told the show. "And there’s a bunch of negativity about the food being bad, you know the champagne didn’t work, even though it was all consumed. And when I walked outside, some kid ran up and hugged me and was like, 'Oh I grew up watching you. I didn’t have a dad, you’re like a dad to me.' And there was another person that said, 'Hey Hulk, we love you.'

“I got sick and tired of being sick and tired,” he said, and added, “I now realize I had to go through all this stuff to be who I am today, to make me who I am today.”

But the Los Angeles Times cast doubt on the story, saying he had a different version while making the interview rounds in 2009. He told "Today"'s Meredith Vieira that his co-host on “American Gladiators” – Laila Ali – saved his life.

“All of a sudden the phone rang, and it was Laila, and she said, 'Hey, what’s going on? You’re on the set. You’re all depressed. We’re worried about you. You going to be OK?'

“She called with no agenda, just to say hi and check on me,” Hogan said at the time. “It snapped me out of it. At that moment I switched gears. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Her voice saved my life, it really did.”

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