Ultimate Warrior's WCW run was brief, but for me it was incredibly memorable. As a teenager, I was hooked on the battle between the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling for Monday night supremacy. However, I was firmly on the side of WCW for a couple of those years. They had the NWO and Raven, who were my favorites. When Warrior joined up with them, it just made things that much better. I couldn't wait to see him wrestle...but WCW just kept delaying things. He was set to join DDP at Fall Brawl to battle the NWO Black and White and the Wolfpac in a War Games match, but he didn't even enter the cage. We had to wait another month to see him fight Hogan at Halloween Havoc in a Mania VI rematch. The suspense was killing me! Unfortunately, I didn't have the money, or means to order the pay-per-view. I didn't even have the internet at that time, so I had to rely on the Nitro announcers letting me know what happened. While they informed me that Hogan won, they said it was too graphic to show on TV (due to the show running long, WCW aired the main event of DDP vs. Goldberg for free on Nitro. Warrior and Hogan was also cut off, but not shown). I believed them. That was probably a mistake. Never trust Tony Schiavone! I had to wait to borrow a tape of the show from a guy at school who recorded it. He warned me that it was bad. And wow, was he right. Now, there's movies and TV shows that are so bad that they're kind of good in a bizarre way. Going by that same criteria, this is one of those matches for me. Don't get me wrong, it's awful, but it's comically awful and I love it for that. You can tell that the two weren't prepared for the match at all. Warrior had considerable ring rust, and their timing was way off. At one point, Warrior fell to the ground, began rolling around, and knocked over Hogan! It's one of the weakest bump in the sports' history. The ending was also botched when Hogan failed to light some paper and throw it in his face. It was a colossal failure in every conceivable way, which is exactly what made it so great.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
