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Jim Hellwig,
the man who would become known as the Ultimate Warrior
got his start wrestling in California as a member of Power
Team USA, a short-lived group of four wrestlers which included
Steve Borden (the man who eventually become Sting). After Power Team USA
disbanded, Hellwig and Borden began wrestling in Jerry
Jarrett's Memphis based Championship Wrestling Association
(CWA) where they debuted as the Freedom Fighters. While
they had incredible physiques and were already being compared
to the Road Warriors, Hellwig and Borden's wrestling skills
were extremely limited. The Freedom Fighters started off
as babyfaces but it didn't take long before they became
heels. Hellwig and Borden were confronted by Phil
Hickerson who mocked them for their million dollar bodies and
two cent brains. The Freedom Fighters feuded with
Hickerson and his old partner the Spoiler.
After
wrestling in the CWA, Hellwig and Borden moved to Bill Watts'
Universal Wrestling Federation where they wrestled as the
Blade Runners. Blade Runner Rock (Hellwig) and Blade
Runner Sting wrestled in the UWF for several months before
Hellwig left for Fritz Von Erich's World Class Championship
Wrestling. Hellwig was renamed the Dingo Warrior and had
a successful stint in WCCW.
Hellwig's next stop was the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)
where he wrestled in dark matches as the Dingo Warrior.
First though, the WWF felt that he had to improve his
ring skills to the point where he was ready
for "prime time". Vince McMahon and other WWF
officials weren't overly impressed with the name the Dingo
Warrior and McMahon felt that the name was too similar to the
Road Warriors and Kerry Von Erich's nickname "The Modern Day
Warrior". After discussing a new name, they asked what
type of warrior he was and they settled on the Ultimate
Warrior.
The
Ultimate Warrior debuted on WWF television against preliminary
wrestler Terry Gibbs. His impressive physique, power
wrestling skills, and incredible charisma made him an instant
hit with WWF fans. The Ultimate Warrior began worked his
way through the ranks of the WWF. His first major
challenge was against the Mighty
Hercules, a member of the Bobby Heenan Family who had
interfered in a match between the Warrior and "King" Harley Race (another member of
the Heenan Family). The Ultimate Warrior amazed fans by
engaging in a tug of war with Hercules using Hercules' chain
and actually snapping the chain! The two battled for a few
months with the Ultimate Warrior defeating Hercules at Wrestlemania IV.
His
winning ways continued as the Ultimate Warrior's popularity
soared. At SummerSlam 1988, the Warrior defeated the Honky Tonk Man (HTM) for
the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship.After a 15 month
reign as the IC champion, the Honky Tonk Man fell to the power
of the Ultimate Warrior. Honky was scheduled to defend
the belt against Brutus "The Barber"
Beefcake but an attack by Ron Bass sidelined
Beefcake. The ever cocky HTM issued an open challenge to
anyone in the dressing room and he soon paid for the mistake
with his title. The Ultimate Warrior raced into the ring
and destroyed the HTM in 35 seconds, winning the IC Title.
Over the next few months the Warrior defended the belt against
the HTM and formed a team to battle the HTM's team at the 1988
Survivor Series.
As the
Warrior continued to defend his title, he found himself
challenged by "Ravishing" Rick Rude.
The muscular Rude challenged the Warrior to a pose-down at the
1989 Royal Rumble. During the Warrior's posedown, he was
sprayed in the face with rubbing alcohol and Rude beat him
down with a steel bar. The two met at Wrestlemania V
where Rude seemed on the way to losing. However when the
Warrior picked Rude up to suplex him, Bobby Heenan tripped the
Ultimate Warrior and held his leg down after Rude fell on top
of him for the win. The Ultimate Warrior gorilla
pressed Heenan after the match but that was little
consideration for losing the title to Rude. For the next few
months the Ultimate Warrior chased Rude for the title.
At SummerSlam 1989, the Warrior regained the Inter-Continental
Title from Rude.
After regaining the belt, the Warrior battled Rude and other
members of the Bobby Heenan Family. At Survivor Series
1989, the Warrior formed a team to defeat a team of members
from the Bobby Heenan Family. The Ultimate Warrior was
on a hot winning streak but in the WWF, babyfaces didn't
wrestle babyfaces so it appeared that the Warrior would have
to settle for the Inter-Continental Title. Or did
he?
