We chronicle in depth the second half of The Ultimate Warrior's WWE career. Find out why he was fired three times by Vince McMahon in the 1990s and why both sides kept coming back for more "punishment".
Although WWE perfectly plotted The Ultimate Warrior's rise to stardom, outside of Hulk Hogan ensuring that the spotlight was placed firmly on himself rather than the newly crowned WWF champion in how he reacted to his first clean loss in almost a decade at WrestleMania VI, the company weren't very well prepared for when he reached the top of their mountain.
His first house show program after winning the belt was with Mr. Perfect, Curt Hennig, whose record had already been blemished in several major markets by clean pinfall losses to Hulk Hogan earlier in the year and also his first televised defeat to Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake at WrestleMania VI.
Next came "Ravishing" Rick Rude again. Although they had great chemistry together and could play off Rude being the only man to ever pin The Ultimate One at WrestleMania V, Warrior had already beaten him at SummerSlam 1989 and Rude was coming off being on the losing end of an arena feud with "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.
Thus, fans didn't really buy either Perfect or Rude as serious threats for Warrior, and house show attendance consequently dropped from the high level Hogan had set as champion. By the summer, Vince McMahon was already making plans to transfer the WWF strap back to Hogan's broad shoulders, even though Warrior had been promised a multi-year run with the belt.
Perhaps the best drawing opponent for Warrior would have been the monstrous Earthquake, who was getting over big by sending his victims out on a stretcher by repeatedly hitting them with his running sitdown splash finisher, but he was programmed with Hogan instead after dishing out the same fate to The Hulkster thanks to a sucker attack with a steel chair during the Brother Love show on the May 26th, 1990 edition of WWF Superstars.
A mawkish "Get Well Hulk" letter writing campaign dominated the WWF airwaves for the next two months. Even when he was off television, Warrior couldn't escape Hogan's dark shadow and avoid being upstaged by him.
Warrior could never quite generate the same sympathy that The Hulkster got with fans in heavy duty beat down angles. The WWF creative team feared that his character was the problem. It was too aggressive and too scary for their youngest fans to get behind. Their answer to this conundrum was frankly bizarre. In the middle of an interview with Brother Love on the June 23rd, 1990 WWF Superstars, he went off on a tangent about "Ultimate Love" and the "love warriors have for him". He then brought out of the crowd a young fan who claimed her name was Amanda Ultimate Warrior. She then posed, cartwheeled and stood on her hands, before Warrior hugged her, kissed her on the cheek and professed his love for Amanda Ultimate Warrior. Whatever the intention was, it didn't work.
Despite Warrior getting equal billing and closing the show out at SummerSlam 1990, demolishing Rude in a decent steel cage match, it was clear there was a much greater buzz for Hogan's return against the undefeated Earthquake. When the show drew almost as well as WrestleMania VI on pay-per-view, garnering over half a million buys, it was Hogan, not Warrior, who drew the lion's share of the credit. Rightfully so, of course.
Warrior was also treated as Hogan's equal at Survivor Series 1990. Both men were the soul survivors of their eight man teams and then joined forces together with Tito Santana to defeat the surviving heels of "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase, Rick "The Model" Martel, The Warlord, Hercules and Paul Roma in the Grand Finale Match of Survival main event.
However, Warrior's main storyline focus during the autumn and winter months was turning down repeated requests by Sensational Sherri to give her Macho King, Randy Savage, a WWF title shot. Savage taunted the champion from afar, but when Warrior went looking for him, he was nowhere to be found.
The ante was upped when King Savage blindsided Warrior with his sceptre during his match with DiBiase on the NBC TV special The Main Event IV on Nov. 23rd, 1990, knocking him out cold so he could drop the big elbow on him.
However, instead of defending the WWF Championship against Savage at the 1991 Royal Rumble, he was booked in a title match against Iraqi sympathiser Sgt. Slaughter, who had vowed to beat Warrior with a pair of boots that he claimed were personally sent to him from dictator Saddam Hussein. Exploiting xenophobia by using racial stereotypes for heel heat had been a staple of the business for decades, but never before had a promoter so shamelessly tried to profiteer from ongoing tensions that looked likely to end up in military conflict. It was a serious misstep, garnering the WWF a significant amount of media criticism, made worse when war broke out two days before the pay-per-view and they didn't tone the angle down sufficiently.
