Hulk Hogan testifies in court during the first Gawker lawsuit trial in March, 2016; John Pendygraft-Pool/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Hulk Hogan is suing Gawker Media again.
In paperwork filed in Florida state court on Monday, the pro wrestler, whose birth name is Terry Bollea, accused the media company of intentional infliction of emotional distress and maliciously destroying his business relationships by allegedly “leaking a sealed transcript of surreptitiously recorded private oral communications in a bedroom to the media.”
Hogan claimed that in July 2015, the National Enquirer published a transcript from a 2007 video in which he used a racial slur, and that the information was at least in part furnished by Gawker.
As a result of the publication, Hogan was fired by his employer, World Wrestling Entertainment, and, he claimed, “his global brand was forever tarnished.”
“This is getting ridiculous. Hulk Hogan is a litigious celebrity abusing the court system to control his public image and media coverage. It was absurd enough that Hulk Hogan claimed $100 million for emotional distress and economic damage for a story about a sex life that he’d already made public. Now Hulk Hogan is blaming Gawker for racist remarks he made on another sex tape, which Gawker never had,” an attorney for the media company told ABC News in a statement. “As we’ve said before and are happy to say again: Gawker did not leak the information. It’s time for Hulk Hogan to take responsibility for his own words, because the only person who got Hulk Hogan fired from the WWE is Hulk Hogan.”
The lawsuit also names a talent agent, two deejays, a radio company, and an attorney, among others, in conjunction with the alleged attempted extortion.
Earlier this year, Hogan, 62, was awarded $140 million in compensatory and punitive damages after he sued Gawker for invasion of privacy. In 2012, the website published a portion of a sex tape that was made without Hogan’s knowledge.
On Monday, his legal team told ABC News in a statement regarding the latest lawsuit, “Mr. Bollea said from the beginning that he would seek to hold all persons and entities fully responsible for their wrongful actions. This lawsuit seeks to do just that.”
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