Wrestling the Hulk: My Life Against the Ropes Page 7

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “You have a million dollars in your bank account.”

  Terry had only been with the WWF for a little over a year. It was hard to register that this was real. I was happy that we made it, but I also realized how much work it took to get us there. Quite honestly, Terry and I didn’t even have time to spend it. We didn’t live much differently than before. We still drove the same beat-up car and stayed in crappy hotels. Even though Terry was the face of the WWF, we chose to stay at the same hotel as the other wrestlers. As far as we were concerned, you stayed where they stayed, you ate where they ate, and you traveled the way they traveled. This created a good camaraderie between all of us. We were all in this together and treated it that way.

  Tan, Ready, and Rested

  Wrestlemania III on March 29, 1987, was another star-studded spectacle. Even though I was from California, I’d never met big celebrities in person besides Farrah Fawcett. Vince would have celebrities attend every Wrestlemania. I was backstage with all of these stars, such as Alice Cooper and Aretha Franklin. My husband was now a star himself! For the main event, Hulk Hogan put his World Championship belt on the line against André the Giant. Hulk ended up slamming the giant. The crowd roared like I’d never heard before. I was so proud of my husband I cried! We celebrated. It was such a special feeling when Terry and I hugged after the match. We had come so far. He was the nation’s hero, and he was my hero.

  But all that time traveling on the road with Terry, I finally felt like I had been body slammed. During one year we spent 324 days on the road! For the longest time, Terry and I never spent a holiday at home. Every Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter we were at a different wrestling event. I had flown to so many cities, sat in so many arenas, washed so many yellow tights and boots, eaten in so many fast-food places, stayed in so many motels, and partied so many late nights that I was done. And I looked it. I had major breakouts on my face from lack of sleep and stress. I missed my period for eight solid months while I was still taking the pill. My hair was dry and brittle even though I didn’t even color it then. I was sleep deprived and more tired than I had ever been before in my life. I experienced the kind of total exhaustion that would cause most people to rethink their lives. I was going to self-destruct. I needed to find Linda again.

  Meanwhile, the wrestling business grew at a staggering pace, and we realized Terry couldn’t take a break, even if he wanted to. I, on the other hand, needed to take one for the both of us. Sure, being on the road was an essential part of being married to a wrestler. Just as it was for people on circus, carnival, and rock-and-roll concert tours, the road was our home. However, it was time to establish a real home base.

  One of the things we did do with our money was buy a three-bedroom town house in Redington Beach, Florida. We could easily fly from Connecticut in under three hours and be guaranteed warm sunny weather. We had spent so many days out of every year in gloomy cold cities during the winter. I needed to be in the sunshine once again. And when Terry would get a few days off and he’d come to Florida, it was like we were newlyweds all over again. I made sure I was tan, ready, and rested when he showed up.

  With Terry on the road and me at home it put a different spin on our relationship. Now I had to get used to being alone a lot of the time. I would watch him on TV. He would call me every night. He would call me every morning. But it wasn’t the same thing as being with him. Sure, I missed him. However, I knew I needed a change. I also knew how hard Terry worked, so when he came home, whatever he wanted to do was fine with me.

  When Terry was home, a lot of his wrestling buddies came down to Florida to hang out as well. Because he was the leader of the wrestlers, the party was always at our house. I’d throw barbecues together at the last minute. That’s when I invented the “Company Cupboard.” I took one big shelf out of my pantry and piled it with the typical party food. Peanuts, chips, sodas, beer—you name it, they ate it. I was always stocked up. Some of my favorite recipes were invented in those days. Here are a couple of my standards.

  CITY CHICKEN

  There is no chicken in this recipe, but the skewers will look like drumsticks when they’re finished.

