This morning I woke up and checked my phone to see what time it was. It’s something I do everyday. This morning though it showed that their were 8 texts for me. All from around the same time. Straight away I had a strange feeling something wasn’t right. I opened the first message, which was from my brother Karl. It read – ‘Woke up to hear Ultimate Warriors dead?!’. I sat bolt upright and got online. This is some sick joke right? The Ultimate Warrior dead? He just returned at Wrestlemania to be entered in the Hall Of Fame. I just watched him return on WWE RAW yesterday for the first time in 18 years. Someone has made a silly mistake.
It turns out no mistake was made. The Ultimate Warrior had collapsed and died outside a motel at the age of 54. With him goes a large piece of my childhood.
I loved Ultimate Warrior from the first second I saw him. He was the sole reason as a child I got into the wacky world of wrestling, something I still enjoy to this very day, something everyone thought I would grow out of but never did. Ultimate Warrior was the key that opened up this world to me of larger than life characters, crazy story-lines, the age old tale of ‘Good Vs Evil’ and a place where good will always find a way to stand victorious.
As kids my friends were all Hulk Hogan fans, he was the big hero, the champ but I was drawn to the Ultimate Warrior. His awesome face paint, his long hair, his tassles wrapped round his arms, the way he powered to the ring at high speed, shaking the ropes and pulling in ‘the power of his Warriors’. He was amazing! For non-wrestling fans i’ll put it in a musical term. Hulk Hogan was like the christian rock band Creed, crazy popular but not very good. The Ultimate Warrior though. He was Slayer. Not as popular but way more bad-ass! In fact he was so bad-ass no one knew where he came from! They had to create a new land for him, simply called ‘Parts Unknown. He was so bad-ass that he finished matches not by some crazy, intricate finishing move, he would pick his opponent up above his head and then drop them on their face before jumping on them. He was bad-ass!
Even after he left wrestling the Ultimate Warrior was still amazing. He had truly become this character he played on tv. He changed his name legally to Warrior. He made himself into a brand. Comics were made, fitness schools, self esteem clinics, all run by the Warrior. He set up this code of which he lived and preached. Admittedly a lot of it made little sense but the passion he showed for it was awe inspiring.
Every so often he would return to wrestling. Every single time I would revert to being a child again. Sadly he would never stay for long, something would happen and he would return to Parts Unknown. I remember how excited i got a few months ago when it was announced that he and WWE had made amends (they had fallen out a long time ago but that’s not important anymore) and he was being entered into the 2014 Hall Of Fame. They played a vignette on tv showing highlights of his career and I sat there eyes wide with a huge grin plastered across my face. This whole weekend I have been excited to see him just come out on TV and wave to the fans at Wrestlemania and of course to hear ‘that’ entrance music once again. God I remember painting my face as a child and running around singing ‘that’ entrance music.
It was announced this past monday that Ultimate Warrior would be appearing on their live show RAW to talk to the crowd. I watched it just yesterday and it was great. He put on a mask of his old face paint and talked to the live crowd. There was something about that final speech that now seems so bittersweet, so apt. It kind of makes you think ‘did he know?’. This is what he had to say to the crowd –
“Every man’s heart one day beats it’s final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. If what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them bleed deeper in something larger than life, than his essence, his spirit will be immortalized.”
24 hours later he would be dead.
You may find it silly that a grown man, actually looking at my news feed this morning lots of grown men, can be so heartbroken about this but I truly am. Like I said earlier this man was a huge part of my childhood, he pretty much defined it. Because of that I don’t believe the Ultimate Warrior has died. He has simply returned to ‘Parts Unknown’.
Thank You Ultimate Warrior. Thanks for being so crazy. Thanks for being so bad-ass. Thanks for helping to make my childhood amazing. You were a true one off.
RIP
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