Ultimate Warrior In WWE: How It Started, How It Ended

There's some confusion over exactly when The Ultimate Warrior first appeared on screens, but it's a nicer story to go with his emphatic debut win over Terry Gibbs on a Wrestling Challenge from October 1987 because of how fully formed the gimmick already was.

It's not as though the other candidates (a Dingo Warrior vs Barry Horowitz from the Boston Garden aired on the New England Sports Network [NESN] in August, and some markets might have caught Warrior working a Superstars Battle Royal that was taped one day before the Gibbs squash) are disastrous, but there's something neat and tidy for the story about this particular matching be the one where things really started for him.

It's got all the hallmarks of a standard Ultimate Warrior squash, but there's honestly something refreshing about the formula not yet being quite perfected. He doesn't yet have his pulsating Jim Johnston theme or - curiously - the chaotic energy that came to define the gimmick that propelled him to the top of the industry.

Not that Gibbs gets to find that out for himself - Warrior beats the tar out of him from the second the jobber tries a shoulderblock and hits the deck himself. The press slam is devastating if not yet as flamboyant, and an inset promo pulls him closer to the brother brother style of a certain Venice Beach native rather than Captain of the good ship Insanity that he'd later become.

Even now it's effective though. Going just 1:38, it leaves the viewer craving a little more, and WWE would follow that method with impeccable grace until the character's zenith at WrestleMania VI.

And about that...

CONT'D...