Quicknation    The Warrior

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The Warrior on June 16, 1959 in Queens, New York), is a former American professional wrestler known to many as builders that Red Bastien and Rick Bassman formed in 1985, 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 WCW's Sting). They formed a tag team called The Blade Runners with Warrior as when they wrestled in the UWF and on the independent circuit, but the group ended and Warrior became .

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 , 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 WCW's Goldberg). He was also known for his distinctive pattern of face painting.

Warrior enjoyed two stints as Intercontinental Champion, defeating the Honky Tonk Man (in 32 second) 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 the SkyDome in Toronto, Ontario in the main event (which was billed ) 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 Iraqui allies. 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 sometimes still persist that the original Ultimate Warrior and Dingo Warrior was not the same one as the one that came back in 1992, 1996, and 1998. It was believed that the original Warrior died. In fact, when the Ultimate Warrior came back to the WWF in 1992, it was rumored that Kerry Von Erich supposedly was playing the part since the Warrior's hair was much shorter than it was 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 taking at any given time.

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 diferences as to how the Warrior's character should be used. Warrior left the company before the event took place.

In 1993, Jim Hellwig had his name legally changed to Warrior in order to retain the legal rights to use the name outside of the WWF. The one-word name appears on all legal documents pertaining to Warrior, and his children carry the Warrior name as their legal surname. The domain is registered to "Mister Warrior."

Warrior returned to the WWF briefly in 1996, squashing future champion but then obscure rookie Triple H in 1:38 at WrestleMania XII. Triple H only refers to his match against Warrior as 'not my best event,' and, prior to the Warrior DVD (see below), has never talked much about Warrior himself. WWF later terminated his contract when Warrior took some time off to grieve the death of his father. WWF owner Vince McMahon, by way of explanation, said that Warrior had not seen his father in 10 years and didn't care much for him; therefore, he did not take Warrior's explanation at face value, especially since this explanation came after Warrior missed several shows without prior notice.

Warrior and the WWF engaged in a series of lawsuits and legal actions in 1996 and 1997, culminating in a court ruling that Warrior was legally entitled to use the gimmick, costuming, face paint designs, and mannerisms of the "Warrior" character. Wrestlers such as Ric Flair later called the lawsuit unprofessional.

World Championship Wrestling (WCW) signed Warrior in 1998, and gave him a degree of creative control over his matches, considered by some to be a foolish move. His debut drew huge audiences, but it didn't last. He created a storyline where he formed a stable opposing Hulk Hogan's New World Order: the "One Warrior Nation." The acronym OWN for One Warrior Nation was a play on the name nWo. Highlights of the unpopular storyline included Warrior kidnapping and "converting" The Disciple, and frequent instances of "magic smoke" knocking out all of the nWo members except for Hogan (and covering Warrior's movement through a trapdoor in the ring). The British Bulldog suffered a career-ending injury when he landed on Warrior's trapdoor (This would lead to Bulldog resorting to pain killers which led to subsequent addiction and eventually demise).

At its , Warrior played mind games with Hogan by projecting backstage "apparitions" of himself in a mirror that only Hogan could see. The WCW storyline would have it that Hogan was "cracking up" in seeing these apparitions. However, the announcers could also see them, as well as the home viewing audience. Warrior only lasted long enough in WCW to participate in 2 PPV events, losing a War Games match (along with 7 other wrestlers) to Diamond Dallas Page at Fall Brawl after he escaped the cage by force to attack an also-escaped Hollywood Hogan, and losing to Hogan at Halloween Havoc in what is widely considered by critics of Warrior to have been one of the worst matches ever (he injured his arm during the War Games prior to the event).

Warrior officially retired from wrestling in 1999, and for a short time ran a youth center called Warrior University (now closed). He has found a new career as a conservative speaker and commentator, denouncing left-wing politics. Most notably, mentioning that "queering doesn't make the world work" during a speech given by Warrior at the University of Connecticut led to the UConn College Republicans issuing apologies to several campus organizations for the Warrior's behavior. In 2005, he and his company, Ultimate Creations Inc., threatened to sue Richard Kyanka of Something Awful for allegedly libelling him on an Awful Link of the Day. The case has not yet been brought to court.

