Mike Calta says he ‘did not pay one cent’ in ‘embarrassing’ Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit

Mike Calta said on air Monday that he was “released” from the latest Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit and did not enter any settlement agreement with the 66-year-old pro wrestler.

The morning radio host for 102.5 The Bone said for the past four years he’d mostly resisted talking about the lawsuit, in which he, his employer Cox Radio, and others were accused of conspiring to leak sex tape footage of Hogan, real name Terry Bollea.

“The whole point of this ridiculous nonsense is that it’s now over,” Calta said. “The lawsuit against me as a person who was involved with this was dismissed, and I did not enter into a settlement with Hulk Hogan.” He told the Tampa Bay Times, “I did not pay one cent.”

Calta, 48, said he was at one point compelled to make a settlement offer, just to stop spending money on lawyers, but “I didn’t want to settle for anything. I said I didn’t want to give a goddamn dime of my money to anyone for something I didn’t do.”

As for the private settlement reached between Cox Radio and Bollea last week, Calta said he doesn’t know the details or any dollar amount. “It’s private, that means I don’t know. You can ask me a thousand times, I’ll tell you I don’t know.”

Calta said he feels his privacy was invaded during the lawsuit. He said his phone records had been subpoenaed and that all they showed was that he’d had many conversations with his agents, also named in the suit, and his management at Cox. He said he’d had trouble getting a mortgage because the banks were wary that he could lose the case and be unable to pay.

The suit accused him of conspiring to leak the footage of Bollea as part of a radio war with a rival DJ, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, in whose home and with whose then-wife the sex tape was filmed. Among the evidence attached to the original complaint was an email Calta sent his agent in 2012 that contained a minute-by-minute summary of the sex tape. Calta said on-air Monday that he, like everyone else, had heard the rumors of Hulk Hogan sex tapes.

Calta also said he still does not understand why Clem never got in trouble for secretly filming the encounter. Clem told the Tampa Bay Times in 2019 that he might have faced criminal charges if the statute of limitations had not run out.

Clem is currently suing Calta and Cox Radio, claiming they conspired to trap him in a ratings tampering “sting operation” that ruined his business. Asked for comment on Bollea’s lawsuit against Calta, Clem said, “I have independent claims that I am pursuing in separate litigation. I cannot comment at this time.”

Cox Radio declined to comment.

Calta told the Times that the lawsuit also “ruined my childhood love for Hulkamania.”

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“I said to my brother one time, can you believe I’m getting sued by Hulk Hogan,” he said on air. “Because my brother and me used to wrestle on the furniture and argue about who was better, Hulk Hogan or Randy Savage.”