With his focus elsewhere, Warrior wasn't tarred by the bad publicity like Hogan was, although his angle with Sensational Sherri at the Rumble was quite risqué for the time. Randy Savage revealed at the show that Slaughter had promised him a WWF Title match should he win the title later that night. In a bid to guarantee her man a shot at the gold, Sherri got down on her knees and attempted to seduce Warrior into giving the Macho Man what he wanted, but she rudely got turned down for her efforts. This led to the match between Warrior and Slaughter being a crazy affair with lashings of interference from the royal couple and the Sergeant's second General Adnan. With the odds stacked against him, Warrior was finally felled by Savage's sceptre shot to the head and a chunky elbow drop by Slaughter. Jim Hellwig would never be WWF champion again.
With Savage wanting time off to try and have a baby with his real-life wife Miss Elizabeth, which would require him to get off steroids, the WWF quickly announced that the loser of his match with The Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VII would have to retire. Thus, the stage was set for the greatest match of Warrior's career.
They were the perfect opponents for each other. Savage was the only man who could match the crazed intensity of Warrior's far out promos, whilst also conveying an unhinged presence and keeping a frenetic pace in the ring. Moreover, he loved to meticulously lay out his matches move for move beforehand, which was perfect for a guy like Warrior, who still needed to be led through anything more than an explosive squash. Plus he was willing to selflessly die on his sword to get the finish over.
The end result was simply magic. Warrior went on a voyage of self doubt, looking at his hands in disbelief, questioning his destiny, as Savage dished out everything he could throw at the hero, including five top rope elbow drops in a row, withstood all his best shots and capitalised on his subsequent indecision, but eventually the tide turned again and Warrior beat him with one foot planted firmly on his chest after three huge flying shoulder tackles that each sent the Macho Man flying out of the ring:
Once again, Warrior's big victory was overshadowed by the post-match melodrama when Sherri turned on her fallen meal ticket, Miss Elizabeth jumped out of the crowd to make the save and Savage was finally reunited with his one true love, but at least this time it wasn't done maliciously. I'm sure there was some sweet satisfaction though that he had stolen the show and Hogan's thunder for once.
Warrior seemed to genuinely appreciate what Savage did for him on that night and gave a touching tribute speech when he died from a massive heart attack three years ago at the age of 58:
After WrestleMania VII, Warrior was finally entered into a feud with a talent that fans could genuinely believe might have his number, the seemingly impervious to pain zombie, The Undertaker.
The program was memorable mainly for the uniquely dark angles, interviews and vignettes starting off with Taker locking Warrior in an airtight casket and leaving him requiring resuscitation when the road agents finally broke the coffin open. By late July, Warrior had been befriended by Jake "The Snake" Roberts who promised to share with him all the secrets of the darkside and The Undertaker. This led to a series of trials where Roberts briefly locked Warrior in the same casket he'd almost died in and burying him in an open grave up to his head, but in the final quest where Warrior was supposed to face the snake Lucifer in a darkened room, it was revealed to be an elaborate trap concocted by the devious Snake and the coldblooded Deadman. When he walked into the pit, Roberts turned on the lights to show not one, but dozens of snakes all over the place, and a mysterious box betwixt them, out of which a huge cobra leaped out and bit him on the face when Warrior opened up his "reward" for facing his demons.
The feud drew solid to surprisingly well depending on the market and lasted throughout the late spring and summer with Warrior beating Undertaker by disqualification in the first go around and winning all the bodybag rematches.
On the face of things, all seemed well with Warrior's career, but behind the scenes this was the time period when his match made in heaven with Vince McMahon quickly turned to hell in a handbasket.
From Warrior's perspective, he was disgruntled that he was paid less than Hulk Hogan and also had a more demanding schedule than him, despite being pushed as his equal for over a year, while McMahon was growing tired of his constant complaints and the headaches his immature behaviour caused, like leaving his steroids behind in the Baltimore hotel room he'd stayed a few months earlier and having to clean up the minor legal issue it created for him.
The straw that broke the Warrior's back was a strange one. Apparently, he rudely blew off an autograph request from the son of a station manager whose channel aired WWF programming and he was forced to make a videotaped apology to the child in question to smooth things over. Warrior strongly professed his innocence over the matter, but as McMahon noted in deposition many years later, it fitted his MO at the time:
"It wasn't uncommon, you know, I mean, for Mr. Hellwig from time to time to refuse autographs from kids or from anybody. He didn't like to do that and was often rude to fans."
