My dad flattened Hulk Hogan and shook WrestleMania – now I’m training to honour him

Jan 11, 2026 - 13:00

Few WWE giants dominated the early 1990s in the way Earthquake did.

After Andre The Giant’s peak in WWE had waned and before Yokozuna burst on to the scene, John Tenta was the company’s top big man.

Earthquake was a mammoth menace of the early 1990s

As Earthquake, he wasn’t just another monster heel slotted in to bounce off the hero of the day, Hulk Hogan.

In 1990, he flattened Hogan in a brutal televised angle that wrote WWE’s biggest star off screen, a rare moment where the company allowed its centrepiece to be physically overwhelmed.

When Earthquake hit his trademark tremors off the ropes and squashed an opponent, it was a visual unlike any other.

Earthquake competed at six WrestleMania events, becoming a familiar presence across its early growth — even winning one of the event’s shortest matches with a cameo bout at the historic WrestleMania X at Madison Square Garden.

He wasn’t the face of the show, but he was often the weight behind it, used when WWE wanted something to feel massive rather than flashy.

Away from the ring, the contrast was stark. Tenta was known as intelligent, thoughtful and quietly respected backstage, a man who would later earn a degree and work in education after wrestling.

Daughter of late WWE star speaks out on ‘heartbreaking’ truth

That divide was felt most clearly at home. Wrestling in that era meant long stretches on the road, something his daughter Joanna would later reflect on.

“Our dad was on the road so much that it took a while for me to figure out who he was,” she wrote on Instagram in October 2023. “I would cry when he’d walk through the door, and it would break his heart. But he was patient and persistent… Once it clicked for good, I couldn’t wait until he was home again.”

John Tenta died in 2006 after a battle with bladder cancer. Joanna was 17. Wrestling, the thing that had defined her father to the world, became something she couldn’t bring herself to watch.

“When I was younger, I used to love watching wrestling,” she told The Kelly Clarkson Show.

‘Quake’ and Typhoon reigned as WWE’s top tag team

Joanna posted a loving tribute to her father whom she now seeks to emulate in wrestling

“When I was 15, I told my dad that I wanted to do what he did… After he died, I stopped watching wrestling for almost 17 years.”

That distance only broke recently. She added: “I tuned back in during WrestleMania 39 and remembered why I loved wrestling so much.

“In June 2024, I decided that… I wanted to learn and train to be a pro wrestler for the joy of it.”

Earthquake’s daughter sets sights on pro-wrestling

The decision wasn’t about chasing a career or repeating her father’s path or chasing title gold in the wrestling ring. It was instead far more personal.

“What I sought after is that it has formed a new and special connection with my dad,” she explained.

Now training at Absolute Intense Wrestling, Joanna, who carries a striking resemblance to her father, has described how the physical act of wrestling brings flashes of memory rather than driven ambition.

Joanna has spoken of her desire to train in the ring

“There are some times that I do… if I’m stepping into the ring… running the ropes… sometimes there are flickers of that… I’m trying to learn some of my dad’s moves,” she told WKYC.

Alongside that training, she works as a cancer chaplain, another thread tied directly to her father’s life and death.

Joanna Tenta ready to ‘honour’ WWE legend

“I feel like since I’ve started training, it has rounded me out,” she explained. “I feel like I’m healing parts of that 17-year-old after my dad died. It’s still the same Joanna.

“When I’m at the hospital, my whole role is caring for others and so there’s a level of sensitivity and care and attention that I have to provide. Here, I kind of let loose here. I get to be myself.

As one of the Disasters, Earthquake was posthumously inducted into WWE’s Hall of Fame

Her trainer Dominic Garrini recalled their first conversation: “She said: ‘Well, my dad is a wrestler. I’d really like to honour him by trying to wrestle.’

“I go: ‘Who’s your dad?’ And she goes: ‘John Tenta.’ And I go: ‘Earthquake is your dad?’”

He has also noted her progress. “She came here very timid, very scared and now she’s invited into the intermediate class,” Garrini said.

In WWE, Earthquake is remembered for flattening Hulk Hogan and shaking WrestleMania rings. As one half of The Natural Disasters he was a former tag team champion and, in 1994 he even toppled Yokozuna in a sumo-style match.

Despite it all, at home, he was remembered for patience, gentleness, and making his daughter feel safe — a legacy that might just power a younger Tenta to wrestling glories in the future.

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