3 Ups & 5 Downs From Hulk Hogan: Real American (Review)

By Terry Bezer / April 23, 2026

Real American is a 4-episode documentary that attempts to tell the definitive story of Hulk Hogan, with contributions from most of the major players from his life, both in and out of the ring. Produced by the WWE-affiliated Netflix, it is sure to be one of the biggest wrestling documentaries ever produced that will provide fans with talking points for years to come.

Given the incredible highs and unforgettable low points of Hogan's career in his career and his private life, there is an eye-watering amount to be covered in Real American. While it leaves few stones unturned, there is undeniably a bias on display and an agenda to restore the reputation of one of wrestling's biggest ever names in the wake of his passing in 2025.

How good a job does it do in covering the life and controversies of Terry Bollea and selling the legacy of Hulk Hogan? Come with us on the Ups and Downs of Real American to find out.

UPS

Nostalgia Is A Hell Of A Drug

As wrestling fans, we are willingly blinded by nostalgia. When done correctly, the magic moments that happen in the squared circle literally stay with the audience for a lifetime, and Hulk Hogan has more of them than 99% of performers.

Real American has Hogan saying, “some people hate me, but I’m definitely the greatest wrestler of all time” in its opening minutes. While that is stretching perception to a laughable extent, this series does a wonderful job of selling Hogan’s greatest moments. The coverage of him leading the charge of promotion for the first WrestleMania, body slamming Andre the Giant at WrestleMania 3, and particularly when showing the enormity of his 2002 WWE comeback, is all fantastic.

Sure, there’s still some trademark Hulk-tinted bias that gets in the way. The pile-on about The Ultimate Warrior’s lack of skills cheapens the magnitude of WrestleMania 6’s main event, and the tone deaf madness of Hogan likening Hulkamania’s success to the cultural significance of World Wars 1 and 2 is bananas. Nevertheless, you’d have to be made of stone not to fall into warm and fuzzy feelings reliving some of The Hulkster’s finest hours.

Hogan’s Contribution To Wrestling Is Undeniable

The accepted history of the growth of the WWE is that Vince McMahon's decision to go national, in spite of the gentleman’s agreement of the territories, made the promotion the global force it is today. This is entirely possible, but it’s undeniable that Hogan was the secret sauce that took wrestling to the promised land. Love him or loathe him, without Hulk Hogan’s entertainment savvy mindset, look, and marketing, wrestling as we know it might never have reached where it is today.

Hogan’s decision to film his part in Rocky 3, despite Vince McMahon Snr’s decision to fire him for doing so, is covered excellently here. It’s true that Thunder Lips destroying Rocky in that movie sold Hogan himself as a larger-than-life superstar, but it also exposed the world to the concept of professional wrestling as we know it (with Hulk as the poster child of the art form, naturally).

In episode 2, some of the biggest names to ever enter WWE all unanimously admit that Hogan was the reason that they made substantial money and achieved their goals as a roster. For all of his many, many faults, his immeasurable contribution to creating the global industry that wrestling has become cannot be diluted.

The Doc Is At Its Best When Going For The Jugular

The whole reason that Hogan’s legacy has been jeopardized is because he is a very flawed human with questionable morals.

Hogan is a cultural icon bigger than wrestling itself, so not everyone knows his backstage politicking is such a source of anger for fans. The documentary’s best moment comes when addressing these criticisms head-on. Watching Hogan openly admit to sabotaging Bret Hart becoming WWE champion at WrestleMania 9 is one of the few moments when Real American feels like a genuine documentary and not a puff piece. Hulk admits to being in the ears of all the decision makers about how Bret wasn’t the right guy, and even in his interview footage, compares Bret to “seeing a movie that you thought would be better than it was”.

As always, Bret Hart is pure gold through his “no BS” approach in these documentaries. As well as saying he knew more about wrestling when they met in the Georgia territories than Hogan did in his whole life, Hart calling Hogan a “backstabbing, knife-wielding piece of shit” for purposefully derailing his career is comfortably the best moment in this series. More of this kind of honest approach to Hogan’s life story would have made Real American a much better documentary.

DOWNS

Hogan Sabotages His Own Documentary

If the aim of this piece is for Hogan to receive forgiveness for his social crimes, Hulk himself continues to be the biggest obstacle to achieving that.

Instead of owning up to things, he constantly attempts to weasel his way out of them. Hogan’s leg drops are blamed for his immobility in later life, more than his admitted steroid use. He blames the journalist for covering Hulk declaring that he "understood OJ Simpson murdering someone" in the aftermath of his divorce, rather than admitting this is not something he should think privately, let alone say publicly in an interview with Rolling Stone. After admitting to ruining Bret Hart’s WrestleMania 9 coronation, he makes excuses when faced with the accusation of refusing Bret Hart’s handshake on the day of the event.

In Real American’s most emotional story beat, Hogan tells a story about lending his estranged brother money, which he then used to buy drugs and consequently overdosed. It is a gut wrenching moment where it’s easy to feel for Hogan, and one of the few times we see him emote for somebody other than himself. Instead of allowing himself to be vulnerable, Hogan shuts down the interview and refuses to get personal when the filmmakers begin to ask about the impact this had on himself and his family.

This kind of behavior and dated concept of how to protect his public image means Hogan continually botches his attempts to make himself seem more human and relatable.

Vince McMahon Is Featured Half-Heartedly

It’s a curious choice to feature the voice of Vince McMahon at various points in this documentary with what are clearly newer interviews, yet he is never featured onscreen. This is for obvious reasons, but when the documentary is happy to parade Donald Trump as a close friend of Hogan’s in front of the camera, hiding Vince McMahon feels like a pointless endeavor when both of these men are accused of similar disgraceful acts.