Bret Hart also mentioned in his autobiography an incident about Warrior making a sick, dying Make A Wish kid wait hours until the end of the show to get to meet his hero backstage, which led to The Hitman souring on the real man behind the facepaint:
"My disgust for Warrior magnified a thousand times. To me he was a coward, a weakling and a phony hero."
Being forced to apologise for something that he didn't do made Warrior realise that the only thing he and Vince had together was business. As there was clearly no friendship involved, the gloves were well and truly off!
Warrior quickly decided to start fighting for his rights by penning Vince a long, personal letter of complaint where he made numerous demands and threatened to stay at home until he got what he wanted:
"In reaching this conclusion I ask for these things. You say 500,000 for Wrestlemania is unfair, then I say the last 8 1/2 years of not being compensated equally when I meant as much or more to the company was total bullshit and most definitely unfair. I have sacrificed more than 500,000, more than 1 million dollars, even more in monies that should have been paid to me in receiving equal compensation as Hulk. I paid my goddamn dues long ago. I need not pay anymore. I have given everything and never once was there a knock on my fucking door. Whether to bullshit as a friend or help me thru my times of need or you trusting me to help you thru yours. I ask for these things Vince and the answers must come for the next event is upon you. It has been for me the 5 years and for you to tell me you need to evaluate whether or not I'm cost-effective and this takes time is unfair. A show runs at a given time and date - I have always been there, never asking for time to see if I have the rest, food or whatever it takes to make it. Now I ask the same of you. I want (1) $550,000 release from the monies allotted me to purchase my home. This will suffice as my Wrestlemania VII payoff, but let it be noted it is not fair. I meant as much or more to that show as Hulk - I deserve to be paid the same (I know what Hulk will get). (2) 4 days off every other time off period - except Pay Per View only. (3) I want the same pay cut as Hulk gets on all Pay-Per-Views, SNME, FRIDAY PRIMETIME, house shows and proof as such. The same pay cut applies to what Hulk has been paid with relationship to past events Wrestlemania V, VI, VII i.e when Hulk was top draw. (4) I want numbers and prove of monies done on 1-900-Hulk and likewise same pay cut. (5) Same pay cut on all forms of merchandising. Because I have had to always knock on your door words alone are not good enough. I understand Doug Sages is on vacation, call him, take his days off away like you do to the boys and myself and have it written. Everytime I had to knock upon your door upon leaving I have always apologized. I no long feel I have any reason to apologize, Therefore I will not. I have tried to speak as a friend, but maybe I don't have the qualities you required to seek me out as a friend. The videotaped apology was the icing on the cake - you see it as business so whether I like it or not I must do the same. Whatever your decision I can and will live with it. Till then I remain home with one who cares -Jim."
The timing of this ransom note by Warrior was very crafty, as he had already been announced as Hogan's tag team partner in the SummerSlam 1991 main event against Sgt. Slaughter, Col. Mustafa and Gen. Adnan, but ultimately it didn't help him get what he wanted. Mr. McMahon showed Warrior who was boss by quickly agreeing to all his conditions to ensure that he would work the pay-per-view and then indefinitely suspending him as soon as the match was over, whilst telling him in a letter explaining the decision that fame had clearly gone to his head and that he had become impossible to work with and a legend in his own mind. Vince didn't even live up to the agreement for the SummerSlam payoffs, as Hogan was paid a $15,000 bonus, which Warrior didn't receive, on top of his $75,000 base pay.
Warrior didn't fight the decision and instead moved on, telling those who asked that he had decided to retire from the business and had quit the WWF for good when Vinnie Mac made the move to suspend him.
However, it was only took half a year before Vince came calling again, begging for him to come back. With Hulk Hogan becoming a lightning rod of controversy for the WWF, after he shamelessly lied about his steroid usage on The Arsenio Hall Show the previous summer and plenty of people came out of the woodwork to call him out on his BS statement that he had only ever used them once long ago to rehab an arm injury, it was mutually decided that the best course of action would be for The Hulkster to take a break from the squared circle until the heat died down. Vince thus had an opening at the top of his cards to fill and he chose Warrior for that spot, given that he was the only person who had ever come close to matching Hogan's popularity and merchandise sales, and there was no-one on the horizon ready for that lofty position.
