10 Insane Wrestling Paydays
...It's A Rich Man's World
Bruce Prichard will talk about just about anything on his 'Something To Wrestle' podcast, with one glaring exception. Despite host Conrad Thompson's persistent pestering, he'll never deal in dollars.
The former McMahon right-hand man either wilfully rejects the question or feigns ignorance, and with good reason. Wrestling can be a very rich man's world, with figures from the top-earners often protected from public view. The privacy tracks back to wrestling's chequered past - performers weren't encouraged to talk about contracts by promoters because it harmed future negotiations in the eyes of the bookers.
Few bosses wanted the wrestlers to know their true worth, and the best-paid brawlers rarely wished to rock the boat if they were sailing smoothly. That, and the fact that there has at times been criminal amounts spent on undeserving causes. WWE could donate charitably for the rest of time and still not level the playing field against the money they've wasted.
The secrecy (and occasional embarrassment) stifled and trapped talk of finances outside of dirt sheet speculation and occasional confirmations from the companies themselves. Performers are retrospectively loose-lipped though, and have willingly discussed earnings of themselves and others after the fact. Legendarily daft dollar figures populate much of wrestling history, but salaries haven't always married up with skill...
10. The Ultimate Warrior - $500,000+ For WWE SummerSlam 1991
There are two versions of the events that took place backstage at Madison Square Garden ahead of Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan's SummerSlam 1991 main event against the Triangle Of Terror.
One is the gleeful misrepresentation spewed out in relentless trash-piece 'The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior'. The other is...the truth.
A hatchet job unlike any other, Warrior's entire character is exhaustively extricated from WWE lore during the infamous defamatory DVD, particularly when McMahon references him figuratively holding a gun to his head over a one-off payment. Sgt Slaughter later revealed the controversial sum amounted to $500,000, which was no small stack for a single night's work. McMahon was apparently furious over this 'hold-up'. But can you steal what was already supposed to be yours?
Decades later, correspondence between the two revealed that Vince had promised the figure along with other demands dished out by the former WWE Champion that brought him in line with Hulk Hogan's own astronomical earnings. Warrior pocketed a small fortune that August night, but remarkably, he was owed it.