  2 cups seasoned bread crumbs

  ½ cup parmesan cheese

  ¼ cup chopped parsley

  2 to 3 eggs, beaten

  2 pounds veal, cubed

  2 pounds pork, cubed

  garlic salt and pepper (to taste)

  olive oil for frying

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In one bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and parsley. In a separate bowl beat the eggs. Dip the meat pieces into the egg batter, soaking the meat on all sides; then roll each piece in the bread crumb mixture. Stick the pieces of cubed meat onto skewers, alternating veal and pork. Sprinkle with garlic salt and pepper.

  In a large pan, fry the skewers in olive oil on all sides until the meat is golden brown. Then drain each skewer on paper towel. Place the skewers in a roasting pan and bake in the oven for 1 hour.

  CROCK POT HAM

  1 8-pound ham with bone (pre-cooked)

  2 8-ounce cans apple pie filling

  1 cup honey

  1 cup cinnamon sugar

  Put the ham in the slow cooker. Pour the apple pie filling, honey, and cinnamon sugar all over the ham. Cook on high for 4 to 5 hours.

  The ham will fall off the bone, and the gravy is amazing!

  I think being the wind beneath Terry’s wings was my forte, my calling. Terry was the wrestler . . . the showman. You stick a camera in his face and he can talk at the drop of a hat. Me, not so much. I was content with being behind the scenes. Sure, I was a celebrity in my own right just being married to Hulk Hogan. But Terry was the star, and I was fine with that. I was always very proud of him and thrilled to be his wife.

  As far as the World Wrestling Federation was concerned, we were one big family. However, when I turned twenty-seven years old, I felt Terry and I should begin building our own little federation at home.

  It was time to start a family.

  Chapter Five

  Oh Baby!

  HULK HOGAN WAS A HERO TO SO MANY KIDS. The WWF always collaborated with different charitable organizations benefiting children, specifically the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Starlight Children’s Foundation. These groups work with terminally ill children and grant them their dying wishes. And it was amazing to me how many kids shared the same wish—to meet Hulk Hogan in person. So many kids with such little time left looked up from their wheelchairs, hospital beds, and parents’ arms at Hulk, who brought a little magic into their lives.

  Terry was so powerful, yet gentle around those little angels. And he always had a kind word for their parents, who were saints. I always stood by his side hugging the kids and giving them T-shirts and bandannas, gifts from the Hulkster.

  From watching Terry deal as warmly as he did with these ill children, I knew he’d be a great dad. I was more than ready to be a parent, and I think he was ready, too. Now that Terry had become so successful, and I knew he was on his way, I felt it was time for us to take a moment and put down some real family roots.

  It took a little while, but about six months into trying to conceive, I got pregnant. I remember Terry looking at the positive pregnancy test in the kitchen. His eyes lit up. He couldn’t believe it. Yep, I was pregnant! We went to the doctor, and the pregnancy was taking off and doing well. We were on our way to becoming parents!

  About four months along, Terry and I went to a wrestling match he had on his schedule in Rhode Island. We drove from Connecticut to Rhode Island in the dead of winter. It was so cold that despite the car heater being on, the frigid air still managed to seep in.

  Terry was in the dressing room getting ready to go out and wrestle when I suddenly got cramps, bad ones. I didn’t know why. I thought maybe it was growing pains from the baby because I was almost midway through my pregnancy. I rushed to the ladies’ room, sat down on the toilet, and bloo
d gushed from my body. I realized I was having a miscarriage. I was devastated. Terry must have sensed something was wrong because he came into the public restroom to check on me. He was so tall that he looked over the stall and saw me sitting on the toilet crying.

  An ambulance was called and I was taken to a local hospital where they announced that there was no baby. It was an ectopic pregnancy, which means the pregnancy occurred outside the uterus.

  “I thought I was four and a half months’ pregnant,” I said to the nurse.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she responded. “But you can try again.”

  It took so long to get pregnant the first time that maybe I can’t have a baby, I thought. Maybe I’m not meant to have a child. After a few months, Terry and I started again. Six months later, and voilà! Preggers! This time it took and I was ecstatic. I began seeing Dr. Lewis at the All Women’s Center in Tampa, Florida, where we monitored the pregnancy closely.