It worked a treat on his first night back, as the roof blew off the Hoosier Dome for the surprise ending of WrestleMania VIII when Warrior's music hit and he ran down the aisle to save Hogan from being double teamed by the massive duo of Sid Justice and Papa Shango, but the magic quickly evaporated when the fans fully processed what they had just saw. With Warrior looking a shell of himself, much less ripped than before, false rumours spread that the real Ultimate Warrior had died and he had been replaced by an inferior impostor. Back in the old days when there wasn't the Internet, such hearsay was much harder to get rid of.
It didn't help matters when Sid, arguably his most marketable opponent and the monster he was initially programmed with, quit the promotion in late April when he was told he was going to be suspended for several weeks for a failed drug test that had been taken before WrestleMania.
Neither did the wacky angles used to heat up a grudge with Sid's replacement, voodoo master Papa Shango. On the May 16th, 1992, WWF Superstars, Shango placed a curse on Warrior causing him to collapse with stomach cramps on his way back from the ring and puke backstage. Then during an interview with Gene Okerlund the following week a mysterious black goo started seeping from Warrior's head. It suffices to say that the feud was an unmitigated disaster, bombing at the box office with God awful matches to boot.
Thankfully, the WWF creative braintrust came to their senses by the end of June and booked Warrior to challenge Randy Savage for the WWF Championship at SummerSlam '92 in the UK's Wembley Stadium, someone he had proven to have tremendous chemistry with in the past. Although both were babyfaces at the time, dissension was sown between the two by "Nature Boy" Ric Flair and his manager Mr. Perfect, who teased that they would be in one of the heroes corner's for the bout, but wouldn't reveal whose until the night in question.
Of course, it was all a ruse, as the dastardly heels attacked both men during their match together, before causing Savage to lose by count-out but retain his title when Flair clobbered The Macho Man in the knee with a chair when he attempted to destroy the pesky thorn in his foot with a top rope double ax handle smash to the outside. Warrior then saved Savage from Flair's subsequent figure four leglock attack and helped his wounded comrade to the back. Similar to Bret vs. Owen Hart at WrestleMania X, the fact that this was one of the most gripping WWF bouts of the era was forgotten about just minutes later when The Hitman miraculously carried The British Bulldog to an even more dramatic and memorable wrestling masterclass in front of his rowdy hometown fans.
The Perfect Plan paid off as Flair pinned the gutsy Savage when he blacked out from the pain of his figure four leglock to win the WWF Title for a second time just three days later at the Prime Time Wrestling tapings in Hershey, Pennsylvania, after their newfound friend Razor Ramon had kicked his knee out from under him behind the referee's back. Warrior then saved Savage again before The Bad Guy could injure him further and carried his fallen friend to safety, leading to the formation of the dream team of The Ultimate Maniacs and Warrior being named the number one contender to the World title. Surely a second WWF Championship reign for the Warrior wouldn't be far behind?
However, a strange thing happened when Flair came down with inner ear trouble and needed to drop the strap to allow him time to recover from the ailment. Vince McMahon shocked the wrestling world by making career midcarder Bret Hart his new king on Oct. 12th, 1992, rather than going with the obvious choice of the Warrior.
In what was a perfect storm for The Hitman, Warrior had strangely admitted to McMahon days prior that he had recently tried to obtain human growth hormone from Europe through a source of Davey Boy Smith's, but the package had been seized by U.S. customs. With McMahon being investigated for conspiracy to distribute steroids by the U.S. Justice Department, he would have been absolutely insane to simply ignore what amounted to international drug trafficking by two of his top stars. An internal investigation was immediately opened up and Warrior was fired on Nov. 9th, 1992, for attempting to circumvent the WWF's new drug policy, even though he was scheduled to headline the Survivor Series pay-per-view less than three weeks later in a tag match with his partner Randy Savage against Ric Flair and Razor Ramon.
The firing was almost certainly inevitable anyway, even without Warrior's stupid disclosure, as he had failed every one of his drug tests since returning to the WWF, but was never punished because the levels of synthetic testosterone and nandrolone in his system had always decreased and Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale bought his excuse that a tainted supplement had caused a one-off positive test result for methyltestosterone.
