WWE professional wrestling legend Hulk Hogan has deleted one of his most famous and popular tweets. Hulk Hogan has been a major figure in professional wrestling for decades, rising to stardom in the 1980s as WWE Champion and headlining multiple WrestleMania events in the process. Hogan's popularity has persisted since then, enjoying a career resurgence in the 90s after he was revealed to be the leader of WCW's villainous nWo faction.
Recent years have seen Hogan embroiled in controversy. Hogan could be heard making racist remarks on a leaked video tape, leading to a lawsuit that saw Hogan successfully sue Gawker for millions of dollars. There have been attempts to rehabilitate Hogan's image in the aftermath of the incident. WWE parted ways with Hogan for a short time, but has since brought him back to make occasional appearances at wrestling events.
On October 16, 2011, Hulk Hogan tweeted out, "Goodnight HULKAMANIACS and jabronie marks without a life that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot, marks," a tweet that amassed thousands of likes and retweets. The bizarre tweet has popped back up on social media numerous times over the years, but it's recently been discovered that Hogan has deleted the tweet. Twitter user Garrett Kidney made the discovery, pointing out that it was last quote tweeted in August, so it must have been deleted within the last couple of months or so.
Hogan has not provided any kind of explanation as to why he deleted the popular tweet. It's not necessarily uncommon for celebrities to delete old tweets, but that's usually when they are offensive or inappropriate. This particular tweet from the multi-time WWE World Champion is strange, but there's nothing about it that might make people upset. In fact, most people will probably read the tweet and not even know what it means.
The tweet uses a lot of wrestling-insider terminology that will likely go over the heads of those that don't follow WWE or the wrestling industry in general very closely. The word "jabroni" basically translates to idiot, while a "mark" in wrestling has a broader definition. Sometimes mark is used to refer to anyone that is a ticket-buying fan, while sometimes it's used to mean someone that thinks pro wrestling is legitimate. It is often used as an insult. A "work" in wrestling is anything in wrestling that is pre-determined, while "shoot" is something that happens that's real. Fans can use those definitions to try translating Hogan's now-deleted tweet for themselves.