At the 1990
Royal Rumble, the Ultimate Warrior cut a promo about how there
were 28 mortals in the Royal Rumble and said that only one man
would provide him with the challenge he craved- Hulk Hogan. At the Royal Rumble,
the Warrior met Hogan in the match and the two battled briefly
before being attacked by other wrestlers. As the weeks
progressed, fans began to talk more and more about who the
better was. The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan teamed
up on Saturday Night's Main Event, defeating Mr. Perfect and
"The Genius" Lanny Poffo. This only fueled the fans'
curiousity as to who the better wrestler was.
In an
unprecedented move, WWF President Frank Tunney signed a
champion vs. champion match for the main event at Wrestlemani
VI in Toronto. Hogan and the Warrior met in an epic
showdown in which both men fought for the upper hand.
Both men seemed to be even matched in size and
strrength. However when Hulk Hogan went for his patented
leg drop finishing move, the Warrior ducked out of the way and
took advantage of the situation by delivering the Ultimate
Splash and pinning Hogan to win the WWF Heavyweight
Championship. Hogan was a gracious sport and he handed
the belt to the Warrior, passing the torch to the new
champion.
As
WWF champion, the Ultimate Warrior took on all challengers,
including Dino Bravo, Ted DiBiase,
and Rick Rude. Through it all, the Warrior continued his
winning ways and held on to the title for the rest of
1990. The Ultimate Warrior started off strong,
beating up Sgt. Slaughter along with his Iraqi entourage, and
destroying the flag of Iraq for good measure. To
everyone's surprise, "Sensational" Sherri Martel showed up and
watched the match at ringside. Earlier on, "The Macho King" Randy
Savage issued a challenge to the Ultimate Warrior
but the Warrior told him that he was not worthy of a title
shot. During the title match, Martel grabbed the
Ultimate Warrior's leg and the Warrior chased her back to the
dressing room. During his pursuit of Martel, he was
ambushed by "The Macho King". Savage picked up a piece
of lighting equipment and blasted the Warrior with it, leaving
him senseless on the ground. The Warrior was beat up so
badly that he had to crawl to the ring to face
Slaughter. Sgt. Slaughter prevented the referee from
counting the Warrior out and he watched with anticipation as
the Warrior crawled back to the ring. Despite all this,
the Warrior fought back and nearly defeated Slaughter until
"the Macho King" blasted the Warrior over the head with a ruby
scepter. Slaughter capitalized on this and pinned the
Warrior for the belt.
After
Savage's interference, the Ultimate Warrior had one goal in
mind- to rid the WWF of Randy Savage. At Wrestlemania
VII, the two met in a retirement match with the loser having
to retire from professional wrestling. Savage (aided by
his valet "Sensational" Sherri Martel administered a
devastating offensive barrage to the Ultimate Warrior
including his finisher the flying elbowsmashes. Despite
the fact that he administered several of the elbowsmashes,
Savage could not put the Warrior away and in the end, the
Ultimate Warrior was victorious and Savage was out of a job
(although circumstances would eventually transpire in which he
would return to the squared circle).
With the
Ultimate Warrior's attention focused on Savage, Hulk
Hogan challenged Sgt. Slaughter for the WWF Title and won it
at Wrestlemania VII. However the war with Slaughter was
just beginning and when Slaughter's Iraqi comrades Colonel Mustafa and General Adnan
conspired to rid the world of Hulk Hogan. Since ths
score with Slaughter had never been settled, the Ultimate
Warrior welcomed the opportunity to face Slaughter and he
teamed with Hulk Hogan at SummerSlam in the "Match Made in
Hell" in a handicap match against Slaughter, Adnan, and
Mustafa. The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan defeated the
three heels but after SummerSlam, the Ultimate Warrior
disappeared from the WWF.
In the
recently released WWE DVD The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate
Warrior, Vince McMahon explains that before SummerSlam, the
Ultimate Warrior demanded a pay-off or he would not wrestle at
SummerSlam. McMahon reluctantly agreed to the pay-off
but fired the Ultimate Warrior after the match.
According to an account on the Warrior's web page, the story
is that there was a dispute over money owed to the Ultimate
Warrior for Wrestlemania VII and that the WWF repeatedly
delayed in resolving the dispute and that McMahon fired the
Ultimate Warrior after he pressed for a resolution. In
any event, the Warrior was gone from the WWF.
