Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake has thanked Hulk Hogan for helping him through a dark period of his life

Speaking to Sports Illustrated, Brutus - real name Ed Leslie - said: "My doctors told me I was lucky to live. I was never supposed to wrestle again. I was also going through a bad divorce and my parents had just died, so that was a really dark time.

"I took life one day at a time. I had the support of people in the WWE, and I had a good friend in The Hulkster. Terry pulled me from the depths, and he told me I was going to get better. With a lot of support, I did."

Brutus and Hogan - whose real name is Terry Bollea - started their professional careers together as The Boulder Brothers tag team in 1977, and it was a dream come true for the lifelong wrestling fans to compete together.

Brutus added: "Terry and I were just a couple kids from Tampa living our dream. We had sat on the beach for endless days talking about wrestling, and then there we were, living it, working territories in Florida and Alabama with guys like Ox Baker, Bob Armstrong, and Professor Toru Tanaka.

"They took us under their wing and helped make us into what we became."

Beefcake will enter the Hall of Fame with the other inductees - including D-Generation X, The Honky Tonk Man, Harlem Heat, and Torrie Wilson - at the ceremony at the Barclays Centre in New York City on April 6, the night before 'WrestleMania 35'.