Brooke Hogan is done letting strangers tell her how she should mourn her father. One year after Hulk Hogan’s death, she posted a heated Instagram video defending the boundaries she set before he died and blasting fans who think they know what really happened inside their family.
The video came on July 24, 2026, as Nick Hogan shared an emotional tribute calling Hulk his best friend, mentor and hero. Brooke took a much different route, making it clear that her relationship with her father was complicated—and nobody watching from the outside has the right to judge it.
“I can’t believe I even have to make a post reminding human beings how to be human. I am receiving so much judgment over my—not yours—my relationship with my father. Not my brother’s relationship with my father. Not my mother’s relationship with my father. Everybody does not know exactly what I went through with that man.”
Brooke said fans may have seen some of their problems play out publicly, but insisted the private damage went much deeper. She also pushed back on the idea that drawing a line with her father meant she stopped loving him.
“Two things can exist at once. You can take a trip down memory lane on Google and see what he and I went through publicly, and imagine the damage it did privately, along with other things I’ve never spoken about. I am allowed to be very hurt and very allowed to draw boundaries. I am also allowed to mourn and miss. I have cried every day since he died. Every day.”
She then went after fans questioning her grief, pointing to the toll the past year has taken on her and saying she has been doing everything possible just to hold herself together.
“The bags in my eyes, the tiredness—this is grief. I’m doing everything I can to hold it together as a human being, and you guys have the balls to judge. It’s not me digging my heels in. It’s not ego. What we went through was something that might never be explained and something I could not go back into.”
Brooke also made it clear that she was there for Hulk during some of the hardest years of his life. She said she spent years flying to be by his side during surgeries, even while waiting tables and paying her own way.
“I had a very real relationship with my dad. I spent 15 years with his second wife, Jennifer, at every surgery, flying down on my own dime while I was waiting tables. I loved—I love my dad. I miss him terribly. Me and him were so tight. We were thick as thieves. But somewhere I lost him along the way, and I kept losing him, and he kept losing himself.”
According to Brooke, she became the person everyone expected to fix every problem until she finally could not do it anymore. By that point, she was married, pregnant with twins and later recovering from a difficult C-section.
“I was the one who reached into the pit and said, ‘Let me help you.’ I was the fixer. ‘Fix it, Brooke. Fix it, Brooke. You fix it, Brooke.’ How about no? You fix it. I couldn’t keep fixing it.”
She also revealed that her husband tried to give Hulk a chance to meet their children, but hinted that her father may not have had control of his phone at the time.
“My husband asked my dad if he wanted to meet our kids. I don’t even know if my dad had his phone, let’s put it that way.”
Brooke closed by saying she does not need to perform her pain for social media or pretend their relationship was perfect. Despite everything that happened, she said her love for her father never disappeared.
“I don’t have to put on a show. I don’t have to pretend. Liars need good memories. Make of it what you want, but I loved my dad beyond. I think he knew it too, and I think he knew it at the end.”
Brooke Hogan is not asking fans to approve of every decision she made. She is telling them to stop pretending they lived through a relationship they only saw pieces of on television and social media.
Do you think Brooke Hogan was right to fire back at fans judging how she mourned Hulk Hogan? Leave your feedback in the comments.
