7 Wrestlers Who Made Vince McMahon Their BITCH!

7. The Ultimate Warrior

The Ultimate Warrior wasn’t a mark, and as bad as he was mechanically, he grasped the most important aspect of the wrestling business: he was over, and crucially, he knew how over he was. 

He didn’t care about pro wrestling. It wasn’t his big goal in life. He didn’t grow up dreaming of being a wrestler, enchanted by his heroes on the TV; he got in because he was a bodybuilder when that exact physique was prized by the WWF. Moreover, he didn’t enjoy the lifestyle. This is how even the most savvy of operators fall. They love the life. They might have had Vince’s respect, and they might have known their worth, but they could not no-sell the romance of the road nor the ego trip that the spotlight affords. Bret Hart, for example, knew what Vince McMahon was, and he knew when he was lying to and using him, but he was a wrestler at heart. He put up with it. Warrior could and indeed did spend years at a time out of the limelight. 

Warrior tolerated the lifestyle, as a necessary means of making money, but actively resented it. He almost left the WWF alongside Owen Hart in mid-1989, when the ‘Killer Kalendar’ WWF touring schedule was at its most arduous, before Owen had to gently tell him that he was too rubbish to get over in Japan. Warrior was there to do a job. He wanted to make money and made sure to get what he was owed. He was, thus, a formidable political opponent of Vince McMahon. 

Warrior knew that he could walk back into the WWF when he threatened to no-show SummerSlam 1991 because he was adamant that he was owed in excess of half a million dollars from his WrestleMania 6 main event. He cared even less in 1996, when his ill-fated return fell apart. He didn’t think the WWF flogged his comic books hard enough and thought the promotion was using his own IP on his merchandise. It was rumoured that he simply didn’t turn up to house shows in protest. 

Vince McMahon loved the Ultimate Warrior character. The Ultimate Warrior was adamant that the WWF was out to f*ck him financially, so he treated the promotion with contempt, mostly. Vince couldn’t handle one of his glorified action figures showing some agency, ultimately leading to the extremely petulant ‘Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior’ DVD.