Of course, Warrior rather than blaming himself for admitting his wrongdoing to his boss and getting himself fired, took it out on McMahon by filing a $5,819,500 lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation for wrongful dismissal, unpaid pay-per-view and house show payoffs, withheld merchandising royalties, future earnings for the six pay-per-views he would have headlined if his contract hadn't been unfairly breached and claims to the IP of all aspects of the Dingo Warrior character he had created before joining the WWF. Although some of Warrior's claims may have been valid, the main charge that McMahon knew that the allegations that he had attempted to distribute anabolic agents were false and thus unfairly terminated his contract was bogus, as just one month later Warrior admitted that he had indeed paid for imported HGH in his grand jury testimony for the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of Titan Sports and Vince McMahon in particular. In late June of 1993, Linda McMahon claimed in an interview with Mike Mooneyham that Warrior's attorney quickly withdrew the lawsuit when they pointed out the misrepresentations he had made over his WWF departure.
For the next three years, Warrior largely kept himself out of the public eye, but when stories about him emerged they tended to be negative.
There was his two week tour of Germany and Austria for World Wrestling Superstars in April 1993, where even though he was guaranteed and paid in advance $120,000, encouraged the other performers to go on strike an hour before a sold out show, under the pretext of making sure everyone else got paid what they were due, whilst also holding up promoter Bob Yorey for even more money for himself. This cash grab netted Warrior another $42,000, but likely cost him and his colleagues more bookings for the future.
On July 12th, 1994, Warrior testified at Vince McMahon's steroid distribution trial and admitted to using steroids throughout his bodybuilding and wrestling career, and estimated that 85-90% of WWF wrestlers were on steroids while he worked for the company. During cross-examination from Jerry McDevitt, Warrior claimed that he "didn't think anyone would consciously take steroids if they thought they were pouring toxins or poisons into their body" and that steroids were a small sacrifice that he was willing to make to maintain his character for his chosen career.
Even as far back as late April 1995, Warrior was publicly admitting that only the big man upstairs knows how much time was taken off his life by his use of steroids, for a piece called "Requiem For The Heavyweights" by Sports Illustrated on ABC's Wide World of Sports about the deaths of "Love Machine" Art Barr, Big John Studd and "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert, all of whom's lives were almost certainly shortened by their use of steroids and other narcotics during their wrestling careers.
Despite this sadly accurate premonition, within months Warrior was already opening up his own wrestling school called Warrior University in Scottsdale, Arizona, and training for his first wrestling match in over two years for National Wrestling Conference (NWC) promoter T.C. Martin, who had been running shows in Las Vegas for a couple of years and sometimes drawing in excess of a thousand fans using the likes of Sabu, Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, The Junkyard Dog and Virgil on top. Warrior not only beat The Honky Tonk Man with his own guitar on July 22nd, 1995, in front of 1,250 fans but also showed up looking as large and as ripped as he did when he won the WWF Intercontinental Championship seven years earlier. Clearly steroids for him was a tough addiction to kick.
It wasn't long before the stories of Warrior being a nightmare to work with broke out again. His debut for Otto Wanz's Catch Wrestling Association on Sept. 23rd, 1995, in Hannover, Germany, failed to sell out, which likely was due to Warrior cancelling an interview with Germany's best selling newspaper the day before the event, which cost the promotion a great deal of publicity. With Martin's original NWC partner going bankrupt, he struck a deal with Warrior to restart the company under the name Ultimate Creations, a partnership that abruptly ended the night before their big debut show on Oct. 7th in the 6,500 seat Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas again. Dave Meltzer detailed the insanity in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter at the time as follows:
"Hellwig was supposed to arrive in town on the morning of 10/6 to do spots on the two largest radio stations in Las Vegas during morning drive time to promote the show. About 15 minutes before his first scheduled appearance, he called Martin and told him that his car broke down on the drive from his home in Scottsdale, AZ. Hellwig officially checked into the Aladdin at 6 p.m. that day, roughly 12 hours after his scheduled arrival and immediately put a block on his phone so nobody could get through to him. He finally surfaced the next morning at about 11 a.m. just before some scheduled public appearances. At a meeting, Hellwig asked for the sponsorship checks for the show, all made out to Warrior Promotions, which totalled $6,000. He said he'd cash the checks and settle with the hotel and the athletic commission to show each there were sufficient funds for the return show, and at the show write out his own checks to take care of the boys.
