Critics often enjoy pointing out that the matches in Hulk Hogan’s vibrant professional wrestling career weren’t exactly authentic. However, no one could make the same claim about the conflicts within his own family.

Shocking and severely damaging allegations of parental abuse, repeated infidelity, and domestic violence have been thrown around so often that, when the WWE legend and movie star passed away last month at the age of 71, it wasn’t entirely unexpected that his only daughter, Brooke, chose not to attend his funeral, opting instead to spend the day at the beach.

She claimed it was how her father would have preferred it, although it’s unclear how she would know this, considering she had been completely estranged from him since he married his third wife, Sky Daily, in 2023.

On Wednesday, Brooke, a mother of two with her hockey player husband, Steven Olesky, and a child from Hogan’s first marriage, posted on Instagram. She claimed she had received ‘100% legitimate calls from professionals – including police officers and nurses allegedly with my dad on the day he died, telling ME I need to see body cam footage.’

To clarify, the official account of his death states that the star, whose real name was Terry Bollea, passed away on July 24, after suffering a heart attack at his residence in Clearwater, Florida.

Hogan suffered from both atrial fibrillation (an irregular heart rhythm) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia – a cancer of the blood and bone marrow – and police said at the time that foul play was not suspected.

But according to Brooke, she has been told, ‘I need to get a hold of the 911 tapes because they supposedly contain information that could potentially shed enough light to change the narrative, we/l/everyone’s been hearing.’

She continued: ‘Those same professionals feel so passionately about what they witnessed, they have continued to contact me and push me to find specific answers to this very day. They are quite literally putting their careers at risk because they feel so compelled to do the right thing.’

She provided no further details but insisted she had ‘zero control,’ that her ‘hands are tied’ as it was ‘all up to my dad’s wife’.

She went on: ‘I do not have any information on if or when he is being cremated. Could have been right after he died, could be tomorrow. I do not know.’

Her younger brother, Nick, 35, she said, ‘who is boots on the ground with everything’, had told her there will be an autopsy on their father but, even if she was privy to the results, she wouldn’t be sharing them ‘out of respect for my father.’

According to Hogan’s widow, Sky, 46, an autopsy has been performed but no cremation has yet taken place.

However, just as online commenters were lining up to dismiss Brooke’s latest diatribe as a pathetic cry for attention, it emerged that there is an ongoing police investigation into the former wrestler’s death.

On Thursday, TMZ reported that an occupational therapist, who was present at Hogan’s home on the day he died, told police officers that he had been the victim of medical malpractice.

The therapist said that during a recent operation – either surgery to repair his heart or a neck fusion procedure which he underwent in May – the surgeon ‘severed’ his phrenic nerve, which runs from the neck to the diaphragm and controls breathing.

Sources reportedly claimed that Hogan’s heart attack wasn’t preceded by any chest pain but that he simply stopped breathing. TMZ said a conversation about the matter was recorded on a police body cam.

Clearwater Police issued a statement later on Thursday saying, ‘We have been in communication with family members – including his son, Nick, and daughter, Brooke.

‘The unique nature of this case has required us to interview multiple witnesses and seek medical records from a variety of providers, and our detectives continue to do that. All of this takes time.’

Hogan’s sudden passing was made all the more shocking by the fact that it came just days after Sky’s very public assertions that concerns about her husband’s health were unwarranted.

As rumors circulated – including the suggestion that Hogan was in a coma following his May surgery – Sky stepped forward to quash them.

Writing on her Instagram story on July 18 she insisted, ‘No he’s not in a coma! His heart is strong, and there was never any lack of oxygen or brain damage. None of those rumors are true.’

She has now, however, confirmed that Hogan’s phrenic nerve was ‘compromised’ by his surgery.

A source told the Daily Mail: ‘Brooke’s tired of being looked at as the crazy one through all of this but she doesn’t want to be ignored anymore, she wants everyone to get in line and get the 100 percent right answers on how her father died, if it was malpractice, natural or somewhere in between.

‘And if things continue to go astray, then Brooke isn’t afraid to have a showdown with Sky and family to force what she wants to happen.’

The potential for an outbreak of new hostilities among Hogan’s family – this time quite literally over his dead body – would be sad but entirely in keeping with a supremely dysfunctional clan.

Hogan was married to his first wife, Linda, for 26 years, appearing alongside her and their children, Nick and Brooke, in four seasons of a reality TV series, Hogan Knows Best, during the aughts.

But the show, along with his attempts to portray himself as a wholesome family guy, was spectacularly derailed in 2007 when Linda filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized two years later.

By then it had emerged that Hogan had been cheating on Linda with Brooke’s best friend, Christiane Plante.

Brooke described it as a double betrayal and the seeds were laid for a long-lasting rift between father and daughter.

Hogan claimed he’d been so upset with Linda, now 65, leaving him, that he considered committing suicide.

However, he didn’t sound so distraught two years later when, in a memoir, he accused his ex-wife – by then aged 48 and dating 19-year-old Charley Hill – of threatening to beat their son Nick with a wine bottle. Linda denied the claims. 

At one time a wannabe pop star, Brooke also took a swipe at her mother’s toy boy in a 2009 song, Dear Mom, written during her abortive music career. In it she described her mother, ‘smoking all her cares away and having a playdate.’

Next, it was Linda’s turn to land a punch, in her 2012 memoir, Wrestling The Hulk. She claimed that Hogan was not only serially unfaithful but prone to drug-fueled rages so fierce that they left her in fear for her life.

Perhaps even more shockingly, she claimed Hogan had a sexual relationship with his fellow WWE star Brutus Beefcake – a charge both men denied.

Hogan sued for defamation over both her abuse and gay sex claims only for the lawsuit to be dismissed.

By then, Hogan had other worries as, that same year, media website Gawker published a clip of a video of him having sex with the wife of his then best friend, radio host Bubba the Love Sponge.

Hogan claimed that Bubba had given his blessing to the relationship which took place when his marriage to Linda was, ‘really screwed up bad.’ But he said he was unaware the encounter was being filmed.

More damaging than being caught in flagrante delicto with his friend’s wife was the fact that the footage captured Hogan using racial slurs in a rant about his daughter Brooke going out with a black man.

He was temporarily kicked out of the WWE Hall of Fame and, though he went on an apology tour, his reputation never really recovered.

Brooke defended her father, insisting he wasn’t a racist, but there was otherwise clearly little love between them.

In March this year, Linda lit the touchpaper for yet more family fireworks when she released a tearful video on social media in which she called her family the ‘worst mess’ and revealed her daughter wasn’t talking to either parent.

Brooke, who gave birth to twins at the start of the year, took to Instagram in response and claimed she had been ‘mentally and verbally abused since childhood’, abuse which at times turned physical.

She didn’t say who had abused her, but Linda denied that she had ever done so and returned fire, claiming that Brooke – who she branded a ‘narcissist’ – had assaulted her, once being so drunk on vodka she broke her collarbone and cut her lip.

Brooke, who stressed that she had entirely separate reasons for cutting contact with her mother and father, denied the allegation.

Speaking after her father’s death she said, ‘We never had a ‘big fight’. My father and I never ‘fought.’

‘It was a series of private phone calls no one will ever hear, know, or understand.’

And while professional wrestlers famously pull their punches, the Hogan family’s slugathon looks set to continue drawing blood.

Because, as one insider told the Daily Mail, Brooke’s public reticence may not last. The source said, ‘Brooke has a lot of receipts, she doesn’t want to make it public, but she will if she is being played and toyed.’