Gawker settles with Hulk Hogan for $31 million

The legal battle comes to a close

Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, testifies in court during his trial against Gawker Media at the Pinellas County Courthouse on March 8, 2016 in St Petersburg, Florida. Bollea is taking legal action against Gawker in a USD 100 million lawsuit for releasing a video of him having sex with his best friends wife. (John Pendygraft-Pool/Getty)

Gawker.com is dead and Hulk Hogan is filthy rich. The media company, recently purchased by Univision who killed its flagship site, settled with the disgraced wrestling star on Wednesday afternoon for a cool $31 million, according to court filings and former CEO Nick Denton’s blog.

The former wrestler sued Gawker, Mr Denton and former editor AJ Daulerio after the website published a sex tape featuring him. Over the summer, he was awarded $140 million in damages after claiming he suffered emotional distress. Today, Mr Denton admitted that he would not be able to fund the appeals process against billionaire technology investor Peter Thiel, who bankrolled the lawsuit after he was outed as gay more than nine years ago.

"For Thiel, an investor in Facebook and Palantir, the cost of this exercise is less than 1 percent of his net worth and a little additional notoriety," he wrote on Wednesday. "The other protagonists — including Hulk Hogan and A.J. Daulerio, the author of the Gawker story about him — had much more at stake. That motivated a settlement that allows us all to move on, and focus on activities more productive than endless litigation. Life is short, for most of us."