How Good Was Ultimate Warrior Actually?

It's fairly easy to undermine The Ultimate Warrior, but he did have 2 of his generation’s greatest feuds. One that is criminally underrated, and another that ended in one of the biggest matches of the 1980s.

‘Ravishing’ Rick Rude was a generational talent who was way ahead of his time. Everyone from Eddie Guerrero to Dominik Mysterio carries a little Rick Rude in their cocky personas. Rude was a fabulous worker, but his true masterpiece was being able to make Ultimate Warrior look like a competent wrestler during their matches across 1989 and 1990.

That duo traded the Intercontinental Title back and forth, with Rude causing a shock upset by dethroning the Warrior at WrestleMania V due to an assist from Bobby Heenan, before the Warrior regained the title at SummerSlam '89. Rude would also be entrusted to carry the Warrior in his first feud with the WWE Title, culminating in a thrilling steel cage match that headlined SummerSlam 1990.

Then there’s the Warrior’s career-defining rivalry with Hulk Hogan (or “Howk Ho-Gin” as the Warrior would always pronounce his adversary’s name). They met once in the squared circle for WWE, but Warrior was the only performer who got close to Hogan’s globe-conquering success. Vince McMahon would sell “The UUUUUUULTIMATE WARRIOR” excellently on commentary, and believed in him enough to have Warrior pin Hogan and hand him his first ever 'Mania defeat. We’ll cover how that panned out later in this piece, but Hogan and Warrior’s legacies became intertwined from this moment on.

The pair tried to revive their rivalry in 1998 for WCW, but this was a disaster. Hogan had reinvented himself as Hollywood Hogan alongside the nWo, whilst Warrior was still the same old Warrior. Essentially, the match felt like a way for Hogan to avenge the past, so he defeated Warrior at Halloween Havoc (in one of the most notoriously awful encounters in history) to square off their rivalry.

Vince McMahon attempted to create rivalries for the Warrior with Randy Savage, Sgt. Slaughter, The Undertaker, Jake Roberts and Ted DiBiase, but Jim Hellwig was notoriously difficult to do business with. Hulk gained a reputation for always going into business for himself, but his vast popularity meant he was able to get away with it. Warrior tried the same political coups, but with far less success.

Maybe this was because Hogan was able to make money out of rivalries with his opponents, but Warrior was too self-serving to realise that one man can’t do business by himself, and it showed in his lack of historic rivalries.

4/10