The Rise And Fall Of The Ultimate Warrior 

I love the direction Cultaholic has taken on . Yes, there's news and listicles, but these long-form well-produced and researched documentary pieces are all excellent from top to bottom. Keep it up, guys.

9:08 "A record that will likely stand the rest of eternity..." **GUNTHER enters the room**

Documentaries like this are what set Cultaholic apart from all the rest. Ross, incredible job, mate! I can’t thank you and everyone there enough for all you do!! Wishing you all the happiest holiday season ever!! ❤️❤️

Great to hear a balanced view of Warriors career…his rise was great, his fall a mixture of self-inflicted and misunderstandings. He’ll always be my favourite wrestling character of all time

Obviously we all love Ross, Sam, Jack, Andrew, Tom, Adam and the rest of the boys in front of the camera, butI just want to take a second to show appreciation for those behind the lens. The writers, producers, editors and all the rest of those oh-so- necessary and often overlooked roles. It's entries like this that make me realize how great a writing/ researching staff Cultaholic has . Cultaholic and Team Triple Jump have been a constant in my life for years now, and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone at Cultaholic Towers!

I always loved warrior's custom belt. The yellow i.c. belt and the blue, white, purple winged eagle

Love these Rise and Fall segments. Home release levels of quality :)

His cousin was my 6th grade teacher in the San Diego area. Her last name was Helwig, and she did mention that they were related. This would have been 1987. He wasn't quite the huge star yet. I thought it was cool at the time. My teacher was star-adjacent to someone I saw on TV.

It's mad how short his big run was looking back.

What a nostalgia hit this video was. This era was my very first introduction to wrestling , I loved the warrior as a kid, I had the sleeping bag, the bed sheets , the posters etc, this video has taken me back . Brilliant stuff ross

A young Jim Hellwig kind of looks like the British Bulldog 😮

Great job Ross! I always enjoy your narration so much. I like all the other guys too, but you have to be my favorite.

It's fair to say that the Ultimate Warrior character that entertained millions of fans, was often a much different person outside of the ring. Warrior wasn't "always" in a bad mood, but he definitely got his fill of being approached by fans in public. During the years that Jim Hellwig wrestled as the Dingo Warrior in WCCW, he was a lot more fan-friendly than he was in the WWF. I think that Ultimate Warrior had become a much different person when he agreed to become a WWE ambassador in late 2013, all the way up to his death in April of 2014.

Another superb small documentary. These vids are probably my favourite ones you lads do. I'm still working through the WWE documentary bit by bit and I love it. So glad you do this. It's so interesting. Merry Christmas lads.

I was 10 years old when Warrior faced Hogan at Wrestlemania. I was a Hulk Hogan fan first but Warrior was my favorite from the very first time i has seen him on the Saturday morning. I used to watch the PPV with like 10 other kids from the neighborhood, with Pizza and pop, we would wrestle..it was awesome. I know how bad warrior was as a wrestler but none of that mattered when you were a kid.

Feeling in a bad state, kinda depressed, I'm filled with love and warmth at the sound of Tom's voice !

Still fucking crazy that in another timeline, Jim Helwig would've been Big Van Vader and not Leon White.

I gotta say this was an excellent video. I wasn't a big fan of you in your "King Ross" days, but I have been following your work a lot more on Cultaholic. Keep up the awesome, entertaining, and informative work Ross.

More documentaries like this plz

“See, Hogan had humanity. Weird thing to say these days but we’ll roll with it.” I love how that signature Ross humor always shines through even in these polished, scripted narrations.

This and this history of wwe doc have moved you up. Fantastic!

I get why Warrior was so popular, but he never did it for me. All in all, another great documentary!

The Self-DESTRUCITY of the Ultimate Warrior. And he killed Santa Clause in a comic.

I think the ratings went down for the Warrior because a lot of fans got tired of Hogan around that time and just quit watching it. I think Hogan left because he realized he had wore it out. Pretty sure he had agents advising him to get out.

I hate when people say Warrior never slammed Andre over the top. Some wrestlers say he only slammed Andre off to the side. It's true he slammed Andre the way they said. However, he also slammed Andre from a dead lift without Andre helping him. Warrior had some good matches with Andre. He had good matches with Randy and Rick Roode. His later matches with Randy were very good. You could see Warrior was getting better if you really pay attention. The crap some wrestlers and others gave him about his ability might be true in the beginning. I feel Warrior got better towards the end of his run before the Steroids debacle with Vince. I loved the Warrior and always will. I'm 45 years old. I was younger than 10 when I first seen him. He was huge and had tons of power.

Do the rise and fall of pro wrestling NOAH

I wonder if Warrior could have been a bigger success if he had been truly booked as the main star after beating Hogan. Imagine if Hogan had barely beaten Andre, and then be placed behind Andre on the match card.

