8 Things We've Learned From The Hulk Hogan Racism Controversy

5. WWE's Past Will Continue To Haunt Them

As much as WWE is trying to rebrand itself as family friendly entertainment that exists just to 'put smiles on faces', the company's past continues to come back and haunt them. When Linda McMahon ran for the senate in 2008 and 2012, her competition had countless hours of damning material to use against her. They aired the 'Trish barks like a dog' segment from 2001 and questioned why there was a skit that showed her son-in-law having sex with a corpse. The fact is, you could write a book on WWE's murky past and all of the sexist, racist and other questionable material that they've broadcast on their TV shows and PPV. So once Hulk Hogan's racist rant became public knowledge, news outlets didn't have to look far for footage of WWE's owner uttering a racist epithet. Sites such as TMZ shared a clip of Vince McMahon uttering the N word to John Cena during a backstage segment in 2005. Although it was done in a satirical manner (the camera cut to African American wrestler Booker T after McMahon's faux-pas), WWE were still moved to release a statement clarifying the content, once the video became widely shared on social media. WWE must deeply regret a lot of the stuff that they aired on their programmes, regardless of how popular it was at the time.