Brooke Hogan said she was not invited to any of the WWE tributes to her late father, Hulk Hogan.
Brooke, 37, responded to critics who blasted her for missing WWE Raw on Monday, July 28, while her brother, Nick Hogan, was in attendance. She was also not present for the 10-bell salute at WWE Smackdown the previous Friday, held in Hulk’s honor.
“For those of you giving me crap for not attending my dad’s tributes, @WWE did not extend an invite,” she wrote via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, July 30.
Brooke and her father, who died last Thursday at age 71 after suffering cardiac arrest at his Florida home, shared a complicated relationship. She later said she had to “step away to protect my heart.” Nevertheless, she shared a heartfelt post via Instagram days after his death.
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“My dad’s blood runs through my veins,” she wrote on Tuesday, July 29. “His eyes shine through my children. And our bond has never broken, not even in his final moments. We had a connection deeper than words, one that spanned lifetimes. I am so grateful that I knew the real version of him. Not just the one the world viewed through a carefully curated lens. We shared a quiet, sacred bond, one that could be seen and felt by anyone who witnessed us together.”
“When he left this earth, it felt like part of my spirit left with him,” she continued. “I felt it before the news even reached us.”
In the post, Brooke also accused the media of “convoluting the narrative” around their relationship, explaining that the two never fought. She said there was a series of private phone calls that “no one will ever know, hear or understand” that brought them closer together as she implored Hulk to take better care of himself. She and her husband, Steve Oleksy, even moved to Florida to be closer to him before, suddenly, he no longer wanted her at his surgeries.
“Everything started getting covered in a thick veil,” she wrote. “It was like there was a force field around him that I couldn’t get through.”
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Hulk, for his part, “doesn’t specifically know why Brooke won’t speak to him,” a source told Us Weekly exclusively in March.
Brooke also shared a video slideshow to her page of moments the two shared together, from when she was a baby, through to adulthood.
“Our bond is eternal,” she wrote in the caption. “That truth brings me comfort and hope, even in your absence.”