Beginning in May of 1996, Warrior began writing and illustrating a comic book entitled WARRIOR, featuring himself as the main character. The comics sold well in the first two months of their distribution, before sales plummeted and the comic was taken out of circulation in early 1997. The initial success of the comic and its ultimate failure is often attributed to the same things.

As a comic book, fans argued that WARRIOR was a failure; it had no actual storyline, virtually no characters other than Warrior, no action, and considerably more text than the average comic (in the first issue, at least one entire page is made up of a text box, with a small picture of Warrior in the corner). Seeing as how successful comics have relied on interesting characters, storylines, and action, this seemed to many to be a formula for failure.

In addition, the storyline (some fans argued there wasn't one) was difficult to follow, as some issues consisted of nothing but pages of WARRIOR walking around and going through physical transformations, with the plot driven by his internal monologue. The dialogue and internal monologues in WARRIOR are written heavily in jargon, Old English, run on sentences, sentence fragments, and extremely long sentences (some contain upwards of fifty words). Some English majors, writers, journalists, and others who read the comics took note of the use of "..." in place of most periods, indicating that some of the comics are in fact made up of one gigantic sentence with several pauses spread throughout. Several of the words which play key plot points are in fact made up by Warrior for the purpose of the comic, and every time one of these made up words is used, the action ceases and pages are dedicated to explaining the meanings of these words. The overall plot and internal monologues, when deciphered, are two fold: First, the comics act as indoctrination material for Warrior's personal belief system. Secondly, on the fictional level, the comics concern the real Warrior's (ie, Jim Hellwig) attempts to transcend his physical being and become a god; the story appears to take place within the mind of Warrior as he lays in some kind of comatose state. As the books progress, Warrior expounds on the inner trappings of his personal philosophy and religious beliefs, as he meets his father (who is depicted as a being that is either meant to be God or Jesus Christ), and in one segment seemingly unrelated to the main story, saves a suicidal young woman by appearing to her as an apparition and sucking toxins from her bloodstream after she has overdosed. The final outcome of the story, and the ultimate revelation about Warrior's message and philosophy, remained unrevealed, since the comic failed.

In the initial months of publication, all of these things served to help the comic's sales: Fans considered them to be a novelty, or kitsch. Several people who had their comics autographed by Warrior at one of many book signings Warrior held in the midwest only wanted his autograph to add to the camp appeal of what they held to be an extremely ridiculous comic.

The comic's most enduring issue, and the one which has received the most ridicule and is now worth the most money, is one of the final issues, which breaks away from the main storyline into a Christmas tale. The plot of the comic is hard to decipher, as it contains no dialogue, monologue, or text boxes. Inexplicably, Warrior attacks the North Pole, usurps Santa Claus's authority over the elves, and in the final frame, which gained the comic its enduring popularity, a sweaty Warrior forces Santa into bondage gear and poses beside him. The apparent sexual undertones, lack of an actual plot, and non-sequiter nature (nothing from the previous issue served to segue into the Santa attack issue) gained the comic cult popularity, especially on the internet. Though nothing sexually explicit is depicted in the comic, some fans have come to describe it as the "santa rape" issue; more commonly, it is referred to as "the one where Warrior puts Santa in bondage."

Excerpt:

Destiny is: [1.] one's own inevitable, inescapable fate. [2.] A predetermined course of events. [3.] The power or agency thought to predetermine events. Who and what is “one’s own?” The being is the who; the what is its life. What is inevitable, inescapable, and predetermined in it’s course is fixed by the nature of the being’s life. For the human being’s life, what is inevitable, inescapable, and predetermined in its course is that for one’s own life to exist it must be sustained and generated by [it]self... Between knowledge of “What is life” and “What is death”…lies a battlefield of purpose before all “beings”…in its simplest form we are all animals, affected by evolution, seeking survival of self, i.e. BEING. Within the earth plane, “survival of self” only exists by the consistent challenge and negotiation of rules and regulations... Whatever it is you are…However you have chosen to prepare…I come of self…in and of my own god force…the chosen of destiny of Destrucity… All that awaits him brings no power greater than that which he has already subjected himself to… DVD