Where to begin with this storyline? There were many things odd about it, but what was probably the oddest was how WCW managed to completely screw up what had to be one of the simplest storyline opportunities in the history of the industry. When Warrior made an appearance on Nitro in 1998 and proceeded to spout what felt like two hours of incomprehensible gibberish at Hollywood Hogan, the audience should have known what they were going to have in store for them. But their misguided optimism was relentless. After all, Warrior and Hogan at Wrestlemania VI was one of the great Wrestlemania main events and by mid-1998 Hogan was starting to gather some real X-Pac Heat from an audience that had grown tired of his shenanigans, so there was a myriad of options to make this storyline engrossing. Unfortunately what the audience got what was an odd collision of the supernatural, the boring, and wrestling storytelling from another era. Rather than a simple rematch with a slow build, WCW (no doubt at the behest of Warrior and Hogan who both had creative control clauses in their contracts) set about creating one of the most intelligence insulting, and nonsensical storylines they could. Warrior wasnt just hyperactive he was now a superhero. In the two years since he had last been on an active roster these were some of the new skills that the Warrior had somehow managed to acquire: He now had the ability to appear in the ring using smoke; he now had the ability to appear in Hogans dressing room mirror so that everyone could see him except for Eric Bischoff; he now had the ability to brainwash Z grade wrestlers like Ed Leslie; and he now had the ability to get paid seven figures for competing in a number of matches that could be counted on one hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78XbX5tVFeY Needless to say the mixture of supernatural cults, superhero powers, and some of the most confusing storytelling in the companys history grew very tiring for the fans very quickly. When Hogan and Warrior competed in a match at Halloween Havoc 1998 that can only be described as craptacular the madness thankfully came to a screeching halt. While mercifully itd be the last wed see of Warrior in WCW, Hogan still had another couple of years to test the audiences patience and wring what little was left out of the dying company for himself.
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I have only loved three things my entire life: my family, Batman, and the All Blacks.
