WWE chief Vince McMahon has often commented that in the professional wrestling business, perception is reality. That’s most definitely the case with the career of the Ultimate Warrior. In the immediate aftermath of his death he was widely cited as one of the all-time biggest stars in wrestling history, something neither the calendar nor the box office figures bear out. And yet the mere fact that so many people retain this romanticised image of Warrior’s status is testament to the fact that, whatever else he may or may not have been, the Ultimate Warrior was one of the most successful characters that has ever appeared in the squared circle.
While his run was brief, he certainly helped define an era, specifically the culmination of the expansion of the WWF to national dominance and an increased emphasis on ultra-muscular. Company lynchpin Hulk Hogan was portrayed as larger-than-life, but still came across as a relatable human athlete. The Ultimate Warrior, however, truly fitted McMahon’s vision of wrestling as a cartoon come to life.
Between the facepaint (a relative rarity in WWF at the time, shared only by the tag team Demolition), the neon tassles tied tight to make his unnaturally gigantic physique stand out even more, the explosion of hair and the often-baffling promo style, Warrior likely fitted the role of what McMahon believed the “ultimate” pro wrestler should look like.
Jim Hellwig fell into a category of wrestlers that often earned resentment from his contemporaries because he neither came from neither an athletic background nor had a childhood love of professional wrestling. Instead he started life as a bodybuilder in Los Angeles where entrepreneur Rick Bassman, looking at the success of muscle-bound wrestlers such as the Road Warriors, decided to take four gym rats and turn them into a stable of wrestling superheroes under the name Power Team USA.
Although wrestling great Red Bastien only spent a short period training the newbies (as recalled by Warrior in his interview in issue 99 of FSM), that was enough for Garland Donaho and Mark Miller to decide wrestling was not for them, in the process cementing their names as the answer to a trivia question. That left Hellwig (as Justice) and Steve Borden (as Flash) to begin their careers in Memphis where they were rebranded as the Freedom Fighters under the management of Dutch Mantell, now known as Zeb Coulter.
The pair quickly moved to Bill Watts’s UWF territory where Hellwig was renamed Rock and Borden became Sting, with the team redubbed the Blade Runners. The pair were only together for a brief period, but would forever be linked thanks to the way they both ascended to the top of the business within a few months of one another in 1990. Indeed, during a misguided WCW angle in which Sting was plagued by the attentions of the mysterious Black Scorpion, announcers did their best to imply that Warrior — at that point the reigning WWF champion — might be the masked man.
Following the Blade Runners split, Helwig moved to the Dallas-based World Class promotion where he became Dingo Warrior and switched his look from dark paint around the eyes to a more colourful full-face design. His physique and charisma attracted the attention of both New Japan Pro Wrestling and WWF and his career almost took a very different term.
New Japan was about to launch an angle in which comedian Takeshi Kitano (later the host of the Takeshi’s Castle game show) would bring in a American grappler under the name Big Van Vader to challenge the Japanese stars, beginning with a win over Antonio Inoki in a couple of minutes. Hellwig was the original choice for the role, but opted instead to take a job with WWF, leaving Leon White to take the Vader spot.
In hindsight it was a fortunate decision. The Inoki upset so enraged the Sumo Hall crowd that they began not only throwing furniture but actually starting fires, something that earned the promotion a two-year ban from the venue. White was able to ride out the fury, get over with the crowd and make a success of the character thanks to his in-ring abilities and aggressive style; it’s highly questionable whether the more limited Hellwig would have made it under those circumstances.
Between his lack of experience and athletic limitations, Dingo Warrior wasn’t considered ready for an immediate unveiling in the WWF and instead he spent four full months working the house show circuit, usually at the bottom of the cards against reliable hands such as Steve Lombardi and Barry Horowitz. Come his debut in November, he was rebranded the Ultimate Warrior and shortly after given one of the simplest but most effective pieces of ring music of the era.
By 1988 it seemed management were no longer overly concerned about Warrior’s in-ring development, with him spending much of the year booking him against fellow muscle-man Hercules or in “weasel suit” matches with Bobby Heenan. SummerSlam marked his formal ascension to superstar status, defeating the Honky Tonk Man for the Intercontinental title. Warrior couldn’t have been put over stronger: not only did he take the win in a mere 31 seconds, but he ended a 14-month title reign, still the longest in Intercontinental championship history.
