That Time The Ultimate Warrior Nearly Ruined WWE's Attitude Era

All stars burn out, and that is true of wrestling also. The Warrior got over and jumped the shark over the course of his introductory promo in WCW. He rambled on and on and on and on, incoherently, for an eternity. Eric Bischoff realised his error far more quickly than that.

Everything about his resulting Halloween Havoc match with Hulk Hogan, Warrior’s sole singles bout in the company, was an antiquated and unmitigated disaster. All passé tests of strength and arthritic physical exchanges, it ended—and this is pure poetry—with the whole thing literally blowing up in their faces courtesy of an errant fireball. Warrior simply wasn’t worth the hassle.

All Warrior did in WCW was further the league’s stigma as a dinosaur exhibition—a perception the WWF revelled in as the hip, youth-oriented alternative. That’s the kicker: would an inevitable failure of a run at best, or something disastrous at worst, tarnish the WWF’s key marketing strategy, and the reach it secured?

If nothing else, this crazed slice of trivia speaks to a sad truth: Vince McMahon was always immune to change, even at his most impressible. If Vince wanted the Warrior, at the precipice of the Attitude Era, it’s little wonder that he reverts to type time and time again. In 2018, the dinosaurs roam the earth, immune to extinction—and WWE is now stigmatised as the old man’s company.

Is it any wonder that the Finn Bálors and Chad Gables are dwarfed, time and time again?