This.
There's no equivalency in wrestling to what Hoegan got on tape saying. None. It wasn't kayfabe. It wasn't racist talk in the locker room. It wasn't an ill-advised gimmick from Russo. This was his honest thoughts laid up with another man's wife.
This was his idea of pillow talk.
Exacerbated by the fact that his open racism being exposed was turned around and used to make him richer than he was before the event occurred.
He was
rewarded by the system for getting caught being a piece of shyt.
When has that ever gone that way for someone with melanin? Not never. His lack of repercussion for what he did was effectively compounding the racism - the subtext of 'I get to do this and you can't even punish me for it' was worse than the bullshyt he said.
If the public doesn't reject him openly, what does
anyone learn from this but that they can say whatever they want about us, get caught and it not only won't hurt them, but might actually help their lives?
Trying to whataboutism this is suspect as fukk. And trying to dirty the hands of everyone else because Hoegan was dirtied doesn't make the industry cleaner and doesn't help anyone.
fukk that leatherskinned piece of shyt, his drunk-driving ain't-learned-shyt son, and his bug-eyed, cultural-appropriating daughter he desperately wants to fukk. Whole reason that shyt happened was latent rage that some black dude was running through that and he don't get to.
It's 2023 and folk tryna write Hulk Hogan redemption thinkpieces on a fukking hip-hop forum