I was planning to do a best of the interweb post today but I thought that I would use this space to pay tribute to The Ultimate Warrior instead. I had a few favourite wrestlers growing up. I was a Hulkamaniac like everyone else. Being Canadian, Bret Hart was one of my favourites. Then there were the heels, Mr. Perfect and Ted DiBiase, who were just too good to hate (and/or feuding with Virgil who was terrible and not worth the time, even to a kid).

The most unique wrestler of them all, and another of my favourites, was the Ultimate Warrior. He wasn’t as swollen as Hogan but he looked more muscular. He didn’t have the most coherent interviews but you couldn’t help but be captivated. He had the coolest ring music and entrance in the Fed. And many, many years down the road, I figured out that he could work matches too. (I’ll explain.)

So let’s look back on some of the best and most memorable moments of The Ultimate Warrior’s career.

First Title Win vs. Honky Tonk Man (1988)

The Ultimate Warrior joined the WWF in June 1987 as The Dingo Warrior, his gimmick in World Class Championship Wrestling, on house shows and in dark matches but didn’t make TV debut until October of that year.

While Warrior wasn’t a technical mastermind like many of the stars of the NWA, the WWE’s pre-Hulkamania era or some of the stars in the WWE undercard, that didn’t stop the Madison Square Garden crowd from going absolutely bananas (to borrow a common Gorilla Monsoon phrase) when Warrior came out to challenge for the Intercontinental title. He had been on TV for 10 months, which was a shorter period of time than Honky held the IC belt, and the crowd was absolutely mental for him. This guy was something special to be getting Hogan level reactions on the undercard after only a few months.

The Showdown with Hogan at Royal Rumble 1990

While Hogan vs. Warrior was the first face vs. face main event that the WWE ran, they gave it a little bit of a teaser at the preceding Royal Rumble. While the Fed always relied on face Hogan vs. the heel of the month, putting the two most over guys in the company in the same ring was a big risk. If people were excited for it, it would pay off big time but would they be drawn into a match between two of their heroes and not knowing who to cheer for?

The fans at the Rumble ate it up and that was what convinced the WWE higher-ups to go ahead with the plan to pit Hogan against the Warrior at WrestleMania VI. Prior to that, the most recent plan was Hogan vs. Mr. Perfect. Fans were so excited for Hogan vs. Warrior that the plan was changed and the torch was passed.

By the way, keep your eyes on Bobby Heenan at the bottom of the screen. His clients were long gone but he stuck around to watch the action. The Brain really deserved his nickname. He did have the best seat in the house for this showdown, after all.

WrestleMania VI Promos (1990)

Before you can wrestle a match, you have to build it up to sell tickets and pay-per-view buys. The hype of the first Champion vs. Champion / Title for Title match should have been enough to sell it. Instead, you have Warrior, a super face, cutting dark, almost heel-ish promos.

His two pre-match promos are the stuff of legend or infamy… or both. He goes off the deep end in his monologues but he also channels a bit of Jake Roberts. He isn’t doing the typical shouty big man promos of the 80s. Warrior might be considered a guy that goes a million miles an hour but he could dial it back to get some story across. Even if the story doesn’t make sense, he was a captivating speaker.

WrestleMania VI vs. Hulk Hogan (1990)

Prior to the Rumble, there were three planned opponents for Hogan. Zeus from Ready to Rumble was supposed to feud with Hogan from Summerslam 1989 through Mania 6. When he wasn’t working out, the plan switched to Savage. Mr. Perfect was originally supposed to win the Royal Rumble and get a big push, probably into the main event at WM6, but Hogan nixed Perfect’s win and took the Rumble himself.

When Hogan and Warrior faced off in the Royal Rumble, the plan for Hogan/Warrior was set in stone. The resulting match had a properly big match feel. The promos, the buildup, the match and the crowd all had this intangible big match feel that made The Ultimate Challenge seem as big as WrestleMania III’s main event.

Unlike Hogan’s other WM main events, this match had 50/50 booking. Hogan and Warrior would each take turns controlling the match while the other sells. Even the ending had Warrior counter Hogan’s big leg drop to pick up the win with Hogan kicking out at a 3.1 count. That was a big departure from the standard kick-out of finisher, Hulk-up, win that Hogan always did. Like any great match, the crowd was into it the whole time, either man could have won, both men ended the match strongly without anyone getting buried and the winner wasn’t something you could have predicted until the final bell.

Like at WM4, Hogan had to drop the belt so he could film a movie. In 1988, it was No Holds Barred. In 1990, he went to film Suburban Commando which is where he found Mark Callaway, AKA The Undertaker. Warrior, on the other hand, was sandbagged by feuding with Rick Rude which wasn’t a fresh feud or a big drawing heel and being the third-wheel in the Legion of Doom / Demolition feud.

WrestleMania VII vs. Randy Savage (1991)

At the start of this post, I said that Warrior could work a decent match. No one should agree with me. Technically, he was a dangerous worker and had a limited move set. However, he could work matches with his opponents to make everyone look good.

