Athletes - Warrior

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	Athletes - Warrior

"The Warrior" redirects here, for the South Korean movie The Warrior, see Musa (film).

Warrior (born Brian James Hellwig on June 16, 1959 in Williamsport, Indiana), is a former American professional wrestler known to many as The Ultimate Warrior, one of the most well-known characters in the history of the business. He legally changed his name to Warrior in 1993.

Career

Early career

Warrior began his pro wrestling career as Jim "Justice" Hellwig of Powerteam USA, a group of bodybuilders formed in 1985 by Red Bastien and Rick Bassman, but the gimmick went under when they discovered that, in their estimation, the team had limited wrestling potential. All four men were being trained by Bastien and Bassman during this period.

Of the four members of Powerteam USA, only Hellwig and Steve "Flash" Borden had subsequent wrestling careers (Borden went on to become Sting). They formed a tag team called The Blade Runners with Warrior as Blade Runner Rock when they wrestled in the UWF and on the independent circuit, but the group ended, and Warrior became Dingo Warrior for a short period in WCCW. After WCCW, Jim Hellwig signed with the WWF and was given the name Ultimate Warrior.

WWF Career

As a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) superstar from the mid-80s to the early 90s, the Ultimate Warrior was known for his high-energy wrestling style and his Gorilla Press Slam, in which he would lift his opponent over his head like a barbell and then drop him to the mat face-first, following up with a running splash for his finisher. Because of Warrior's slim wrestling ability, his matches were generally kept short and frantic, featuring a handful of power moves. The Ultimate Warrior's ring entrances featured him racing into the arena at full speed, bursting into the ring, and violently shaking the ropes up and down. Warrior's string of fast-paced sub-5:00 matches ended up being a fundamental key to his popularity (The same routine later popularized Bill Goldberg). He was also known for his distinctive pattern of face painting.

The Ultimate Challenge

Warrior enjoyed two stints as Intercontinental Champion, defeating The Honky Tonk Man (in thirty - two seconds at the first ever SummerSlam in 1988) and Rick Rude before achieving main event status. He was heralded as the wrestler to carry the torch after the pending retirement of Hulk Hogan in 1990. Many credit Rick Rude for being able to make the less technically sound Warrior look like a polished wrestler. Ultimate Warrior defeated Hogan on April 1, 1990, at SkyDome in Toronto, Ontario in the main event (which was billed "The Ultimate Challenge") of WrestleMania VI. He held the belt until the Royal Rumble in January 1991.

Warrior was fired from the WWF in 1991 over a pay dispute with WWF owner Vince McMahon. He had threatened to quit before a match at Summerslam teaming him with Hulk Hogan against Sgt. Slaughter and his evil Iraqi allies.

The Return

Upon returning, he received a degree of creative control over his bookings. Many fans may remember the Papa Shango storyline, in which the "witch doctor" cast a spell over Warrior, causing him to convulse and vomit.

Rumors and urban legends sometimes still persist that the original Ultimate Warrior and Dingo Warrior were not the same as the one who came back in 1992, 1996, and 1998, and it was believed that the original Warrior had died. When the Ultimate Warrior returned to the WWF in 1992, it was rumored that Kerry Von Erich was playing the part, since Warrior's hair was much shorter than before. However this has been shown time and time again not to be the case, as the character had always been played by Jim Hellwig. The reason for this confusion is a storyline which featured Warrior being "locked in an air-tight coffin" by Undertaker (whom he was feuding with at the time), and his musculature's drastic changes stemming from the amount of steroids he was using at any given time.

The WWF Steroid Scandal

Late in 1992, Warrior was scheduled to be the tag team partner of Randy Savage (who lost to Warrior in a memorable retirement match at WrestleMania VII) at Survivor Series. Weeks before the event, however, Warrior and WWF were at odds again, arguing over who had creative rights to the Ultimate Warrior name as well as creative differences as to how the Warrior's character should be used. Though this put his WWF future in doubt, the WWF states that his reason for leaving was a "violation" found in his system during a random drug test. This, of course, conveniently happened at the height of Warrior's ongoing marketing/financial differences with Vince McMahon, the owner and CEO of Titan Sports and World Wrestling Federation; this also occurred when Titan Sports—and specifically, the WWF—was under intense scrutiny of its drug policies, including "performance-enhancing" drugs (i.e. steroids). To the contrary, Warrior states on his that his reasons for leaving were due to (1) his disagreements over compensation and marketing rights, and (2) that after his title victory over Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania VI, he felt he had achieved the height of his career; anything less was bound to be anti-climatic. (In a sense, this was true, since at that time, Hulk Hogan was looked at as being virtually undefeatable.) Warrior's character was slated to begin a feud with Nailz, a mid-card wrestler, and Warrior felt that he was being slowly and unceremoniously pushed out of the spotlight in order to make way for Hogan's return to glory. The WWE however, denied that a Warrior/Nailz feud was in the works on The Self Destruction of The Ultimate Warrior DVD, and they said they were trying to start a Nailz/Undertaker feud at the time of Warrior's release.

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