Hellwig then no-showed another morning radio appearance and his public appearance at a place called Ultrazone, a laser tag place which had given $2,000 of the sponsorship money and where a crowd of 300 awaited his live appearance. The plan was for Jim Neidhart to appear at the place and do a confrontation to build heat for their main event that night. By this point, Hellwig had checked out of the Aladdin after what appears to have been a dispute with the hotel claiming the hotel didn't live up to their end of the deal when it came to promotions and he reportedly blew up because when he got to the hotel, his name wasn't on the marquee in front of the hotel and instead they listed the Oingo Boingo band on the big marquee."
It sounds like Warrior just took the money and ran, maybe upon realising that the show was going to leave him out of pocket rather than make him any serious dough.
This incident begs the question, who on earth would ever consider working with such an unreliable, erratic mercenary? Why both the WWF and WCW, of course, with the war between the two sides heating up in 1995.
With Hulk Hogan trying to recreate his Hulkamania peak, bringing with him all of his old cronies and favourite foes like Jimmy Hart, Randy Savage, Brutus Beefcake, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, John Tenta and many more, obviously he'd have loved to have added Warrior to the mix too, but with WCW under pressure to keep their spending under control, he was out of their price range. So they went with the much cheaper option of taking young, muscular independent wrestler Rick Wilson, who already had an Ultimate Warrior inspired look and gimmick as Rio, Lord of the Jungle, teased an "Ultimate Surprise" for their first ever Uncensored pay-per-view on Mar. 19th, 1995, and unveiled their latest acquisition as The Renegade, coming as close as was legally possible to totally ripping off the WWF's intellectual property as they could.
When that experiment inevitably faltered at the first hurdle, WCW opened up negotiations with Warrior and had a three hour meeting with him in Huntington Beach, California, over the weekend of Bash At The Beach '95, but the talks went nowhere, with them being far apart on price (Warrior turned down a $500,000 per year guaranteed contract) and Eric Bischoff also being concerned about the inherent difficulties of marketing and merchandising a star that Vince McMahon himself had created. I guess Bischoff was also partly spooked by all the horror stories that he must have heard about how difficult he was to handle, as by that point Jim Hellwig had already legally changed his name to Warrior.
The schizophrenic nature of Warrior during this time period was perfectly summed up by him sending a letter out to his fans that he wouldn't come back to the WWF because Vince McMahon was a control freak in late September and less than three months later he was seriously contemplating it.
McMahon was looking for big name "out of the box" surprise entrants for the 1996 Royal Rumble to turn around his flagging pay-per-view business, contacting former WCW star Big Van Vader, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, UFC fighter Dan "The Beast" Severn, ECW star Sabu and boxer Peter McNeely, amongst others, but The Ultimate Warrior was at the top of the list of the names he wanted to land. An agreement was so close to being reached that they hinted about his potential return on syndicated television and Warrior was sent plane tickets to fly to Titan Towers to cut promos for his appearance at the event, but he never showed up, due to a hesitance on McMahon's part to break out the wallet and sign him to a long term guaranteed contract, which few performers in the WWF had at the time, and Warrior's insistence that he be allowed to use a testosterone patch, which would have been against the spirit of the company's drug testing policy.
These snags were quickly ironed out when McMahon offered Warrior an unprecedented $1 million guaranteed 18 month contract, where he agreed to transfer all "Ultimate Warrior" trademarks over to Hellwig and also pay him an extra $2,500 per shot should he work more than 14 days in any calendar month, so he could make his WWF comeback at WrestleMania XII in a match with Hunter Hearst Helmsley. For Warrior the timing of his return to national prominence made perfect sense, as an Ultimate Warrior comic book was just about to hit the newsstands and wrestling on WWF television would boost their sales. Indeed, by late April, the WWF had even entered into a formal business partnership with Warrior to jointly promote his wrestling school and his comic book, to keep him sweet.
History doesn't remember it this way, after almost two decades of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels pushing that their Iron Man match was one of the greatest grappling feats in WWF history, but even they couldn't follow Warrior's 98 second demolition of the young and slender Triple H, which blew the roof off the Arrowhead Pond. That was the moment most fans came to see, not the hour long technical stalemate, which saw a few thousand people leave the building before its conclusion and many more use the first half of the bout as an excuse to go to the bathroom or grab a bite to eat. Some in attendance even slightly turned on the match when they realised halfway through that there would be no falls before the hour was up.
