Hulk Hogan Net Worth at Death: $25M, the Will and the Estate

Hulk Hogan had a net worth of about $25 million when he died on July 24, 2025, at age 71, according to Celebrity Net Worth (checked September 2026). The single biggest reason he was not worth far more is that his fortune took two heavy hits: a 2009 divorce that handed his first wife most of the couple's cash, and a $140 million Gawker verdict that ended in a $31 million settlement before taxes. The figure you may have seen in headlines, about $5 million, is only what went through probate court, not everything he owned.

Where the money came from

Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, earned from five main sources over a career that ran from 1977 to 2025. None of his wrestling contracts were ever made public in full, so the sourced numbers below are fragments rather than a complete ledger.

Wrestling purses and contracts

Celebrity Net Worth lists a handful of known paydays: about $1 million each for WrestleMania V and WrestleMania VI, and about $150,000 for WrestleMania XIX in 2003. He headlined the first nine WrestleMania events, per the same profile. He also held the WCW World Heavyweight Championship six times after joining WCW in 1994 and led the New World Order storyline that drove WCW's ratings in the late 1990s, according to Wikipedia. Those were the years of his largest earnings, though no reliable outlet has published his WCW salary.

Film and television

His first movie role, as Thunderlips in Rocky III (1982), paid $15,000, per Celebrity Net Worth. That was followed by leading roles in No Holds Barred (1989), Suburban Commando (1991) and Mr. Nanny, the syndicated series Thunder in Paradise (1993–1995) and VH1's reality show Hogan Knows Best (2005–2007). No source we checked gives his fee for any of these.

Merchandise and licensing

His name and image were the most durable asset he had. Celebrity Net Worth counts 171 different Hogan action figures produced from the 1980s through the 2010s. The value of that brand shows up clearly in his estate: court papers filed by his son Nick put his intellectual property at $4 million, the largest single item in the probate inventory, as Us Weekly reported in January 2026.

The Gawker judgment

In March 2016 a Florida jury found Gawker liable for publishing part of a secretly recorded video of Hogan and awarded him $115 million, then added $25 million in punitive damages for a total of $140 million. Gawker went bankrupt, and in November 2016 the two sides settled for $31 million, according to Wikipedia and Celebrity Net Worth. Tech investor Peter Thiel later confirmed he had funded the lawsuit, which Celebrity Net Worth puts at about $10 million.

Restaurants, shops and beer

His businesses were a mixed record. Pastamania, a restaurant in the Mall of America, opened in 1995 and closed within a year. Hogan's Beach, a Tampa restaurant, opened on New Year's Eve 2012 and dropped his name in 2015; he then opened Hogan's Hangout in Clearwater Beach. He also opened a memorabilia store in Orlando in 2017 and a second one in New York City in 2024, per Wikipedia. His last venture was Real American Beer, which he launched with investors in 2024 and promoted at WWE's first Raw on Netflix in January 2025.

Career timeline

The 2015 firing matters to the money story. Wikipedia notes the leaked recording badly hurt his public image, and it cost him his WWE deal and a Hall of Fame spot for three years at a point when legends earn most of their income from appearances and licensing.

Hogan's estate and will (2025–2026)

This is where most of the recent interest in his money comes from, and where the numbers are easiest to misread.

What the probate filing showed

About six weeks after his death, Nick Hogan asked a Florida court to name him co-personal representative of the estate, and the court agreed, Realtor.com reported. The filings listed roughly $200,000 in cryptocurrency, $799,000 in personal property and $4 million in intellectual property, per Us Weekly. That totals about $5 million.

That is not his net worth. Celebrity Net Worth notes that much of his wealth, including Clearwater real estate it values at about $11 million, sat in trusts and LLCs that never appear in probate. Realtor.com reports that the two Clearwater homes are still registered to an LLC linked to Hogan and his second wife, Jennifer McDaniel.

