SGM Review: The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior

I've been a wrestling fan for as long as I can remember; my formative years consisted mainly of TBS' Saturday night wrestling programming comprised of Georgia Championship Wrestling and various other Southern staples of the NWA variety. The WWF was something of a rarity to me back then, for whatever reason. I vaguely remember digging the Junkyard Dog and the Hart Foundation and knowing "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and others from the Saturday morning cartoon. Hazy memories of watching the infamous "evil twin screwjob" match between Hogan and Andre on Saturday Night's Main Event float through my brain like so much detritus. I didn't watch much wrestling between 1990 and 1994, but when I returned to the fold my programming of choice was the WWF, although in a two year period between the Royal Rumble in 1994 and whenever it was that the WWF turned all of the non-Monday night programming into recap garbage I was watching approximately twelve hours of wrestling a week from all three of the big three promotions (WWF, WCW and ECW), plus renting various wrestling tapes from the local rental stores to catch up on all that I missed when I was away.

One part of that history that I missed was the Ulitmate Warrior. I knew of him mainly from the first WWF arcade game, Superstars, where the Warrior would press slam his opponent out of the squared circle and onto the protective blue mat that surrounded the ring. I eventually saw most of his big matches from the four major PPVs of the era: the Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam, and Survivor Series, plus other random appearance on the old Coliseum Video compilation tapes. Crappy matches abound when dealing with the Warrior; he was a 'roided up body with coked up eyes, poofed up hair and whacked out interviews who ran like a madman into the ring, bounced around for about two minutes with a few ragdoll tosses of his opponent thrown in for good measure, got the pinfall and then ran back to the dressing room. And that was that.

What catching up on the early 90s in professional wrestling through the haphazard renting and borrowing of tapes lacked was continuity. I would occasionally rent tapes in an order that followed certain feuds, usually the Undertaker or Bret Hart, but most of what I knew about the Ultimate Warrior was disjointed. A Wrestlemania here, a Survivor Series there. This Summerslam, that Royal Rumble. And given his relatively short tenure in the WWF, four quarterly pay-per-view appearances didn't tell much of the story at all. The rest was filled in as I discovered the Internet Wrestling Community, a group of retarded, basement-dwelling homos with their own water-brained ideas for how professional wrestling should really be. Various retellings of this incident or that incident when the Ultimate Warrior ran howling from the business that made him a star, looped out of his head on psilocybin or LSD or a mixture of coke and steroids; stories that in a business with no objective truth have no objective value. The truth is whatever the last person to tell you about it says it is; if you weren't there, it didn't happen.

But the Ultimate Warrior has a perverse appeal, even to someone like myself who has fairly refined tastes in professional wrestling. A man with a short shelf life, in the big picture of history and the small picture of the single match. Blazing, adrenaline rushing entrance music, the sprint to the ring, the shoulder block, the second shoulder block, the third shoulder block, the press slam, the flying press, the pinfall. The mesmerizingly insane promos about outer space and dead Warriors of the past and unborn Warriors of the future and fuck knows what else the voices in his head were shouting at him at any given moment. And, as with all wrestlers who were ever given the top billing on any show that drew more than fifteen people, an over-inflated sense of self-worth. No humility, no understanding of the business, nothing about Jim Hellwig that should in any way endure him to anyone who has ever watched the Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels Iron Man Match at Wrestlemania XII or Chris Benoit and Edde Guerrero bust their asses in a wrestling ring and enjoyed every minute of it.

So when the WWE announced the release of "The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" on DVD, I knew I had to see it. Not just see it, but own it. Prior to this weekend I owned not one single DVD containing professional wrestling. I, who have watched at least ten-thousand hours of professional wrestling in my lifetime, had not purchased any professional wrestling on the best medium for archival footage yet offered, promptly bought "The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" for $16 dollars at Wal-Mart. Then I went home and watched as the WWE did everything possible to bury Jim Hellwig for no other reason than that was as they were wont to do. To remake history in their own image.

The reality is, there was very little for the WWE to do to bury Jim Hellwig but to tell the truth. Or at least, the ostensible truth, what they want you to know as they will presumably be the last people to tell you about it. Honestly, I know to take what Vince McMahon says about Hellwig holding him up for more money at SummerSlam '91 and Hellwig's disappearance in 1996 with a grain of salt. The same goes for what Triple H says about his experience with Hellwig at Wrestlemania XII and anything Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff say about anything, especially that relating to whatever the WWE wants them to talk about now that the WWE is the only game in town for two limelight addicts who have only ever gotten limelight from one business.

Jim Ross is a company man and so are Bruce Prichard and Gene Okerlund. Ted DiBiase is more or less in the same boat as Hogan and Bischoff. The only man whose opinion is given on this DVD that I'd believe without thinking about is Bobby Heenan and even he sounds unneccesarily angry about Hellwig's rise in the business.

The story starts with the Warrior's beginnings in a tag team with the man who would eventually be called Sting, the Blade Runners. Jerry Lawler tells a story of how green they were when they worked the Memphis territory, although he knew they would both be stars one day. They move on to the Warrior's days as the Dingo Warrior in WCCW and the UWF, then to his signing with the WWF. McMahon didn't plan to use the Warrior name, as the Road Warriors were popular at the time and one of the von Erich boys was calling himself the "Modern Day Warrior" in Texas. A discussion with Prichard led to McMahon expressing the desire to promote him as "more than a Road Warrior, more than a Modern Day Warrior, the...Ultimate Warrior." And thus McMahon both stripped him of his previous identity and gave him a new one, more or less the same yet different.