  The second time around I told no one I was pregnant except Terry. I didn’t want to jinx it. I stayed home, didn’t work out, and ate and ate and ate. I didn’t care about anything except the baby. During this time, I lived at our home in Florida so I wouldn’t catch a cold up north. I was tan, healthy, and very pregnant. I was having the Hulkster’s baby and it showed. I was huge! I thought for certain it was a boy. In fact, I prepared the nursery for a boy. I was so big that I looked like I was smuggling watermelons. The normal thing that happens during pregnancy is that the baby drops. Mine kept growing straight out in front of me.

  I wrote an entry in my journal on March 4, 1988, which is exactly two months and one day before I delivered Brooke. I clearly had the baby blues:

  Well I’m having a bad day. I just keep crying because I’m so depressed. Terry won’t be home for five more days. He doesn’t like making love to me anymore because I’m so fat and pregnant. I have no more self-esteem left. I hate looking at myself in the mirror. Today I weigh 183 pounds! The veins in the back of my knees are having blowouts. My feet are totally swollen. I can’t wear high heels anymore. Maybe Terry can loan me his wrestling boots! I can’t exercise now. I’m not tan. I’m sick of staying home. I wish I could go away with Terry just for a couple of days and go out at night. I still have two more months of being pregnant left and it feels more like two years!

  It wasn’t easy being alone in Florida during my pregnancy with Brooke. Terry’s parents were older and traveling was difficult for them, so we didn’t see them that much. My family was three thousand miles away in California. This was the first grandchild in my family in many years and it was a special time that I wished they were experiencing with me.

  Terry wrestled often during that course of time and watched my baby bump grow. When the baby started kicking, he liked to feel my tummy. We would also read baby books together. He was very excited about becoming a dad for the first time. Terry really loved me, and the child growing inside of me was an extension of our love.

  As my due date approached, I got into mommy mode. I fixed up the nursery, washed the quilt, bought stuffed animals, packed the diaper bag, got the changing table ready, and put the car seat in the Suburban. Now, we just needed the kid!

  My mom and sister flew from California to Florida for my due date of April 28, 1988, but there was no birth. No labor pains. No dropping. No signs. There was just a lot of kicking and moving. I started to think that if they didn’t get this kid out of me soon, I was going to burst! I was pretty uncomfortable, with my measurements topping out at bust 42½, waist 43½, and hips 42½. Pretty soon King Kong Bundy was going to look like a runway model next to me.

  Ten more days went by, and finally my mom got worried and called Dr. Lewis.

  He told us to come in to see him, but not to worry because a lot of first babies are born late. We gathered our purses and headed to the doctor’s office right away. Terry went out on his boat, and my sister stayed behind.

  When we got to Dr. Lewis’s office, he told me that the baby was in fetal distress. He immediately broke my water and called the hospital, telling them to get ready for me because the baby was coming right then! I was nervous to push this enormous baby out from inside of me. Wouldn’t you be?

  Terry raced to the hospital. I was going to give birth via C-section. I had to get an epidural. It was a big needle and I was very nervous. Terry showed up right before my epidural. I felt so much better when he got there. I remember his large tan hands tenderly holding mine. It made all the difference in the world to me.

  On May 5, 1988, I gave birth to a ten-pound, eight-ounce beautiful and healthy baby girl. What? A girl? I was sure it was going to be a boy. She seemed as big as a two-year-old. Our daughter was adorable with the biggest and brightest eyes, a cute nose like a Smurf, and lungs like . . . well, a singer.

  The next challenge was for Terry and me to come up with a name for this angel. With our last name being Bollea, I wanted something simple. It was springtime and she was such a breath of fresh air that I called her Brooke. Her dad nicknamed her Brookeitini. I nicknamed her Brooklyn from when we lived in Connecticut so close to New York. The name fit her perfectly.