Who inherits Hulk Hogan's money

His son Nick is the sole beneficiary named in the will. His widow, Sky Daily, is listed as surviving spouse but not as a beneficiary, according to Wrestlezone via AOL. Hogan first drafted a will in 2016, amended it in 2017, 2021 and 2022, and signed the final version in July 2023, per Us Weekly.

His daughter, Brooke Hogan, is not in the will. She asked her father's financial manager to remove her, citing fear of a family fight over the money, as two law professors described in a piece for The Conversation republished by Yahoo. In April 2026 she told the Hollywood Raw podcast she now regrets that choice because it left her with no say in decisions about the estate, per Wrestlezone.

Claims against the estate

• Carma HoldCo: On January 20, 2026, the licensing company filed a $10 million claim against the estate in Florida. It had already sued Real American Beer in July 2025, claiming former employees took its beer idea to Hogan. The beer company denied all wrongdoing, and the case was ongoing as of Us Weekly's report.
• JPMorgan Chase: filed a claim for $12,574.61 in November 2025, which was paid and released in January 2026, per Us Weekly.
• Possible malpractice suit: Sky Daily and Nick Hogan listed a potential medical malpractice claim over neck surgery Hogan had months before his death. No lawsuit had been reported as filed when we checked.

Assets: the Clearwater homes

Hogan's best-known house was the 17,000-square-foot Belleair mansion he built after buying the land for $2 million in 1992. He listed it for $26 million in 2006 and finally sold it for $6.2 million in April 2012, per Celebrity Net Worth.

That month he bought a Gulf-front home in Clearwater Beach for $3.33 million, and in 2016 he added the smaller house next door for $1.6 million, according to Realtor.com (Us Weekly gave $2.5 million for the second purchase; the sources disagree). After his death:

• The main house was listed on January 30, 2026, at $10.98 million, then cut to $8.99 million, $7.9 million in June and $6.9 million in September 2026, per Realtor.com.
• The cottage next door was listed at $4.5 million on March 30, 2026, and cut to $3.9 million on June 6.

Neither home had sold as of early September 2026. If the main house sells near its current asking price, the compound will fetch well under the $11 million value that Celebrity Net Worth and Us Weekly attached to it.

What the divorce cost him

Linda Hogan filed for divorce in 2007, and filings at the time put Hogan's net worth at $30 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Under the final settlement she received about 70% of the couple's liquid assets, or $7.44 million of the $10.41 million in their bank and investment accounts, plus $3 million in cash for property and a 40% stake in his businesses. She did not receive alimony. Hogan said in a 2011 radio interview that the divorce left him near bankruptcy, per the same source.

Celebrity Net Worth also reports that Hogan said he had been the first choice to endorse the grill that became the George Foreman Grill but picked a meatball maker instead. That grill went on to earn George Foreman far more than he ever made from boxing.

Net worth compared

Cena is the clearest comparison: another WWE headliner, but one whose Hollywood career kept growing after wrestling instead of stalling. Tyson's story is closer to Hogan's, with a huge peak in earnings, heavy losses and a late rebuild.

Why estimates differ

• Probate vs. net worth. The $5 million figure covers only assets that passed through the court. Real estate and business interests held in LLCs and trusts sit outside it.
• Real estate values are moving. The Clearwater main house has dropped from $10.98 million to $6.9 million in asking price in eight months, so any estimate that counted it at $11 million is now high.
• Taxes on the Gawker money. The $31 million settlement was a pre-tax figure, and legal costs came out of it too. How much Hogan kept has never been reported.
• Private contracts. WWE and WCW never disclosed his full pay, so career-earnings totals online (Celebrity Net Worth's own table sums only $2.2 million of known paydays) leave out most of what he made.

Our figure follows Celebrity Net Worth's $25 million estimate, which several outlets including AOL repeated after his death. Treat it as a rough estimate of his total holdings at death, not a count of what his heir will receive once claims, taxes and property sales are settled.