Inside Brooke Hogan & Dad Hulk Hogan's Complicated Relationship

Brooke Hogan Says Relationship With Dad Hulk Hogan Was Never Same After He Had Sex With Her Friend

Hulk Hogan's transformation in the ring from hero to heel 30 years ago utterly floored wrestling fans and revitalized his career.

His heel turn at home a decade later, however, caused a rift between him and his daughter, Brooke Hogan, that never really healed before his death in July 2025 at the age of 71.

Brooke revealed after her dad died that she had distanced herself from him months prior because of the "emotional toll" their "respectful disagreements" were taking on her while she was pregnant with her and husband Steven Oleksy's now-21-month-old twins, Molly and Oliver.

But she has since traced the moment that their dynamic took an irreversible turn to 2008, when Hulk (born Terry Bollea) slept with Christiane Plante, one of Brooke's best friends at the time.

"I forgive people very easily—sometimes probably too easily—and I forgave him, but something between us changed afterward," Brooke told Us Weekly in a recent interview. "I don’t think he ever related to me in quite the same way again.”

Linda filed for divorce in November 2007 after 24 years of marriage—and just a month after the family's reality series Hogan Knows Best concluded its four-season run on VH1.

Christiane, for her part, admitted to having a relationship with the wrestling legend, but only once Hulk and his wife Linda Hogan "privately knew their marriage was ending," she told the National Enquirer in February 2008. (Hulk's rep echoed that timeline, telling ABC News in 2009 that he only had the affair once his marriage was "irrevocably broken and over.")

She acknowledged hurting Brooke in the process, adding, "Having felt the guilt and pain build up, I gave a note to Brooke apologizing for my actions. I will never be able to fully forgive myself for this. I have lost an amazing friend.”

Hulk and Linda's split quickly turned into a messy case of who-did-what-when before their divorce was finalized in 2009.

But the six-time WWF (later WWE) champion—who subsequently remarried twice—also told Access Hollywood in August 2008 that the divorce had been Linda's idea, that despite their "problems over the last 10 years" he believed in "until death do us part."

He added, "As crazy as that sounds to say, I wish I was still with my wife."

Meanwhile, despite what it looked like from the outside, Hulk continued, “This is a simple divorce— there’s no custody, there’s just a big pile of junk that we’ve accumulated."

But Brooke's relationship with her family never entirely thawed out.

"It makes me sad," she told Distractify. "I mean my mom and I don't talk, which is kind of like our third stint of going and doing that, and it is sad. We haven't been able to have that breakthrough but I'm hopeful though for the future."

“I know in my heart I did everything I could,” she noted. “He knew I would run through a burning building for him.”

And when Brooke found out last September that she wasn't named in her dad's will, that Nick was his sole beneficiary, she said it came as "no surprise" to her.

"It's what I asked for, I stand by it with no regrets," she told TMZ. "My dad knows I'm a hard worker and I have been surviving without his money for a long, long time."

But they did spend time together in his final years, as after his father-in-law died Oleksy shared a touching carousel of images featuring Hulk, including a video of Molly seeing him on TV and saying "grandpa" and a photo that appeared to be from a Thanksgiving dinner.

Reflecting more recently on her bond with her dad, Brooke said there was a long time when he was an "excellent father."

“I can love my father profoundly," the "Goes Around" singer told Us Weekly, "and still tell the truth about where he hurt me. I can acknowledge the wonderful things my family gave me while also acknowledging that eventually the dynamic became something I could no longer live inside. Both things can be true.”

Read on to see the Hogan family during happier times together: