ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Hulk Hogan showed up for a court hearing in St. Petersburg on Wednesday where his attorney asked a judge to bring shock jock Mike "Cowhead" Calta's agent, Tony Burton, back into a $110 million invasion of privacy lawsuit.

“I just thought it would be a good idea to keep my head to the grindstone," Hogan said. "Make sure the ship‘s going in the right direction."

Hogan, 65, whose real name is Terry Bollea, is suing Calta, the morning host of 102.5 The Bone, Matt "Spiceboy" Loyd, his wife Tasha Carrega, her friend Lori Burbridge, Beverly Hills attorney Keith Davidson and Cox Radio for allegedly conspiring to leak and financially benefit from illegally recorded video of the former wrestler having sex with Bubba Clem's wife, Heather Cole. 

Hogan's attorney, Shane Vogt, asked a new judge on the case, Linda Allan, to bring Burton, along with the New York City agency where he's employed, Buchwald & Associates, back into the suit citing new phone record evidence that shows the agent downplayed his involvement in the conspiracy.

“In the one month surrounding that Gawker leak, Mr. Calta and Mr. Burton had 36 calls that totaled 276-minutes and 30-seconds," Vogt said. "By far, the most they had talked throughout these time periods.”

Back in December of 2017, a former judge dismissed Burton, along with the agency, from the lawsuit based on lack of personal jurisdiction and their sworn affidavits that they were not involved in the conspiracy. Hogan appealed the ruling to the 2nd District Court of Appeal whom recently agreed to relinquish jurisdiction for 60 days to allow the trial court to rule on a 'motion for relief from judgement' based on the new evidence.

“The concealment of these phone calls is very significant to the circumstances surrounding the conspiracy,” said Vogt. “No conspirator is going to admit that they were conspiring."

According to the complaint, in September of 2012, Burton e-mailed A.J. Daulerio, then-editor-in chief of Gawker that he had "a client that has a very significant DVD they want to send you." Burton's client was Calta. The following month, Burton sent Daulerio another email that stated, "I hear there's a second DVD of the same but has more racist comments by Hogan."

Daulerio responded to Burton, "We're gonna slice this up into a highlight reel then do some commentary on the stills. I just say this 'came across our desk' right?" Burton replied, "All I know is it was sent to you anonymously."

Gawker posted a 1:41 highlight reel on their tabloid website and a Pinellas jury in March of 2016, awarded Hogan a $141 million verdict for invasion of his privacy. Gawker went bankrupt and settled for $31 million. Hogan wants to recover the balance of the damages from the current defendants.

Burton and Buchwald & Associate's New York City attorney, Ilene Farkas, told the judge that the phone records are not sworn evidence that show her clients committed fraud on the jurisdictional motion.

"They haven’t pointed to a single misrepresentation that my client made. All they have done is speculate. Speculation is not evidence," said Farkas. "They say well they’ve had a lot of calls and if they had a lot of calls on dates that mattered then maybe that might lead to something.”

In Burton's opposition to motion to vacate, the agent stated, "I communicated with A.J. Daulerio of Gawker regarding Gawker's publicly available mailing address. I also communicated with my client, defendant Michael Calta."

Burton said, "I did not send the Sex Footage to Gawker, I did not know the identity of the person who allegedly sent the Sex Footage to Gawker." The agent also said it would be unreasonable to force him to litigate a case in Florida since he lives in New York City.

The response from Buchwald & Associates stated the phone records don't prove a conspiracy because the frequency of calls on a per month basis between Burton and Calta actually increased by 14% during the "non-relevant" period.

Judge Allan asked Vogt to respond to that fact, “If the same thing is happening every day, then how meaningful is it to take out a couple of days here or there and say, ‘well, this is part of the conspiracy?'"

Vogt responded, "Looking outside the time period of these key events that we pointed out and their review at least, showed that the calls in number were more frequent outside this time period. That’s a number. We don’t know in duration."

Farkas told Judge Allan the motion should be denied because they did not come forward with the required evidence of fraud.

“They can’t even point to a single phone call that relates to the alleged conspiracy," she said. "It’s not enough that they might have been talking about the sex tape. Everyone was talking about the sex tape.”

Judge Allan asked both sides to prepare a proposed order within 10 days and she would make a ruling about whether or not to move forward with an evidentiary hearing on the matter.

Hogan said he's paying close attention to this case.

"It’s just the on-going saga of everybody being accountable from day one, like we said when everything was filed originally," said Hogan. "That anybody who was part of this whole craziness, like I’m accountable, we want everyone else to be accountable.”

The trial is scheduled to begin on August 31, 2020.