Triple H didn't take too kindly to being treated as a modern day Honky Tonk Man, especially Warrior no selling his Pedigree finisher. Hunter had laid out a several minute long competitive, back and forth, encounter, only for Warrior to metaphorically rip up his script to itsy, bitsy, tiny pieces and dictate to him how the match was going to go down. Four years later, Hunter would collect his receipt by calling Warrior "probably one of the most unprofessional guys I've ever stepped into the ring with" on a WrestleMania special, which is something that the McMahon family now tries to sweep under the table.
The nostalgia drew big for Warrior's first television appearance in over three years, a typically nonsensical promo and confrontation with the even more bizarre Goldust, as the unopposed Monday Night Raw on Apr. 8th, 1996, shattered its previous record high with a 4.7 rating and was the biggest cable audience for wrestling since the 1988 Royal Rumble.
However, the honeymoon period was over by the April 28th, 1996, In Your House: Good Friends Better Enemies pay-per-view, as Warrior's act was badly exposed in a farce of a match with the aforementioned Goldust. Instead of scrapping the match as Goldust had a bum knee, they stalled for several minutes with Warrior puffing on Marlena's big fat cigar, sitting in her director's chair and put on Goldust's wig on for giggles, seven years before Goldberg would be put in his place by being scripted to do so. Eventually, Warrior allowed Goldust to sit on his throne instead, burnt his hand with the cigar and clotheslined him out of his seat for a feeble count-out victory.
It didn't take long before the relationship between Warrior and the WWF went completely off the rails again, when in an attempted power play, Hellwig no-showed three consecutive house show dates in major markets from June 28th-30th, 1996. Warrior was upset when he found out that the WWF was using a slogan that he himself had come up with, "Always Believe", in their own marketing campaign without his permission and he wanted to be paid for the phrase's usage. Apparently he had also made threats to stay at home if the WWF didn't also buy off him 100,000 of his comic book magazines every month.
The story got even stranger when Warrior gave an interview to Bob Ryder of Prodigy on July 1st claiming that he missed the events due to the death of his estranged father. The problem was his dad didn't pass away until June 30th, two days after Warrior took his ball and went home. This was news to the WWF, as Warrior had failed to notify them of his bereavement. McMahon was super pissed off, as not only had Warrior given an unauthorised shoot interview with a competitor to AOL, their online partners, but in his eyes publicly lied about the reasons for him going AWOL.
On July 8th, Warrior attended a comic book convention in San Diego and told fans that he expected to be back on the road with the WWF later that week and upon returning home faxed the McMahons that he was ready and willing to go back to work with them. The only problem was that they didn't want The Ultimate Warrior back, at least not without guarantees that he wouldn't pull the same stunt again. The WWF had already decided to indefinitely suspend Warrior on that very same day and he'd only be allowed back if he posted an enormous appearance bond of $250,000, a decision that was announced on Raw later that evening by figurehead President Gorilla Monsoon, along with the revelation that Psycho Sid would take Warrior's spot tagging with Shawn Michaels and Ahmed Johnson against Vader, The British Bulldog and Owen Hart in the main event of the next In Your House PPV. Clearly, the WWF was moving on without Warrior, much to the delight of the rest of the locker room.
Linda McMahon came to the conclusion that Hellwig never intended to complete the full term of his deal and had acted in bad faith to procure the rights to the Ultimate Warrior name and likeness, and informed his lawyer that the WWF was still asserting ownership over those trademarks as he had breached his contract. Of course, this led to Warrior filing another lawsuit against the WWF for unfair dismissal and trademark infringements.
Warrior never wrestled for WWE again, even though Vince McMahon offered him an even more lucrative, much longer term contract on Dec. 17th, 1997, just over a month after the infamous Montreal Screwjob, worth $750,000 a year, 35% merchandise royalty rate, 10% more than anyone else, and working only 14 days a month. Many have found it surprising that even in those desperate times, when his ass was getting royally kicked by Eric Bischoff in the Monday Night Wars, that Vince would go to the Warrior well yet again, but for all his many faults, he still made the McMahon family more money than anyone since Hogan until Stone Cold Steve Austin surpassed both of them the following year. It's for the best that Warrior turned down that offer, as there's no way Vince would have abided by that deal, even if he had, and maybe their relationship would have soured to the point that there was no coming back ever.