Summary

Hulk Hogan said in the "Real American" docuseries that the pain management regimen he used during his TNA run reached a point where a pharmacist told him he should have been dead.

Hogan, whose interview in the series was presented as his last before his death in July 2025, said he joined TNA in 2009 after his divorce left him in severe financial trouble. He said the company gave him a needed opportunity at a time when his body was already breaking down and he was going through repeated back procedures.

The Netflix series has already generated attention around Hogan's final public reflections, including Brooke Hogan's decision not to take part in the documentary.

Quote from Hulk Hogan

"After the divorce, I had no money. I was broke. TNA saved me."

Hogan later went on to say:

"I was taking 80-milligram fentanyls, two in the morning, stuffing them under my gums. I had two 300-milligram patches of fentanyl on my legs, and they gave me six, 1,500-milligram fentanyl lollipops to eat. I went to the pharmacy. He goes, 'You should be dead. We have never seen a human being take this much fentanyl.'"

Hogan and TNA

Hogan was initially brought in as a major attraction, but he said he kept wrestling even while dealing with serious physical limitations. The documentary states that he underwent multiple back surgeries and relied on a spinal cord stimulator in an effort to manage the damage.

That matters to wrestling fans because Hogan's TNA run has long been debated as a creative and business move, and these comments add a far more severe layer to how compromised he says he was behind the scenes. They also sharpen the context around his final match in 2012, showing that he was still performing while describing extraordinary levels of pain treatment.

Sources

As reported by Fightful.