Hulk Hogan stands at the lecturn of the Republican National Convention, the summer of 2024. Donald Trump had been shot at a week earlier, he wears an oversized square bandage on his ear. Trump stands in the audience, applauding and pointing every time Hogan says that Trump is “my hero,” which he says a lot. Hogan’s got the audience right where he wants them, cheering and chanting as he runs through a script that paints him at his 1980s best, despite the fact that he can’t stand up straight anymore, his walk reduced to a shuffle. It’s all “dude” and “brother” and “real Americans.” He references the Macho Man Randy Savage and Andre the Giant. He’s wearing a sportcoat over a T-shirt with a picture of himself on it. At the climax of the speech, the sportcoat comes off, he take ahold of the neck of the T and he rips it clean in two, revealing a Trump/Vance shirt underneath. One year later, almost to the day, Hulk Hogan was dead.

Hulk Hogan stands next to his lawyer, dressed in all black with a black bandana covering the ample bald spot on his head. It’s March 18, 2016 and they’re on the steps of the Pinellas County Courthouse in Florida. Hogan doesn’t speak at all, squinting in the sunlight. Moments before, he was awarded $115 million in a lawsuit he’d filed against Gawker, the hard-charging news and gossip website, over their publication of a sex tape featuring Hogan and his best friend’s wife. Soon, that number would swell to $140 million, an amount that would send Gawker into bankruptcy. Ten days later, it was revealed that the lawsuit was funded by Peter Thiel, a then mostly-unknown startup billionaire who had been on a secret vendetta against Gawker ever since they wrote a story in 2007 that outed him as gay. Thiel spent $10 million on the lawsuit. He told the New York Times “it’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence.” Thiel has since spent millions on conservative causes and candidates. He spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He did not rip off his shirt.

Everything is silver and black, the distinctive hue of an infrared camera. Hulk Hogan sits on the edge of a canopy bed. Blurry in the bed is the wife of his then-best friend. It’s 2006, Hogan is getting divorced. His friend, a Tampa radio shock jock who goes by the name Bubba the Love Sponge, invites him to sleep with his wife. He doesn’t know that Bubba is taping him. He does more talking than anything else. He rants about his daughter Brooke dating a black man. It’s shockingly ugly, filled with the n-word. Over and over again. “I guess we’re all a little racist,” he says in the midst of it. They have sex. Six years later, the tape leaks. Gawker publishes a two-minute excerpt. Everything is silver and black.

Trash rains down on the wrestling ring. Hulk Hogan stands in the center, arms up, hands clasped with Kevin Nash on one side and Scott Hall on the other. It’s the culmination of a storyline that has been building for months. Hall and Nash, known as “The Outsiders,” had recently left the World Wrestling Federation to join their biggest rivals, World Championship Wrestling and had been running roughshod over the WCW roster. For weeks they’d been teasing that they’d be joined by a “third man,” at WCW’s July 1996 pay-per-view, Bash at the Beach. That third man turned out to be Hogan, who ran out as if he was saving his former best friend Macho Man Randy Savage before doing his signature Atomic Leg Drop on Savage and clasping hands with Hall and Nash. They became known as the New World Order. Wrestling was never the same after that point.

Hulk Hogan sits in the witness stand, dressed in a dark suit. It’s July 1994 and he’s quietly answering questions from federal prosecutor Sean O'Shea. Hogan is a witness in the government’s case against Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWF, for illegally providing steroids to his wrestlers. Hogan used to tell kids to say their prayers and take their vitamins and today he revealed that for 14 years he had been injecting himself with steroids. He picked them up at the WWF headquarters “along with my paycheck, fan mail or whatever.” The government's case seems solid. Hogan is the star attraction. Except. He testifies that he was never told by Vince to take steroids. McMahon is found not guilty. 30 years later, Vince’s wife Linda would become the US Secretary of Education.

93,000 people. It’s the largest crowd anyone had ever wrestled in front of. Wrestlemania III, Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant. March 29, 1987. The audience is huge and it is electric and here for this match. When Hogan is announced, the crowd explodes in unison. He struts down the aisle to “Real American,” his theme music. “I am a real American / Fight for the rights of every man / I am a real American / Fight for what’s right, fight for your life.” He points to the crowd, raises his hand to his ear. He climbs in the ring and reaches for his yellow Hulkamania T, grabs with both hands and rips. The bell rings. Slowly he approaches Andre the Giant who stands stoically in the center of the ring. They stand chest to chest, Hogan looking up at Andre who towers above him. They stare at each other. They stare forward into history. They stare info infamy, forever.