Still scary he died a few days after Raw 2014

That final line is so true. Great stuff!

Great work as always, Ross

Love all the content yall are awesome Merry Christmas to everyone

Excellent uploads recently

19:36: In other words: Frank Miller's Batman.

fun fact, the original Vader gimmick was supposed to be Hellwig in Japan, but he turned it down to go to wwf... Leon White assumed the Vader moniker and the rest is history

That picture of earthquake teabagging hulk makes my sides hurt

Ultimate Lunatic Loved his wrestling promos thou 😂

That nightmare fuel at 0:22...

Love these Rise and Falls

Thanks for another fantastic story, Ross

Great job on the video Ross

I did laugh out loud at the thought of Warrior in ECW. How would that have worked?

Great video 👍🏼 I must say to this day the Ultimate Warrior has one of the most energetic and electrifying entrances of all time

So very well done, thank you.

LOVE that we have a match from 🇨🇦 that will be talked about forever in Wrestling history!!!

The character was a hero, the man was a heel.

I have divergent feelings on Warrior. He was popular, no doubt. And he was fun at times to watch. But he seemed to not have a genuine desire to become an all-time great. He had zero staying power. The guy just seemed to enjoy the money but not the job itself.

Great stuff. thanks

9:08 Well unless a Ring General from Austria comes along to give a stiff chop to that record.

This proves what a good writer Ross is, and always has been.

Love how Warrior is always blamed for how Heenan "futher injured" his neck and back. Who is the creator that scripted that a man with a known serious back and neck injury be pressed slammed? No one ever mentions that aspect of the story.

This Guy is not a World Champion material, Ultimate Warrior is not that guy. He belongs in the mid card.

Warrior's promos and the way he wrestled was perfect for his character. He couldn't do it any other way as that character.

It shows how behind Warrior they were when even Hogan's politics couldn't sway them.

I remember when Warrior came on the scene...he was my favorite wrestler..and then I learned what kind of person he was behind the scenes and I just couldn't respect him anymore..

"Written by a sleep deprived English-lit student" sent me into hysterics. Thank you xx

Fun Fact: The capital of Parts Unknown is Destru City.

The Warrior was fun to like as a kid. He was just a total cartoon.

Only Ross can pull those jokes off 😂🤣

I'm pretty sure they said the Warrior's music got your "blood a-pumping". Not that it got your "bladder pumping", as the captions so helpfully showed it.

I believe it was made to fail not intentionally but inevitably. It literally is Hogan 2.0 a big part of Roman problem being Cena 2.0. recreating is incredibly hard and often resented. May Jim rest in peace ✌️

Honky Tonk Man's 15 month IC belt reign is one I never knew is still a record to this day. How long was Mr Perfect's reign with said belt?

It's difficult to try to say how I feel about Warrior as a person. He spent most of his life a delusional asshole, but he seemed to finally get it together in the last year or so of his life and became a decent guy. I hear complaints about Hogan kicking out just a moment too late, but I was fine with it. The story of the match was that Hogan and Warrior were effectively equal. So, to me, Hogan doing that moment-too-late kick-out basically said that Warrior was just a bit better or wanted just a bit more that night. "Warrior was Batman if Batman had his dialogue written by a slight-deprived English lit student." We usually call him Frank Miller.

I Love these videos more please

I thought Ultimate Warrior died after he lift Andre the Giant which cause his muscle to rupture. Hahahaha! Now I know the truth. Legend! One of my WWF hero!

5:50 I am going to be honest, I don't think it would have mattered. Warrior is the epitome of 'he doesn't know and by god he is going to keep it that way.'

I think we were all pumped for the Warrior return in 1996. It was just doomed from the start. HHH was nobody's fav wrestler in 96 but had tons of potential and it was clear had a good future. The Warrior could've squashed any wrestler for his return. It shouldn't have been Hunter but oh well. Then came what the wrestling world was waiting for. The Ultimate Warrior vs GOLDUST!!! I mean this was fantasy booking ish. Of course, Dustin was shoot injured and instead of having a match, they did this weird psychology battle that was so cringe. So that was terrible. It wouldn't take much longer for Warrior to start no showing events and getting no angles because he couldn't be trusted, then of course he was fired. However, I wouldn't say it was desperate on both sides. Had Warrior came in with a cooler head he would've worked a real match with HHH, and they would've waited until Goldust healed to get these two in the ring.