Real American would have been a much better documentary with more involvement from the disgraced billionaire. When talking about Vince McMahon’s decision to fire him in the mid-90's, Hogan has the gall to go with the “but I thought we were friends..” defence, directly after admitting to stabbing his "friend" Bret Hart in the back. This section really required hearing what Vince had to say on the matter in greater detail to have real value.

Hogan would also later gloat about his Hollywood Hogan run showed Vince that he was wrong to fire him. Leaving aside that his red and yellow WCW run went terribly, entirely justifying McMahon’s decision to rebuild WWE without him, who is to say Hogan wouldn’t have tried to use his political stroke to assassinate Steve Austin, The Rock, and Triple H to ruin the most popular period in the history of WWE in the same way he did Bret Hart in 1993 and future legends like Rey Mysterio and Chris Jericho during his time in WCW? This question deserved to be asked, and the only answer you could get on this would be from McMahon.

Hogan Knows Best Is Scapegoated For His Divorce

The portion of Real American that focuses on the Hogan Knows Best reality show fraudulently scapegoats the program for being the reason Hogan's family fell apart. The idea that the show was made purely to give Hulk’s family better opportunities also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Hulk can’t sell himself as a savvy businessman who uses every tool he can to keep himself at the forefront of entertainment, and ignore that he did this show at a time that his in-ring career was winding down, and when celebrity-based reality shows like The Osbournes and Jessica Simpson’s Newlyweds were all the rage.

The coverage of the show is used to paint Linda Hogan as a money-grabbing leech and his kids as fame-hungry brats. It feels like a smokescreen of justification for Hogan being caught having sex with one of his daughter’s friends, when the focus should have been on that incident’s impact on his life and public reputation. That there is more coverage of Linda’s post-divorce relationship with a 25-year-old friend of their son Nick’s than Hogan's adulterous behavior that ended their family unit is a scandalously transparent attempt to suggest Linda was as culpable as Hogan himself.

Again, this feels like blame shifting and spin instead of addressing the real issue.

Real American Is Pure PR

Real American has a clear aim and that is to restore the legacy of Hulk Hogan. It uses cheap parlour tricks to attempt to sway the audience. It is the anti-Dark Side Of The Ring. Upbeat rock music and playful classical are employed throughout Real American in an attempt to lower the senses and warm the audience to Hogan.

Then there are the narratives that are pushed; Linda Hogan’s tales of romance and a whirlwind love story paint Hulk in a favorable light. Showing Hogan meeting Make-A-Wish children and fans with health complications, attempts to sell Hogan as a compassionate man. Jimmy Hart has a spin for everything, always casting Hogan in an angelic light every time he opens his Mouth From the South. A lot of footage in Real American shows Hogan as a fragile old man. Whether it’s creaking in his home gym or looking back through his belongings, memorabilia, and diaries, it’s all designed towards painting Hogan in a light that lowers the audience’s defences.

All of the above is designed to provide a side of Hogan that’s the counterargument to fans who remain firm in their rejection of Hulk in the wake of his racism and political leanings. Some moments address his failings, but this documentary really feels like a piece of pro-Hulk Hogan propaganda, more than a serious exposé of Hogan’s entire story.

Hogan’s Actions Will Continue To Define Him As Much As His Wrestling

The most galling thing about Hulk Hogan being caught making racist remarks is how badly he interprets what he did wrong. Hogan is happy to suggest that he got caught "using a bad word" and was dragged over it further because he “couldn’t keep his mouth shut”. It’s gross that he suggests that being caught using a slur was the problem, when the world has told him that not only should he not have used that slur, but the views that he expressed about his daughter dating a black person were inexcusable.

Real American doesn’t have the balls to tell the audience what he said directly. It’s yet another attempt to cover up why fans refuse to forgive Hulk Hogan, and in shirking this responsibility, it will do absolutely nothing to change public opinion on who Hulk Hogan is. After half-heartedly covering how he was caught in his racism scandal, Real American then uses jaunty piano music to introduce Hogan meeting his second wife, introduces a nauseating and unconvincing story of him finding religion, him being reinstated to the WWE Hall Of Fame, and meeting a disabled Hogan fanatic. It attempts to show that he’s a better man than reality suggests and fails spectacularly.

The following section on him endorsing Donald Trump as something that “jeopardized his fan base” is, again, lies and spin. People had already labeled him a racist and a bigot, and the reality of jumping on Trump’s train is that it was a desperate attempt to appease the only audience who might still support him and his lifestyle.

There is a suggestion that Hogan was booed on Raw’s Netflix debut "because LA has its own vibe". This is laughable. It’s impossible to imagine his reception would have been any different in a landscape removed from US politics, such as the UK. People were booing Hulk Hogan for his actions, not because of geographical bias. To suggest this incident was merely a regional representation of Hogan’s popularity is insulting to fans around the world who have denounced him as a consequence of his actions, something that is thankfully addressed by Booker T, Cody Rhodes, and Natalya Hart.

For all the great memories and matches and moments Hogan has given fans, and his enormous contributions towards creating the world that fans love so much, Real American’s putrid and feeble coverage of his racism only shines further light on why fans refuse to forgive Terry Bollea. Today’s media-savvy audience will not be swayed by this documentary's tone. The filmmakers and Hogan himself had the perfect platform to atone for his sins with an honest appraisal of all of the situations that led to his reputation being tarnished. Both failed to do so in dismal fashion.