Sure Pat Patterson deserves most of the credit for working out matches with Hogan and Hercules and Andre but there’s a difference between Warrior and Hogan. If you’ve seen one Hogan match, you’ve seen them all. He goes on the offense, sells for a bit, Hulks up and wins. That’s every Hogan match.

Warrior has had everything from ugly squashes to technical gems. While he runs around a lot and hits clotheslines, shoulder blocks and splashes, he’s also capable of wrestling great matches and different types of matches. His matches against Rick Rude are very different than the Hogan match which in turn is different than the matches with Savage. Warrior might have been a bit limited as a wrestler but that doesn’t mean he can’t tell a story and wrestle a great match.

Savage was known for putting together his matches ahead of time which is considered a bit of a faux pas in wrestling because tradition states matches should be called on the fly with only big spots planned ahead of time. However, Savage crafted a brilliant match against Warrior at WM7 (though the ending had no heat because Warrior didn’t use his finisher). To his credit, Warrior pulled his weight and looked like a million bucks as a result. Some guys are able to elevate their game when the occasion calls for it and that’s what Warrior does. He seldom held a match back from being great. That’s not a popular interpretation of Warrior’s in-ring skill but the guy could work when he wanted to.

The WrestleMania VIII Return (1992)

After WrestleMania VII, Warrior renegotiated his contract with Vince. He became the highest paid guy in the company, with the biggest base salary, a bigger cut of the live gate and weekends off except for TV. It was a deal that made him the top dog in the company. Considering that Hogan/Slaughter was such a terrible draw that they moved the show from the LA Memorial Coliseum to the LA Sports Arena, it may not have been the worst idea Vince had.

The story differs depending on who you talk to. Vince’s story is that Warrior held him up for the money and threatened to no-show Summerslam ’91 if he didn’t raise his pay. The other widely accepted tale is that Vince offered him the deal in July but tried backing out right before Summerslam. Warrior wasn’t going for that so Vince suspended him after the pay-per-view for being unprofessional. It was supposed to be a 90 day suspension but lasted through Mania VIII.

The finish to Hogan/Sid at WM8 was a well-known disaster. Papa Shango missed his cue so Sid kicked out of Hogan’s leg drop because that wasn’t the finish and it was no-sold by Heenan and Monsoon. Harvey Whippleman jumped up on the apron to save the match and Earl Hebner called for the DQ to keep this from going entirely off the rails. Shango comes out late which confuses everyone. The only thing that did work was Warrior returning to a massive pop from the crowd.

He was off TV for about eight months and no one forgot him and he was still the hottest face in the company. He was so hot after that layoff and return that Vince put him in the title match at Summerslam ’92 against Savage because he thought he was a bigger draw than Ric Flair. That’s the same Ric Flair that’s considered the best wrestler in North American wrestling history. Maybe the biggest Warrior mark in the world is actually Vincent Kennedy McMahon himself.

Squashing Triple H at WrestleMania XII (1996)

Before he slept and buddied his way to the top, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, now known as Triple H, got buried by Warrior at WrestleMania 12. Warrior even no-sold the Pedigree. I guess Hunter took some lessons because he’s been burying people ever since.

He’s in the Mirror (WCW 1998)

The Warrior’s WCW run was nothing short of pointless and bizarre. The whole point of it was for Hogan to get his win back from the Warrior in a match that was nearly a decade in the past when this angle ran.

When he jumped from the Fed to WCW, the Warrior gained magic powers that allowed him to knock people out with smoke, teleport and appear in the mirror. That last power was the subject of a WrestleCrap worthy segment on WCW Monday Nitro. The ironic thing was that Hogan was supposed to be the crazy one but the only person who didn’t see Warrior in the mirror was Eric Bischoff. Turns out Easy E was the insane one.

The Warrior Returns in a WWE 2K14 Ad (2013)

Since he left the Fed in 1996, Warrior had been on bad terms with Vince and the WWE. I don’t know how they came to terms on Warrior’s return from suspension in 1992 or his rehiring in 1996 given the bad blood but somehow, calmer heads always prevailed.

It wasn’t really revealed who got in touch with whom over Warrior becoming a playable character in WWE 2K14 but whoever it was should be given a massive promotion and raise. The return of the Warrior, in facepaint, for a game and its ad was one of my favourite moments in gaming in 2013. I give this video its own post on et geekera. I loved it.

His Final Promo (April 7, 2014)

You can read a lot into everything in hindsight, Warrior’s final promo in a WWE ring included. He spent his final time in a wrestling ring talking about his own mortality, his legacy and the fans. Granted, dark matter such as mortality (and immortality) was often a part of vintage Warrior promos. It was part of the reason everyone thought he died between Summerslam ’91 and WrestleMania VIII. I don’t think we wanted it to be as prophetic as it ended up being.