Michael Rapaport is now backtracking following his video posted earlier this week defending Hulk Hogan.
After Hulk Hogan’s passing, his past racist remarks resurfaced online, but Rapaport said he did not know about Hogan’s use of the n-word.
“When I did my now-controversial Hulk Hogan video two hours after he passed, right after he passed, I saw all of this derogatory stuff about his association with Trump. And I said in the video, what we’re not going to do is disrespect somebody who brought so much joy to the world. In the video, I also said he was involved with some controversy and I wasn’t aware of it,” Rapaport said in a video posted to his Instagram account.
He continued, “I’m not a Hulk Hogan ‘superfan.’ I’m not a wrestling head, I’m not a Hulk Hogan documentarian. I don’t know everything about the life and times of Hulk Hogan. I was not aware at the time, from the bottom of my heart, that he was involved with that racial controversy, the N-word controversy.”
In 2015, a leaked recording from 2007 revealed the wrestling icon using racist slurs during a private conversation. The revelation led WWE to remove him from its Hall of Fame.
Hogan publicly apologized, and in 2018, he was reinstated by WWE.
“Obviously, if I knew that at the time, I wouldn’t have done the video, or my video would have been a lot different. I have openly condemned racism, sexism, anti-semitism, all of that on this platform with my face on wax, have you?” Rapaport added. “I have spoken out loud and proud since this platform came into existence about George Floyd, ‘I can’t breathe,’ Charlottesville, LGBTQ, women’s rights, every single person’s rights with my face on wax over an over again. Again, I did not know about the remarks Hulk Hogan made. I don’t fact-check these videos that a lot of time people love and repost,” he added. “I even called his 24-inch pythons ‘18-inch pythons’; I clearly didn’t do any research.”