Terry Gene Bollea aka Hulk Hogan was able to navigate the psychotic world of professional wrestling for decades, but three seasons of reality TV destroyed his life more thoroughly than a jack knife power bomb through a stack of tables.

Since Hogan Knows Best first aired in 2005, Hogan’s marriage has been in the crapper. His wife wants half and is dating a 19 year-old from their kids’ high school. His son Nick went to jail for eight months for a 2007 reckless driving incident that left his friend, John Graziano, in need of round-the-clock nursing care for the remainder of his life. While Nick was in the Pinellas County stir, guards caught Hulkster and son plotting to spin the tragedy into yet another reality show. Hogan Knows Best got cancelled proving that even VH1’s Celebreality has its limits but the show’s IMDB and Wikipedia entries seem to leave open the possibility that it can return at any time.

After his show was put on hiatus with the disintegration of his family, Hogan has tried to cling to the reality TV gravy train. Brooke Knows Best, a show focusing on his daughter striking out her own, has made it through two seasons, but Hogan is just back story there. His stab at re-branding, the depressing Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling, was mercifully ended by the Country Music Television cable network after only eight episodes in 2008. The re-boot of American Gladiators, which employed Hogan as an announcer, didn't make it out of 2008. While Hogan is most likely proud that Brooke has been able to let the cameras into her life without him, the Hulkster is one of the most limelight starved individuals ever to be ready for his close-up. With dwindling off-network options, Hogan has retreated to the last place that would have him with his appearance last night on Spike TV’s Total Nonstop Action (TNA, get it?).

Taped in a TV studio in Orlando, Florida, TNA’s flagship show Impact! is a far cry from the comparative glitz of Vince McMahon’s WWE, which made Hogan an 80s icon. While Impact! maintains the gritty feel of traditional big time wrestling that McMahon’s slick shows lack, and TNA does gives a lot of young talent a chance that might not make it on any of the WWE’s three weekly programs, the promotion’s top tier is beginning to look like a last stop for broken-down pieces of meat before they fade into Randy “The Ram” Robinson oblivion, or worse.

Recently, TNA broadcasts have made extensive use of highlight footage from an August pay-per-view match where the grey-haired Kevin Nash (age 50) and former WWE champ Mick Foley (age 44) beat each other into crimson messes with steel chairs, baseball bats covered with barbed wire and hidden razor blades. The most painful aspect of watching these scenes isn’t the massive bloodletting but it’s the obvious pain that both men have from wrestling on bad knees. Sadder still is the sight of Foley going to such extremes after his initial retirement from the ring in 2000. His three wrestling memoirs have made the New York Times bestseller list and he has written three children’s books and two novels. With publishing and commentary duties, Foley shouldn’t be risking his health and sanity by wrestling hardcore matches, but TNA somehow lured him back into their five-sided ring.

Like Hogan, fellow WWE castoff and recent TNA champ Kurt Angle also has marital problems. In September 2008, Angle’s wife left him and shacked up with Jeff Jarrett, TNA’s co-founder and a wrestler best known for smashing a guitar over peoples’ heads. That can’t make for a supportive working environment. In August 2009, Angle was arrested for violation of a restraining order and possession of performance enhancing drugs in a suburban Pittsburgh, Penn. strip mall. Angle parted ways with the WWE in May 2006 due to concerns over his then growing painkiller addiction. TNA scooped him up just four months later.

Hogan’s first TNA appearance itself was beyond lame. He didn’t appear in the ring, didn’t call anyone out, didn’t stare down Angle, Sting, Samoa Joe or any of the promotion’s other better known grapplers. Instead we were treated to footage of a boring press conference held in what appeared to be a concourse of Madison Square Garden. Hogan, clad in a tight, pink t-shirt and a matching pink bandana (maybe to make him look less orange) gushed about how great Spike TV was as the president of the network stood beside him. He also referred to himself as a “game changer”.

Dixie Carter, the businesswoman who serves as president of TNA not the Emmy-nominated actress from Designing Women and Desperate Housewives, referred to Hogan as “the man, the brand” in a yawn of a speech that could have been delivered at any sales convention. She was also sure to let us know that she had joined Twitter. I shit you not. Like, that’s so early-to-mid 2009. At 9:30pm PST on Thursday, the Twitter feed itself contains only two posts, the first of which reads: “Celebrated the Hogan signing at staff meeting this morning with champagne and donuts.” In a nutshell, the fundraising symposium I had to go to last week contained more gripping mat action than Hogan’s TNA debut.

Vince McMahon would have never allowed things to go down this way. If Hogan had signed to the WWE, he would have been on Monday Night RAW staring down “The Viper” Randy Orton before being double-teamed from behind by Legacy. Hogan may have also been put through a table or hit with a folding chair right before the show ended, compelling us to tune in next week. At this rate, the Hulkster is far from making TNA “the number one sports entertainment company in the business,” as he promised from the podium. Instead, he will be another budget-draining mistake for a promotion with limited resources.

Yes, Hulkamania is back brother, but does it still run wild?

TNA iMPACT!airs on Spike TV Thursdays at 9pm. Tune in next week to see if Hogan bothers to show up.

When he's not being hit by steel chairs or fighting Sasquatches, Bob Calhoun is a San Francisco author and journalist. His bestselling punk-wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, is available through Amazon.com and where ever fine paperbacks are sold.