Initially working the I-C title bout on the undercard of live events headlined by WWF champion Randy Savage or Hulk Hogan, it wasn’t until the start of 1989 that Warrior regularly headlined shows. He continued to feud with the Bobby Heenan “family”, dropping the title to Rick Rude at WrestleMania, winning most rematches by countout, regaining the title at SummerSlam, then working a series of shows with Haku and Andre.
The Andre bouts were again a case of right time, right place for Warrior: with Andre physically shot and in no condition to work lengthy bouts, bookers decided to have Warrior win many of the house show main events in a matter of seconds. Coming only two years after Andre went into WrestleMania supposedly undefeated in a decade, it was quite the statement about Warrior’s standing.
His most famous moment came at WrestleMania in 1990 where he pinned Hogan for the WWF heavyweight title. It really was only Hogan’s second pinfall loss in many years and marked his first clean loss since 1981. McMahon’s belief was that the title could make the man: by having Warrior defend the title while Hogan took on legend status, he hoped to have two bona fide top-line draws that could carry separate shows on the road. The plan at this stage was that Warrior would hold the title indefinitely and at the absolute minimum would still be champion going into a seemingly inevitable rematch at WrestleMania the following year, scheduled for the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Given neither man was known for the ability to carry a weak opponent, the match itself was a minor miracle, even if it didn’t necessarily stand up to repeated viewing. It’s a perfect example of how Warrior, while lacking many of the tools expected in a polished performer, greatly overachieved when it came to engaging and memorable matches. In some ways he was the mirror image of men such as Ted DiBase who, while highly regarded for their in-ring skills, rarely put together standout matches.
It’s certainly fair to say Warrior had the benefit of working with some outstanding performers such as Rick Rude, Curt Hennig and Randy Savage, and that he was the poster boy for the match layout skills of the likes of Pat Patterson, but it’s no backhanded compliment to say he could be carried to a good-to-great match when the occasion demanded it.
WrestleMania 6 would also serve as example of how context and nostalgia can be far more important in a professional wrestler’s legacy than the hard numbers. Memorable as it undoubtedly was, the show — the very definition of a one-match affair — was considered a box office disappointment. While the 60,000+ crowd was impressive, the vast majority of the seats were sold long before the first hints on TV of a Hogan-Warrior clash. Meanwhile, the pay-per-view buyrate was down significantly from the previous year and was even below that of the preceding SummerSlam (headlined by Zeus, at one point a candidate for the WrestleMania match.)
It was a pattern than would continue during Warrior’s title reign. Live event crowds noticeably slumped, sellouts became a rarity, and it became increasingly clear that Warrior couldn’t be relied on to carry business by himself. It was only a matter of months before McMahon decided a title reign that had originally been envisioned as potentially lasting for years would be cut short at the Royal Rumble where Warrior dropped the title to Sgt Slaughter to set up Hogan reclaiming the belt at WrestleMania.
To be fair to Warrior, his championship credentials test did not come under favourable circumstances. Between some questionable behaviour by Hogan at the Skydome match (kicking out a nanosecond after the referee’s hand struck the mat for a third time, then milking the limelight as he ‘graciously’ handed over the title) and the emphasis of follow-up television shows on Hogan’s “step into immortality” the message was clear from the start that Warrior’s billing as top star came with an asterisk.
It certainly didn’t help that Warrior had few fresh opponents lined up. He spent much of his reign working with Rick Rude, a feud sold on the idea that Rude held the only televised win over Warrior, but sullied by the pair having worked together so many times before. Meanwhile Curt “Mr Perfect” Hennig’s status as a top contender was certainly tarnished by a baffling loss of his on-screen “perfect record” to Brutus Beefcake on the night of Warrior’s coronation along with a series of clean defeats to Hogan on the house show circuit.
Warrior’s character also came in for some unsuccessful tinkering during his reign. Reportedly thanks to concern that his hyper-intense image might be offputting to younger children, Warrior was repackaged with blowdried neatened hair and less-intimidating facepaint (reduced to a logo on his cheeks) and even made an appearance on the Brother Love show where he quite literally hugged and kissed a young girl while proclaiming his “Ultimate Love” for the tot.
Following feuds with Randy Savage and Undertaker in 1991 (and an abruptly ended rivalry with Jake Roberts), Warrior was sent home after the contractual disagreements that were detailed extensively in issue 104 of FSM. He made a memorable return at WrestleMania in 1992, making the save for Hulk Hogan.
