WWE – Ultimate Warrior: The Ultimate DVD Collection

Timing is everything in wrestling. When Jim Hellwig decided to listen to those around him on the body building circuit to look into working for a wrestling promotion, leaving his plans to become a chiropractor on hold, he would become a character like no other in an era of professional wrestling that saw characters who were more comic book caricatures than they were tough guys playing a slightly augmented version of themselves.

And yet as I write this, and as I was watching this DVD collection, it seemed that once again that timing was eerie. Of course, watching any figure’s retrospective so close to their death, it is easy to read too much into things, but at times this really feels like a requiem; a peace-offering to make amends between both parties.

The accompanying musical score is beautiful, often soaring. Watching without knowing, you could easily assume that you were watching a piece about a man who was no longer alive when the company had put it together. But watching knowing that when he died things were peaceful in his life makes such a difference given how confrontational and inciting WWE’s previous DVD on Warrior had been.

WWE’s DVD releases like this tend to take one of three formats: the sit down interview, followed by matches (see Triple H’s recent release); the matches without the sit down (a la Goldberg’s) and the sit down interspersed with matches. This release follows the latter and frustratingly just gets going on a topic only to cut it short as we’re whisked off back to the 80s for a squash match. Warrior is as direct as you’d expect so, when he’s cut off, it feels like there’s more that we’re not being told. And of course there often is. It is visible at times that he is withholding things, choosing not to go into detail or being protective of himself or the company.

What Warrior has to say here is rarely new, if ever, but hearing him say it is still a pleasure. He talks with great verve about his time in wrestling and really very clearly felt strongly about what his character was and how it should have been handled and performed. If you weren’t to know much about pro wrestling, listening to him wouldn’t be too far removed from a method actor or performance artist talking about their stage craft. Evidently, he enjoyed immersing himself in the role of the Ultimate Warrior and loved the challenge of having to decipher what the character would and should do in any given situation or programme.

Matches here include Ultimate Warrior against Hogan, Slaughter, Savage, Honky Tonk Man, Harley Race, Undertaker, André the Giant, Mr Perfect, Rick Rude, Triple H and Ted DiBiase.

The story starts with the chiropractor, turned body builder, who became Mr Georgia in 1984 and was a junior national level bodybuilder. We’re told about working for Turner, training with Red Bastien – training in a ring “that had been set up in a racket ball court” – and Warrior notes that he “wasn’t smartened up.” He was given ten hours training and then he and Sting sent out fliers. They were the ‘Freedom Frighters’; they were naïve and green but they knew that they wanted to be like the Road Warriors in terms of their style, their face-painted look and the way they carried themselves.

Watching the Ultimate Warrior get over is tangible on this collection. No doubt his uncanny resemblance to Kerry Von Erich helped in the early days where a heel run was soon turned face by the fans. Examination of the early matches here reveals how good he eventually was given how weak he was from the outset - not just in terms of his wrestling but as a whole character; talker and performer. Warrior says that this happened because of “practice” and puts over working with so many great teachers in the early days with WWF – they had called him to work in Tyler, Texas in 1987 and before he knew it he was “given a stack of plane tickets” and was “on the road for 43 days straight.”

Although you never get a sense that he was one of the boys, he certainly gives some people their dues. He praises Bobby Heenan, “he was my age then – he was older, not old […] he took amazing bumps and was always keen to give them a good show,” (a disturbing quote when you read it now) but he particularly explains how much he enjoyed working with Randy Savage, who he saw as very similar to himself, “working with Randy was the best.” He notes how their characters were so out there that you could really do anything with them and it wouldn’t be considered too odd. He recalls being in an 8 by 10 room, doing promos over and over, “for 5 hours” and that Randy was just the same, “he was very disciplined […] he’d get wired on coffee […] it was inspiring how he lived the gimmick.”

The amplified character that was ‘wired’ is really how we view that character when watching him today. Kids will have seen a superhero but to adults, they were watching a man who, as he notes, “rarely got home” and “survived on 3 hours sleep per night.” He recalls liking the challenge of being pushed like that and felt that Vince knew that he could be counted on. As soon as he’d won the title, though, within a few days he remembers thinking, “now, what next?”

Despite this ill at ease feeling and, especially given his reputation, he certainly comes across as reasonable and amenable when given the time to talk about his career. He remembers André the Giant fondly, “he was always in a good mood […] he wasn’t moody like people say. He had fun with the business; he had no patience for people who didn’t want to enjoy what they were doing in life.” He claims to have liked many ideas and storylines that he was a part of: dropping the belt to Sergeant Slaughter during the Gulf War; the retirement match with Randy; being put in a coffin by the fresh-faced Undertaker about which he quips, “was the most rest I’d had in months.”

The only times where we’re given a glimpse into his notoriously difficult side are when he talks about going against Vince. For WrestleMania 6, when he got to the Sky Dome he said, “it’s a long f***ing way to the ring, man.” But he told them that he wouldn’t be using the karts that they had ready for the performers and after some rather nervy employees being sent to tell Vince, Vince let it go. He says that he enjoyed telling Vince to ‘f-off’.

On leaving the company, for the second time, in 1992 here merely says, “I left […] they brought in Perfect instead.” Then we see a very pregnant pause and a big sigh before he says “and I was gone. I was gone for a long time after that.”

Clearly, steroids are never mentioned but he does touch on a point that most of us remember upon his return after he had left in 1991. We all saw a man who looked half the previous incarnation of the character; some thought he was a different man altogether, an imposter. Warrior looked at himself and said “I needed to get my shit together with my training,” claiming that he would only have “tuna fish and water” from then on.

Towards the end of the documentary footage, he really gets into his stride. His comments on people in the industry and on Hogan and Bischoff would seem to ring true. He notes that promoters would call him about coming out of retirement and “act like they were doing me a favour.” Hogan had contacted him a few times and “he always used the same shtick and the same clichés.” In the end, he came back for a short term deal, for a lot of money but claims that “they [WCW; Hogan, Bischoff] didn’t want to put the energy in to it.”

Amusingly, he notes that “Bischoff would turn up an hour before television and throw around ‘spontaneity’, telling everyone that they needed to be spontaneous” but really nobody knew what they were doing, “they used Turner’s cheque book to get me to turn up and lose to Hulk – I took the money but really I didn’t feel good about it. It was repulsive to me when I finally realised it. If I had really have known it, I would never have gone back for all the money that they gave me.”

Ultimately, hearing Warrior talk with such passion about living and breathing the character of the Ultimate Warrior sours this DVD collection when you realise that in order to become this much-loved, idolised character, he was taking short-cuts that would eventually cut his life short.  But time really means everything to Warrior and feels very much a part of what should be noted about his career.

Overwhelmingly, he was a superstar but one who only had a limited shelf life - watching his promo from Nitro with Hogan, when he returned to the ring in 1998, shows that he didn’t belong in that era. He ends the interview by giving us a sense that he was making a fresh start with the company, turning over a new leaf, and that this was just the beginning. Tragically, his time was about to be up. The fact that he was able to do and say all of this as well as making a Hall of Fame speech, appearing at WrestleMania once more and speaking on Raw before he died seems poetic and just.