10 Beloved Wrestlers FIRED By WWE
5. The Ultimate Warrior
Bret Hart learned of the firings of both the British Bulldog and the Ultimate Warrior in 1992 during the same phone call from Vince McMahon himself.
Vince made the gesture so that Bret, if probed, was not blindsided by the news. According to the account in 'Hitman', as a result, the planned WrestleMania IX main event, of an all-babyface Bret Vs. Warrior clash, was off.
Warrior was beloved, and his fans didn't know of his...capricious nature. Writing as a fan at the time, who was much too young to begin to know about the backstage goings-on, it was easier to believe that he simply came back from the dead every now and then.
This might not have even been the first time the Warrior was fired from the WWF. It's a bit murkier; a year earlier, after requesting or demanding Hulk Hogan-level money for his SummerSlam '91 payoff, he was officially suspended. That much is certain. At the time, "three company sources" stressed to Dave Meltzer that Warrior had been fired altogether. Warrior himself told friends that he had quit and retired instead of waiting out an apparent 90 days ahead of a "re-evaluation".
Warrior might have been sacked by the WWF no less than three times, which, in an amusing trivia note, might be the same number of great matches he ever worked in his career.
In 1996, while he explained that he did so as a result of his father's passing, he was fired for no-showing multiple house shows because Vince didn't buy that the two were even close. The WWF claimed that Warrior never even informed the company of the death, and had in fact missed shows before it.n