A chilly day Saturday afternoon in New England forced me to sit in the warm house all day and revisit some of my favorite WWE produced DVDs. Today I watched “The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior” . The Ultimate Warrior was portrayed by a full-fledged mass of muscle named Jim Hellwig. In a rare case of life imitating art, Mr. Hellwig legally changed his name to Warrior in 1993. I have not watched the DVD in several years, so it was great to revisit a DVD that I recall enjoying.
The DVD features several current wrestling personalities such as Chris Jericho, Jim Ross and Christian. In addition, distinguished wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan and Sgt. Slaughter are also interviewed for the DVD. Though the DVD is largely considered a knock at the Ultimate Warrior, I found the first ten minutes of the DVD to be very complimentary. The producers chronicled Warriors rise from the Memphis territory to Texas and eventually to the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE). Jerry Lawler, who added a minimal details about the Memphis territory that he ran, stated that although Warrior was green and inexperienced, he felt Warrior would be a big star one day. And Lawler was right. Not long after Warrior left the area, he found his way to Vince McMahon.
The DVD does mock the Ultimate Warrior, but it’s not in a slanderous way. Wrestlers like Chris Jericho and Christian goof about the Ultimate Warrior’s insane promos. But its all in good fun. Looking back on the 80s wrestling scene, goofy over the top promos were the norm. Warrior was not the only one who did them. If you watch a televised event from that period, it seems as if all the wrestlers are competing to see who can out-weird the next. Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper and Randy Savage are considered top promo guys from that circus atmosphere era. But Ultimate Warrior was right up there with them. He was very intense, imaginative and charismatic.
The DVD is very a very entertaining and humorous look at a pro wrestler who was a comic book character come to life. Some wrestling fans describe the story as a hatchet job on the career of the Warrior. But, in my opinion, it was a light-hearted poke at the character. If the WWE was truly trying to slander the Ultimate Warrior, they would not have featured some of his greatest matches as extras. These matches include a classic against Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania 6, as well as against Randy Savage and Rick Rude. For me, it reminded me of all the fun and entertainment the Ultimate Warrior brought to the early 90s wrestling product.