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Hulk Hogan Dies at Age 71. Wrestling Icon\u2019s Court Battle Highlighted Need for Digital Privacy<\/p>\n
Hulk Hogan, a larger-than-life wrestler known for his showmanship, succumbed to cardiac arrest after a career marked by digital hoaxes and a landmark battle against online exploitation<\/p>\n
By Deni Ellis B\u00e9chard edited by Jeanna Bryner<\/span><\/p>\n Hulk Hogan attends a New Era In Florida Gaming Event at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa on December 8, 2023 in Tampa, Florida. Hogan was pronounced dead at 71 on July 24, 2025.<\/p>\n Photo by Julio Aguilar\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Hulk Hogan died today, reportedly of cardiac arrest, at age 71 in Clearwater, Fla. Born Terry Bollea, Hogan was a star wrestler in a do-rag\u2014a six-foot-seven-inch, 302-pound powerhouse in his prime with a gift for showmanship and an affinity for tearing his shirt off before matches. But he was also a common target of digital manipulation, exploitation and online hoaxes, spurring him to champion privacy rights in the digital age.<\/p>\n For those who have followed Hogan\u2019s life closely, this isn\u2019t the first time his death has been announced. According to the Internet, he died in 2014 and did so again in 2015\u2014both times by gunshot\u2014and then passed away yet again in 2024. (The latter claim appeared on a Reddit subreddit dedicated to lies, though some people took it seriously.) Even in the months leading up to his actual death, online rumors claimed that he was on his deathbed or had died. And during that decade of hoaxes\u2014long after the height of his wrestling career\u2014his image was used countless times for digital manipulations. Photographs of Hogan flexing the biceps that he called \u201c24-inch pythons\u201d were often edited to swap out his face, with its iconic horseshoe mustache, and replace it with the face of one of the many people who wanted to be seen inhabiting his body\u2014or with the face of someone else whom others wanted to see on it for their own reasons.<\/p>\n But while Hogan couldn\u2019t prevent the seemingly endless digital manipulations, he became a landmark figure of the digital era for his efforts to defend his right to privacy. Years before \u201cdeepfake\u201d was a household word and artificial intelligence systems could allow anyone to puppeteer the image of a legend, Hogan found himself naked\u2014literally\u2014before the Web. In 2012 Gawker, a digital media company known for gossip scoops, acquired a 2006 sex tape involving Hogan (which he asserted had not been filmed with his knowledge or consent) and posted an excerpt online. Hogan sued, and a jury awarded him a total of $140 million in damages, though he settled for $31 million. Behind the scenes of what looked like a tabloid circus was a proxy battle between tech moguls. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who had been outed as gay by Gawker years before, funded Hogan\u2019s lawsuit. The case, which bankrupted Gawker, would become a major test for First Amendment rights in a time when clicks were increasingly becoming currency and online privacy had few protections.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Though Hogan\u2019s final headline won\u2019t stop the next hoax video or cloned voice, his life\u2014and the ways it was constantly remixed, misreported and monetized\u2014illustrate how the fight over a single leaked tape previewed the question of individual privacy rights in a world where manipulating pixels has become almost effortless. The years to come will no doubt see Hogan\u2019s image in AI-generated content, and legal cases around digital privacy issues promise to become only more complicated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hulk Hogan Dies at Age 71. Wrestling Icon\u2019s Court Battle Highlighted Need for Digital Privacy Hulk Hogan, a larger-than-life wrestler known for his showmanship, succumbed to cardiac arrest after a career marked by digital hoaxes and a landmark battle against online exploitation By Deni Ellis B\u00e9chard edited by Jeanna Bryner Hulk Hogan attends a New<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2822,5718,5717,5735,2527,1136,5715,5714,4493,3502,2183,5716],"class_list":{"0":"post-12164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-age","9":"tag-arrest","10":"tag-cardiac","11":"tag-defended","12":"tag-dies","13":"tag-digital","14":"tag-hogan","15":"tag-hulk","16":"tag-privacy","17":"tag-professional","18":"tag-reportedly","19":"tag-wrestler"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n