From there they explore the origins of the entrance, his feuds with Hercules Hernandez and Bobby Heenan, "humorously" explain the concept of Parts Unknown, the surprise victory over the Honky Tonk Man that began his run with the Intercontinental Championship, his feuds with Rick Rude and Andre the Giant and his strange interviews. The first half of the story ends at Wrestlemania VI with the "passing of the torch" from Hogan to the Warrior. Warrior's entire existence and identity will forever be linked with Hogan because of this match and his subsequent, almost immediate, decline in the business. This match is notable for many reasons, least often mentioned is that it involved two men who believed the world consisted of two distinct people: Little Warriors and Hulkamaniacs. Both men were clearly under the influence of many drugs at the time, but only one went on to write a song about a young Hulkamaniac dying and going to Heaven, damned to an eternity of Hogan matches. Score one for the Warrior.

The only person that seemed to grasp that the point of the Warrior "hailing" from Parts Unknown was that it would be stupid for the Warrior to be from Los Angeles or Des Moines was DiBiase, which is such an obvious point that trying to make fun of it is just as dumb as the idea of the Warrior "hailing" from Des Moines. And no one seemed to grasp that part of the Warrior's appeal, or at least his identity, were his rambling promos of almost Lewis Caroll-like insanities that gave the impression that the Warrior truly was a descendent of greater entities, sent here to vanquish evil. Not just another dude from Venice Beach all juiced up with a shiny body.

At this point they've put over the idea that the Warrior rose to a prominent position due to charisma and look rather than ability, which is more stating of the obvious although they did give credit where credit was due in pointing out his charisma and look. It's clear that they really went around the barn to find material to bury the Warrior when a simple post-it note's worth of writing would explain this whole thing: "Jim Hellwig was a crazy body-builder who was booked to be a World Champion." Thank you, good fuck night.

Fortunately, they didn't stop there as they covered with the feud with "Macho King" Randy Savage, giving them the opportunity to include the full Wrestlemania VII "Retirement Match" with one of the greatest finishes ever: Savage drops the Elbow Smash on Warrior FIVE TIMES only to have the Warrior kick out and eventually proceed to give Savage three big shoulder blocks followed by a pinfall victory in which the Warrior pins Savage with a single foot on the chest. They edited out the part where Miss Elizabeth kicks Queen Sherry's ass, which sucks, but this is about the Warrior, not Savage.

Unfortunately, they didn't stop there as they recounted his feud with Iraqi-sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter (not a single mention of how stupid an idea an Iraqi-symapthizing Slaughter was), the SummerSlam '91 "controversy," Warrior's subsequent return at WrestleMania VIII, the rumors of the Warrior's death and replacement, his feud with Papa Shango complete with footage of the "green vomit incident" (!), his return in 1996, his departure in 1996, his subsequent lawsuit for the rights to the name "Ultimate Warrior" and how Hellwig legally changed his name to "Ultimate Warrior" to attempt to acquire the intellectual rights to the name, WCW's Ultimate Warrior clone "Renegade" (no mention of his suicide later in life), the Warrior's WCW debut, the rematch at Halloween Havoc, his departure from WCW and a brief overview of the Warrior's "legacy" in professional wrestling.

The only interesting moments I found in the latter half of the disc are Hogan recounting a story about wanting to break Hellwig's leg in the locker room for daring to hold the WWF up for more money in such a dastardly manner, my sincere desire to witness Hogan's brutal death increasing exponentially as a result of this story, Hogan later expressing his love for the man Jim Hellwig, my sincere desire to witness Hogan's brutal death increasing exponentially as a result of this contradictory comment, Eric Bischoff denying that the Warrior was brought into WCW solely to return "the favor" to Hogan from WM XII, my sincere desire to witness Hogan's brutal death increasing exponentially as a result of this outright lie, Bischoff attempting to denigrate Warrior's wrestling ability in the same sentence in which he says "Hogan...[can't] neccesarily have a great match with everybody. He's gotta be in the ring with someone who compliments his style, who compliments his character," and my sincere desire to witness Hogan's brutal death increasing exponentially as a result of this absurd statement. And the "green vomit incident" with Shango.

Again, this DVD is using a million-dollar sentence to express a ten-cent idea. Hellwig was a shitty wrester, but even Stevie Wonder could see that. He was charisma and look, but so was half of the WWE roster in the late 80s and early 90s and even today. He was an asshole, but so is everyone who has ever worked the main event at WrestleMania, except for Steve Austin and the Rock and maybe Bret Hart before Goldberg broke his brain.

The bonus matches are a jobber squash, probably his TV debut (Wrestling Challenge, 1987), Honky Tonk Man (SummerSlam, 1988), Hogan (WM VI, 1990), Rick Rude (SummerSlam 1990), and Randy Savage (WM VII, 1991). The bonus segments are a story about Warrior almost breaking Lawler's hip in Memphis, a commercial for Warrior University and McMahon talking about its' failure, Christian's version of the WM VI promo about Warrior telling Hogan to hijack his own plane which isn't nearly as funny as one might expect and DiBiase recounting an autograph signing where the Warrior is an asshole.

I can't say this isn't worth watching, but I passed up the opportunity to buy the Undertaker retrospective, which I would have probably loved like it was my own child, or the Road Warriors retrospective, which I also would have probably loved like it was my own child, which I also saw while at Best Buy on Friday, but I decided against it and picked up this at Wal-Mart. I saved about seven dollars with this purchase, but most likely shaved years off my life on Hogan-related fury alone.

Two and a half count.