At Wrestlemania
VIII, fans were shocked to see the Ultimate Warrior return to
the WWF after a nearly year-long absence. He ran out to
the ring to save Hulk Hogan from a two on one beating at the
hands of Papa Shango and Sid Justice. The Ultimate
Warrior then became involved in a bizarre feud with Papa
Shango, a heel who professed to practice voodoo. WWF
cameras captured an unholy ceremony in which Papa Shango
apparently cast a curse on the Ultimate Warrior. While
some fans were skeptical, Papa Shango had displayed unusual
abilities against opponents in the past such as the time he
once set a preliminary wrestler's foot on fire before the
match without laying a hand on him. After casting the
curse, there was an incident in which the Warrior
collapsed in the ring and began vomiting. There
was no medical explanation for this and some wondered if Papa
Shango's voodoo was more than just a psychological ploy
against opponents. Things became even stranger when a
blackish liquid began to ooze from the Warrior's head during a
promo directed at Papa Shango. Despite these
unexplainable events, the Ultimate Warrior met Papa Shango and
defeated him.
During the Ultimate
Warrior's second run in the WWF, he made minor changes to his
look such as cutting his hair and having a slightly different
musculature. This and his absence from the ring caused
some funs to speculate that the Ultimate Warrior had been
replaced by a new wrestler and that the original Warrior had
died. However no one has ever taken this speculation
seriously save for a few highly imaginative fans.
In the summer of
1992, the Ultimate Warrior appeared on Paul Bearer's talk show
segment "The Funeral Parlor". During an interview, the
Undertaker stepped out of a coffin and blasted the Warrior
with a steel urn. Bearer and the Undertaker then locked
the Ultimate Warrior in an airtight coffin. WWF
officials raced to the scene, as fans could hear the Warrior
trying to break out. After what seemed like an eternity
to fans, WWE officials finally broke the coffin open,
revealing an unconscious Warrior.
The Warrior
was bewildered by the experience and turned to Jake "The Snake" Roberts for help in
understanding the path of darkness. Roberts agreed to
help the Ultimate Warrior and over the next few weeks, he
prepared various ordeals for the Ultimate Warrior to
undergo. One of them involved the Warrior being buried
up to his neck in a graveyard. The final challenge came
when Roberts instructed the Warrior to go into a darkened
room. When the lights went on, the Warrior found himself
in a room full of snakes! Roberts had led the Ultimate
Warrior into a trap and it was soon revealed that Roberts was
working with the Undertaker and Paul Bearer.
The
previous year's troubles with the WWF soon found themselves
repeated in 1992 when the Warrior was fired from the
WWF. Various reasons have been mentioned such as a
failed drug test or contract dispute. Vince McMahon
hinted at the WWF's drug testing policy having led to the
Warrior's dismissal while the Warrior has suggested that he
was fired due to a pending government investigation into the
WWF. Whatever the cause, the Ultimate Warrior totally
disappeared from the WWF and would not return for seveal
years.
During the Monday Night
War, Vince McMahon decided to see if the Ultimate Warrior
could help the WWF in its battle with World Championship
Wrestling (WCW). After much hype, the Ultimate Warrior
returned to the WWF in 1996 at Wrestlemania XII where he met
and defeated Hunter Hearst Helmsley.
The Ultimate Warrior battled opponents such as Goldust, Isaac
Yankem, Owen Hart, and Jerry "The King" Lawler for a few
months before he left the WWF again. The WWF suspended
the Ultimate Warrior, alleging that he had missed several
house shows without reason and he would be reinstated upon
posting an appearance bond to guarantee that he showed up for
matches he was advertised for.
As before, it
was only a matter of time before the Ultimate Warrior returned
to the ring. This time though he chose to wrestle
somewhere besides the WWF. In 1998 the Warrior appeared
in WCW to challenge Hollywood Hulk Hogan and the New World
Order (NWO). The Ultimate Warrior began a psychological
war against Hogan, forming his own faction called the One
Warrior Nation (OWN) and abducting Hogan's longtime friend the Disciple as its first member. Like
his last period in WWF, the Warrior did not remain long in
WCW. At Halloween Havoc, the Ultimate Warrior lost to
Hulk Hogan after outside interference. The Warrior
disappeared from WCW.
Since that time,
the Warrior has gone on the lecture circuit where he discusses
his conservative political views. He has also voiced his
opinion on a number of issues at his home page.
Recently, the Warrior lent his likeness to the last version of
the Legends of Wrestling video game series.
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He turned
down an offer to appear on a WWE Smackdown video game as
well as an offer to participate in a WWE produced DVD
about his career. The DVD entitled "The Self-
Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" cast
the Ultimate Warrior in a negative light and he has
responded to some of the comments made in the DVD
on his web
site. | | 
