So Long, Ultimate Warrior

Photo via Bodybuilding-Forum

Sometimes, even pro wrestling can’t be fake enough. As TMZ reported yesterday evening, the man known to early 90s wrestling fans as the “Ultimate Warrior” – and whose legal name was, in fact, just “Warrior” – died on Tuesday. His death came suddenly and just one day after his return to the WWE ring on Monday Night Raw, when Warrior walked from his hotel to his car, hand in hand with his wife.

Just this past Saturday, he’d been inducted in WWE’s Hall of Fame and held his first speech in front of a WWE audience (and WWE wrestlers) in decades. On Monday, his first appearance on an actual WWE TV show was also his last; a final salute to the comic antics, neon makeup and ring rope shaking of yesteryear.

On Raw, Warrior (who was born James Brian Hellwig before he realised a name change would earn him more royalty cheques) also gave his final speech, which shocked many fans for its concise and mentally stable qualities. While his classic promos were notorious for their remarkable rhetoric – talking about, among other things, space ships, mystical energies and the powers from beyond – his final Raw segment was more about his real-life journey of becoming a legend thanks to his fans. In hindsight, it seems like a perfectly (yet perfidiously) timed punch-line to his life, which needed the same dramatic closure as a wrestling match.

Here’s a transcript of his last TV words:

“No WWE talent becomes a legend on their own. Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them bleed deeper in something that's larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalised by the storytellers – by the loyalty, by the memory of those who honour him, and make the running the man did live forever. You, you, you, you, you are the legend-makers of Ultimate Warrior.”

This final act of conciliation between Warrior and WWE also put an end to a decade-old feud full of estrangement and cold war. According to WWE, it all started with Warrior blackmailing WWE’s chairman Vince McMahon during a live pay-per-view Wrestlemania, when Warrior decided his million-dollar fee wasn’t big enough and he allegedly extorted a few extra million out of the organisation. McMahon accepted the conditions, but fired him immediately afterwards – leading to a dirty PR war that culminated in a nine-hour DVD called The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior, which portrayed Warrior as a delusional character who didn’t understand the business, didn’t know his moves and was a threat to his opponents.

However, after decades of both parties flexing their muscles, it was all water under the bridge in 2014. Just recently, it was reported that Warrior and WWE came to terms on a new contract that would have seen Warrior act as a “WWE ambassador”. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see his own renaissance – but his legend survives and, even after all the years, still upholds his character as the central and most iconic figure of Hulk Hogan’s “take your vitamins” era, when pro wrestling became known as the arena for larger-than-life mutants fighting PG-rated wars for justice while defying logic and gravity. It seems his legend is as immune to media attacks as his in-ring character was to blows and clotheslines from his opponents.

Image from the Warrior Facebook Page

Sure, if you re-watch certain matches now, you don’t need any WWE propaganda to see the problems his co-workers must have had with his stiff style and uncoordinated attacks. Sometimes you did get the impression that Warrior didn’t know there was a script, let alone what it said. But even though he was never the most technically skilled, athletically gifted or most team-oriented player in the business, his matches were a testament to the idea of what pro wrestling is all about. What better way to pay tribute to your fans than to immerse yourself so completely in your fake fights that you forget they're not real?

It is said that the best wrestlers are those who identify with their roles to the largest possible degree. From Dick “The Destroyer” Beyer, who wore his mask to his bedroom, to the “Undertaker”, who still doesn’t give interviews as Mark Calaway, this is probably still true. Following this definition, there really wasn’t any better wrestler than the Warrior. We love to watch wrestling because its performers actually live out every child’s dream of playing characters all the time, without even once having to be serious or follow any rules other than the simple ones you agreed on when you established your little alternate game-universe. Sure, Hulk Hogan and – on the other side of the changing of the guard – today’s hero John Cena are equally over-the-top in their performances and also rely heavily on hyperbole to blow-up their fights to epic proportions. But they fool absolutely nobody into believing that they would, even for a minute, fall for their own spiel.

Photo by Brian Wilkins

With Warrior, you never knew if he even read the script. His character was just as ultimate as his name suggested: He was the last resort of all gimmicks, the last stop on the way to total “comicification”, the fulfillment of the principle behind pro wrestling.

In his best matches, Warrior seemed like a narcissistic child caught up in a feedback loop with himself. The concept of the Warrior was self-contained and complete. And, perhaps weirdest of all, somehow everything made sense in the context of his megalomaniacal persona. Even his entrance music, to which he used to storm into the ring like a delinquent who'd just escaped the electric chair. Even his overall outfit, his neon face-paint and enough other wild shit to briefly make him Ke$ha’s fashion icon a few years back.

And of course, there was his wresting style, which actually didn’t tend to matter at all, because he'd already whipped everyone watching him into a frenzy before the fight even began.

For every bad thing you could say about him, there are at least two good ones. In the end, he wasn’t a tragic hero. He was a complete one. Now the storyline’s over, the bell has rung and the feedback loop is locked close for eternity. Rest in peace, Ultimate Wrestling Icon. Never again will anybody shake the ring ropes as intensely and beautifully as you did.

@wurstzombie