Warrior was so bad in the ring that he made Hogan look like a skilled technician

The comment about honky tonks reign aged well this past year lol

this is another example of what sets Cultaholic apart from Name Redacted

I met Warrior in I think late 2010-early 2011 or so when he spoke at the college I was going to. Think it was right after his match with Orlando Jordan or something that I also remember happening around the same time. Like any other given Warrior speaking he raged against the woke crowd by incidentally sounding like he himself was woke in that he believed that his ideals could save the universe. However towards the end of the whole thing he was like "back in the day I used to think that my beliefs were the end-all-be-all to solving the world's problems. But I've come to realize that they could also start a different set of problems." I think towards the end of his life Warrior started taking himself much less seriously becoming more aware of how bad a person he was and I think he was on the way to changing for the better. That was the vibe I got anyways. He was very nice to everybody before and after the speaking, signing autographs and stuff. I never bothered to get his autograph because I don't get starstruck like that, but the other college kids did. It's very in-style to hate on someone like Warrior because judging from their words AND actions they deserve it. But I just always felt bad for the guy. Thrust into being the second coming of a guy like Hogan so early in your career, that's gotta do something to you. I would absolutely hate that kind of fame and pressure. I'm certain Warrior couldn't have liked it either and he had to act out in one way or another.

I remember my dad telling me the 2nd warrior theory when i was a kid. I don't even know where he heard it back then. how did these rumors spread so much back in the days? lol

This content 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

they should have had him feud with Savage longer or after Savage retired, Warrior would be managed by Savage

It should be noted that Power Team USA is not to be confused with The Power Team, a group of Christian evangelist bodybuilders, power-lifters and martial artists who’ve been around since the 1970s and tour the country preaching and doing motivational speeches.

He never "fell." He cashed out and quit.

His best match is for Randy Savage

Common cultaholic and Ross W

Sure, Warrior didn't have a lot of wrestling skills in-ring or promo skill, but he was over with the fans.

Reminds me of Heavy Metal Van Hammer.

The idea of Warrior in ECW is fucking hilarious

bravo, ross bravo!

well, i still dream, what would have been, if they turned Hogan Heel after the 1992 Rumble and let him do the Job to Sid Justice at WM 8 - sure, Sid turned out to be not what they hoped, but still, that would have been amazing - turning Justice after that Rumble Finish was just stupid

I was in my late teens when I first saw him on TV. I wished at the time I had his physique. I loved his entrance music was awesome! I loved his intensity. Then 25 years later, I find out he was a jerk and couldn’t wrestle according to other wrestlers.

damn so that answers my question lol i remembering hearing the original warrior died. when he did die in 2014 i remember trying to figure out if it was true.

GOD GIVE US BACK ULTIMATE WARRIOR AND WILL GIVE U HOUSTON MILLER !!!

anyone remember Spoony Reviews of his comics?

Warrior and ECW could’ve worked, much like Sid and ECW did for a short time.

21:37 The story that has always been told is that Warrior held up Vince for money. Vince and all the rest tell it like he did it the night of Summer Slam 91. If you look at the stamp at the top right of the letter, you will see that Vince responds to Warrior July 11th. Warrior was responding to the fact that Vince still hadn't paid him the total amount for his work at WM7 on top of demoting him from being the champion. Thing is, all competitive people want to the first or on top. When you get canned the company without giving you enough time to develop, I can imagine in a real world scenario, you're going to have some bad feelings. Vince had 6 weeks to follow through with this. He chose to wait until SummerSlam to tell anybody else or do anything else about this to make him look like had been held up that night. Vince, well, we see how things are working out for him now. Hogan, I imagine had he the legs kicked out from under him that early in his career without the push he'd been given, I'd bet good money he would have done the same thing.....Oh wait.....That's why he came to WCW..............Narc mentalities and greed. Hogan couldn't do a match on his own either BTW. But he had 9 years to perfect his position and solidify his place in the minds of WWF's audience that he was the Guy. Double Standards set by the Civilian American Moron.

"There was nothing methodical about Warrior's brand of onslaught because Jim Helwig wasn't paid by the hour." LMAO

Wow never knew that this type of work was cut throat and just like every work place , employee just don’t want to work …😂

Why did we love this guy? Smh

I was in 7th or 8th grade when Warrior was at the top of WWF. I was OK with it........ but I think it was intended for the young.

Do we have the hulkhogan rise and fall?

I always called him the ultimate steroid!

I dont care what anyone says you're still going to be king Ross to me. ❤️

9:06 lmao

I felt bad for warrior because me at 9 years old at the time of wrestlemania 6 was like ok whom else is next? I would have had legitimate heels lined up. Pn the A&e documentary i believed it was reported that warrior indeed asked vince that in the lockerroom after wm6. Nobody clearly had an answer. You beat the biggest babyface as ababyface. What nex??. This is why face vs face doesnt work. When shawn beat bret wat was next? Did shawn take it to the next level? No bret came back much like hogan did when warrior could not take it to the next level. What happened after wm x-7???? Austin turned heel with no top face because the rock was the only other top face. Its hard to do these things for that reason. I felt this was not warriors fault. There just was nobody.

The man became a legend

Warrior was never meant to last longer. He has achieved a cult status due to his short career.

I liked Savage but hated Hulk and Warrior.