  Brooke was the most celebrated baby. I had so many flowers in the room from friends and fans who knew that Hulk Hogan was a new dad. It was clear that she was a daddy’s girl.

  Whatever has transpired in Terry’s life—divorce, injuries, whatever—I can bank on the fact that the best thing he ever did was have children. He loves his kids to death, and they have always been the apples of his eye. When Brooke was born, I think that having a daughter got Terry more in touch with the softer side of himself. One time when Brooke started to cry, nothing I could do would stop it, but as soon as Terry picked her up she immediately calmed down. He was gently patting her back when suddenly a man-sized belch came out of our baby girl. I had forgotten to burp her! He loved being a dad.

  Innocent Until Proven Guilty

  After Brooke’s arrival into the world, things seemed perfect between Terry and me. Even though he was traveling for work and couldn’t be involved with the family as much as I would’ve liked him to be, he was a great dad. I missed Terry, but I also understood Hulkamania was still hitting the world like a tidal wave, and our plan was to ride that wave.

  Terry had branched out into acting in movies, TV shows, and commercials. He often had to go on location for a lengthy time. On one particular job, he had been gone for almost a month, and I couldn’t wait to fly there and visit him. However, I was grounded in Florida until Brooke was old enough to fly.

  When Brooke turned four months old, we headed for the set. A car picked us up at the airport and took us to the location where Terry greeted us with a big hug. He took us on a tour of the set and introduced us to all of the people working alongside him.

  I really didn’t know much about the project Terry was working on or who his costars were. When he introduced me to one of the women on the set, I felt a strange vibe. I can’t explain it, but my husband was much more comfortable around everyone else on the film set except her. When we were in her presence, there was definitely a different energy.

  She was a tall, young, thin woman with black hair and fair skin—you know, one of those actresses who never went in the sun. When I met her, she was dressed in tight jeans and a white tank top with her nipples protruding evenly and upwardly. (I was nursing and mine were protruding unevenly and downwardly!) I had no reason to mistrust Terry, but I had that intuition and I can’t explain it. Think about it—a bunch of people on a set, stuck in a random city in a random hotel, bored and lonely. All of these people are away from their significant others—husbands or wives—on location for months at a time.

  As the stay-at-home spouse, you can’t escape the thought of it because you read something about men on the set being unfaithful in almost every tabloid. They say while the cat’s away the mice will play. Unless you have a devotion to honor the commitment that you made with your spouse, which I did. But I had my doubts about Terry. Maybe it was me being paranoid. Ma
ybe it was my woman’s intuition, but I couldn’t help how I felt.

  I can’t say anything happened because I had no proof of my suspicions. In fact, after I arrived home in Florida, I talked myself out of feeling the way I did. It’s the baby blues, I thought. I’m overweight, insecure, and my hormones are out of whack. Terry and I are different. He would never do something like that to me.

  As the wife of a wrestler I had to get used to some things. And as Terry’s career grew, and he became a worldwide celebrity and a household name, it became more difficult. It was constant work and travel. With national celebrity, there was a whole new level of learning, trust, and understanding that I had to have for my husband.

  I decided to let the whole negative thing go and be positive.

  I LOVED BEING WITH OUR BEAUTIFUL BABY IN OUR NEW HOME IN Clearwater, Florida. During this time, Terry and I spoke about having a second child. He explained that he wanted to wait. I was enjoying and getting used to my new role of mommy, so I was in no rush either.

  We all know what they say about the best-laid plans. I ended up forgetting to take my birth control pill on time. At first, I didn’t think that missing my pill would be a problem. It took so long to get pregnant with Brooke that I thought we were sure to wrestle a bit with conceiving Hogan baby number two. Plus, Terry was rarely home! Well, I thought wrong. When my period didn’t come for two months straight, I decided it was time to take a pregnancy test.