MM:Is raising kids harder than wrestling?

HH:If it was me alone, I’d say yeah. But my wife, Linda, she’s pretty calm about everything. She’s more aware than me. I’ve been kicked in the head too much.

MM:Can your kids play you pretty well?

HH:Yeah, they’ll ask me something that’s totally screwed up, then tell my wife, ‘Well, Dad said we could do it.’ It gets me in a lot of trouble. I’m more liberal than my wife. But there are certain lines you don’t cross.

MM:Oh? Like what?

HH:My son trying to sneak girls in the house when he was only 14 years old. I encouraged him to chase the girls, but when he hooked ’em I had to say, ‘Wait a minute, you can’t be alone in the room with ’em.’

MM:Did the cameras ever catch you yelling at your kids like they’re the Iron Sheik?

HH:I don’t just go, ‘Hey, brother, lemme tell ya!—I go way above that. When I get pushed over the edge, I go so far above the Hulkster just to put the fear of God in everyone, from my wife to my son to my daughter.

MM:What warrants the fear of God?

HH:When my son was 13, I got a brand-new Viper pickup truck, and I found out he drove it around the beach for two hours. I definitely turned up the volume on that one.

MM:How do you spank your kids without breaking them in half?
HH:I don’t. I hit my daughter one time on the ass when she was two, and I still hear about it. She was trying to help me pack my wrestling bag; she kept takin’ my gear in and out. So I swatted her on the ass. She won’t let me forget about it.

MM:Were you a troublemaker as a kid?

HH:I was just a fat kid. I started lifting weights because I went through high school without one date. I was just eating Baby Ruths and drinkin’ Cokes. The only really bad thing I did was wreck my first car. I was showing off, and I wrapped it around a pole. My dad freaked.

MM:What advantages are there to being Hulk Jr.?

HH:My son, Nick, is friendly with some of the wrestlers. One time, though, he shot Big Show with a slingshot, so Big Show duct-taped him to a chair for three hours.

MM:What about your daughter, Brooke—what if she wanted to date a wrestler?

HH:That’d be my worst nightmare.

MM:What about a Maxim editor?

HH:If you were older than her, you’d get the yellow boot in your face as soon as you opened the door. If you survived that, we’d probably tear up the asphalt outside, along with the rest of your body. I haven’t crossed that bridge yet, where I’ve actually let her get into a car and drive off into the sunset on a date.

MM:You made sure you knew exactly where she was on her first date. The 24-inch pythons weren’t enough to scare away the teenage boys?

HH:When VH1 wanted to do Brooke’s first date, I said we can do a ‘supervised field trip’ during the day. If anything happened, I knew I had a GPS in that car, and I would know where it was instantly. Ol’ Hulk Hogan and his gun permit would find her before anybody else did.

MM:Do you ever get other wrestlers to baby-sit for you?

HH:Oh, God. I tried to take my wife out for a special occasion, and [Nasty Boy] Brian Knobbs was sitting there in my house drinkin’ beer and watching TV while the kids were driving across the golf course mooning people and blowing air horns at the golfers. He was the worst.

MM:What other antics can we expect on Hogan Knows Best?

HH:I didn’t want our show to be based around eating a meal or staring at a pile of dog poop or family members going into rehab—if people are entertained by that, they’d better fasten their seat belts for our show.

MM:So what do you do when Hulkamania runs wild on you, anyway?

HH:Just try to hang on. And smile as wide as you possibly can.