Having dropped considerable weight and cut his hair short, so dramatic was the change in his appearance that it sparked a long-running urban myth that the “original” Ultimate Warrior had been replaced (and may even have died), with one variant of the tale insisting that Kerry Von Erich was now portraying the role. It was a perfect example of how the Warrior character was larger than life, or indeed reality.
Although the WrestleMania run-in was hugely memorable, Warrior’s second WWF run was by no means a success. Initially pencilled in to work with Sid (who quickly departed over the company’s increased drug testing), Warrior instead engaged in an offbeat main event feud with “voodoo practitioner” Papa Shango, set up by skits involving green slime and vomiting. House show attendance across the promotion dropped by 45 percent in the space of a month after WrestleMania and the slump continued throughout the year, reaching new record lows by the time Warrior was fired over his attempts to import human growth hormone.
Following a handful of independent dates, it initially appeared Warrior’s final WWF run in 1996 would be more memorable. As far as the live audience was concerned, his 90-second victory over Hunter Hearst Helmsley was the most important part of WrestleMania 12, receiving far more interest than the Shawn Michaels-Bret Hart main event. But no sooner had Warrior settled into an upper midcard slot as house show business was beginning to pick up, he was gone again, once more embroiled in a contractual dispute.
After leaving the WWF for the final time, Warrior wrestled just five more matches. Four came in WCW, where he made a strong initial impact while being built up for a pay-per-view match with Hogan. Although the bout seemingly served its purpose of allowing Hogan to “get his win back”, from a match quality standpoint it was clear that lightning would not strike twice (and indeed, a fireball would not strike once.) 10 years later Warrior had his final bout, defeating Orlando Jordan on an independent show in Barcelona.
Warrior’s place in wrestling lore is a particularly unusual one. By most objective standards he should be little more than a footnote: a star for a relatively short period during which his box office performance can fairly be described as disappointing.
Yet the reaction to his death has shown that he was widely remembered by the fans who lived through his era, with the unlikely sight of tributes from wrestlers such as Daniel Bryan and Frankie Kazarian (who, to say the least, have a very different ring style to Warrior) and the utterly bizarre experience of his music being played on Radio 4’s Today Programme. He appeared to be particularly fondly remembered in the UK, which is understandably given his peak years came as Sky Television and the WWF first truly established themselves on these shores. Fans and grapplers alike frequently cited Warrior as the man who first sparked their interest in professional wrestling.
It all goes back to that issue of perception and reality. Warrior’s runs at main event level combine to no more than three and a half years, whereas John Cena has been at that level for nine years and counting. Cena has played a major role in ten WrestleManias that attracted similar or larger viewing audiences than the first Hogan-Warrior clash and has rarely been off TV screens (frequently appearing in competitive matches) during his near-decade on top, consistently drawing several million viewers. And yet many fans would simply find it incomprehensible to label Cena as the bigger star of the two.
In some ways it may be the brevity of his time on top that is the making of Warrior’s legacy. Had he had a longer run, his weaknesses would likely have been more exposed, particularly in the era of wrestling lengthy matches and delivering long promos as standard practice. It would also have become far more difficult to protect his image by almost never booking him in defeat. And it would have risked the crowd tiring of Warrior’s effective, but somewhat one-dimensional character.
It’s certainly the case that Warrior greatly overachieved when it comes to iconic moments in the business: destroying Honky Tonk Man, cleanly pinning Hogan in the Skydome, ending Randy Savage’s career, returning to save Hogan, or wrestling for the title in a sold-out Wembley Stadium are all moments that stay in the memory long after the analysis of the relevant PPV buyrates is over.
Ultimately, the career of the Ultimate Warrior shows that what makes a success in professional wrestling is itself a matter of perspective. Some have cited him as the supreme example of how those who put the emphasis on in-ring skills are deluded and fail to understand that the idea is to draw money. The record books show Warrior is a poor example to make that case.
But just as for an active performer what really matters is backsides in seats rather than star ratings, perhaps in the bigger picture of a wrestler’s career as a whole, how you are remembered is more significant than how you drew.
Indeed, nearly a quarter of a decade after he first reached the top of the business, it is abundantly clear that nobody who saw the Ultimate Warrior perform will ever forget him. When it comes to a wrestler’s legacy, that may be the most important quality of all.
