OAN Staff Abril Elfi
10:48 PM – Thursday, August 21, 2025
A potential error during one of Hulk Hogan’s surgeries may have contributed to his death, according to a TMZ report.
On Thursday, Sky Baily, Hogan’s wife, told the outlet that her husband’s phrenic nerve was “compromised” during a recent surgery and said an autopsy had been completed. However, she did not disclose the results.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the phrenic nerve “controls your diaphragm and is essential to your ability to breathe.”
An occupational therapist who was present at Hogan’s Clearwater, Florida, home when the WWE legend stopped breathing told cops on the scene that a surgeon “severed” his phrenic nerve during a recent surgery, according to the police report.
According to TMZ, police officers present at the home reviewed what the therapist had informed them, and those conversations were captured on body cameras.
Hogan passed away on July 24th at the age of 71. According to records from the Pinellas County Forensic Science Center, obtained by Page Six, his cause of death was listed as a heart attack. He had a history of irregular heartbeat and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a type of cancer affecting white blood cells.
Hogan’s daughter, Brooke, has raised concerns about the circumstances surrounding her father’s death and offered to cover the cost of an autopsy to get answers. It was reported earlier this month that the wrestling legend’s cremation was put on hold due to questions about his medical care. On Thursday, Brooke told TMZ that her father’s cremation still hadn’t taken place.
A day prior, Brooke addressed the speculation about her father’s death in a series of posts on her Instagram Story.
“Here’s ALL I KNOW. So stop speculating, stop asking. I have also informed my brother [Nick Hogan] of all of this information, who is boots on the ground with everything,” Brooke, 37, began in one slide.
“FACT: I’ve 100% gotten legit calls from professionals — from police officials to nurses that were supposedly with my dad on the day of his death telling ME I need to see body cam footage and I need to get a hold of the 911 tapes because they supposedly contain information that could potentially shed enough light to change the narrative we/I/everyone’s been hearing.
“Those same professionals feel so passionately about what they witnessed, they have continued to contact me and push me to find specific answers to this very day. They are quite literally putting their careers at risk because they feel so compelled to do the right thing.”
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