Radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge Clem has shared one of the more unusual stories from his long friendship with Hulk Hogan, recalling a private boat trip off Florida’s Gulf Coast that, according to Bubba, left the wrestling legend worried for weeks that an embarrassing encounter might somehow become public.
Speaking with host Danny Jones on The Danny Jones Podcast, Bubba said the incident happened around 1999 or 2000, when he and Hogan were spending time aboard Hogan’s distinctive 45-foot cigarette boat near Clearwater, Florida. Bubba described the boat as impossible to miss, with imagery tied to Hogan’s wrestling career and Thunder in Paradise displayed along the sides.
What followed, in Bubba’s telling, involved two women, a trip several miles offshore and an unexpected Coast Guard vessel that appeared close enough for its crew to see far more than either man had planned.
Bubba Says Hogan’s Boat Was Impossible To Miss
Bubba told Jones that Hogan regularly took the boat around Clearwater and nearby waters, and because of its size and design, people in the area often recognized it immediately.
On one Sunday, the two stopped near Shepherd’s, a busy waterfront destination where Bubba said boats and crowds regularly gathered.
According to Bubba, Hogan was shirtless, drinking a beer and attracting plenty of attention, while Bubba eventually spoke with two women who agreed to come aboard for a short ride.
He said one woman was a hairdresser from Lakeland and the other was a dancer from Tampa.
The group then headed offshore, with Bubba estimating they traveled roughly 10 to 12 miles away from Clearwater Beach, far enough that he believed people on shore would have no realistic way of seeing what was happening aboard the boat.
That sense of privacy, he said, turned out to be badly mistaken.
Coast Guard Vessel Appeared Alongside Them
Bubba described himself and Hogan as being occupied with the two women when an approximately 80-foot Coast Guard vessel suddenly appeared nearby.
He said the larger boat had a substantial crew on deck and estimated it was only about 50 yards away.
The surprise was immediate.
Bubba told Jones that he had no idea how the vessel had approached without either of them noticing, and he believed members of the crew had been watching for several minutes before the two men realized they were there.
He also said Hogan quickly became concerned about what the crew might have seen and whether there was any possibility the encounter had been photographed or recorded.
The story depends entirely on Bubba’s recollection, and the podcast did not independently verify what the Coast Guard crew actually witnessed, but Bubba presented it as one of those moments that stuck with both men because of how exposed they suddenly felt.
Hogan Wanted To Speak With The Captain
Rather than simply leaving, Bubba said Hogan wanted to pull alongside the Coast Guard vessel and speak directly with its captain.
The two boats were brought next to each other, and Bubba said members of the crew immediately recognized Hogan and turned out to be fans.
According to Bubba, the captain boarded Hogan’s boat, while other crew members asked for autographs and posed for a photograph.
Jones asked what Hogan had been wearing during the encounter, and Bubba replied that the wrestler had on only his familiar bright yellow swimwear.
While Hogan dealt with the attention, Bubba said he tried to figure out exactly how much the crew had seen.
He recalled asking the captain how long they had been nearby, with the answer being somewhere around five to eight minutes.
Bubba said he then pressed the captain more directly about whether the crew had witnessed the private activity aboard the boat.
According to his version, the captain understood exactly what he was asking and reassured him that they had nothing to worry about.
Hogan Allegedly Worried For Weeks
Even after that reassurance, Bubba said Hogan remained uneasy.
Because the incident happened before smartphones became common, Bubba believed there was little chance of video or photographs suddenly appearing online, but Hogan apparently was not ready to relax.
Bubba told Jones that Hogan called him repeatedly over the next several weeks asking whether anything had appeared in the news.
Each time, Bubba said he told him there was nothing.
At one point, Hogan allegedly asked whether enough time had passed that they could assume the story would never come out.
Bubba told him that if nothing had surfaced after roughly 45 days, they were probably in the clear.
The anecdote is funny largely because Hogan, a man accustomed to enormous public attention, was apparently more rattled by the possibility of an unseen Coast Guard audience than Bubba was.
It also gives some sense of how carefully celebrities had to think about privacy even before modern phones and social media made almost every embarrassing moment potentially permanent.
Conversation Turns To Hogan’s Clearwater Mansion
After the boat story, Jones and Bubba shifted to another part of Hogan’s private life: his large Clearwater-area home.
Bubba said he had spent considerable time there and remembered the property as unusually elaborate, with hidden rooms, custom carpentry and features that were built specifically for the family.
He described concealed safe rooms near the bedrooms, including spaces hidden behind what looked like bookcases and protected by heavy vault-style doors.
According to Bubba, the house had been designed in the style of a French chateau, with custom woodwork throughout rather than off-the-shelf materials.
He estimated that Hogan spent roughly $6 million building it in the mid-1990s.
Jones pulled up property information during the discussion and found that the home was nearly 18,000 square feet, with five bedrooms and 10 bathrooms.
Bubba said the house also required a large staff and was expensive to operate, estimating monthly costs in the tens of thousands of dollars once maintenance, landscaping and household help were included.
Bubba Recalls A Huge Offer From John Travolta
One of Bubba’s other claims involved actor John Travolta.
He said he was present when Travolta allegedly made Hogan an offer of around $16 million for the property.
According to Bubba, Hogan and then-wife Linda Hogan considered the offer insulting and rejected it.
Jones appeared surprised by that figure, especially after looking up the later sale history.
During the podcast, the pair found a record showing the property sold in 2012 for approximately $6.2 million.
Bubba said he remembered that sale and claimed a neighbor of his eventually bought the home.
The contrast between the alleged Travolta offer and the later sale price became another point of fascination during the conversation, although Bubba’s account of the earlier offer came from memory rather than any documentation shown on the podcast.
A Story From A Different Era
The larger theme of Bubba’s appearance was not simply that Hogan lived extravagantly or had embarrassing moments, but that Bubba had unusually close access to a side of the wrestler that most fans never saw.
He described spontaneous boat trips, private jokes, the layout of Hogan’s home and conversations that happened away from television cameras and wrestling arenas.
Jones mostly let Bubba tell the stories in his own way, occasionally stopping to ask for details or pull up property information as the discussion moved from one memory to another.
The Coast Guard story, however, was clearly the one Bubba considered among his best Hogan anecdotes.
It was not about wrestling, fame or business, but about a private moment that suddenly became public enough to make Hogan worry for weeks about whether anyone had recorded what happened.
According to Bubba, nothing ever surfaced, and the episode remained little more than an embarrassing story shared among people who were there.
Years later, it became part of the collection of memories Bubba still associates with his friendship with Hogan, and one he now says the wrestling legend carried with him without ever seeing it turn into the kind of public scandal he feared.
Mark grew up in the heart of Texas, where tornadoes and extreme weather were a part of life. His early experiences sparked a fascination with emergency preparedness and homesteading. A father of three, Mark is dedicated to teaching families how to be self-sufficient, with a focus on food storage, DIY projects, and energy independence. His writing empowers everyday people to take small steps toward greater self-reliance without feeling overwhelmed.
