When last we left you on Monday Night Wrong, Ultimate Warrior made a disastrous return to the WWF in 1996, four years after getting fired and seemingly going into retirement. Although he had a strong start at WrestleMania 12, the act quickly grew tired again and Warrior was fired for the third and final time in June 1996. He went off to run Warrior University (no, really, that was a thing) and that’s where we pick up.
You could write an entire book on the personality quirks of Hulk Hogan, but one of his primary traits was that he always demanded to get his win back on the rare occasions he lost to someone by pinfall. Some, like Sting, had a surprisingly robust win-loss record against him, but Hogan still ended up with the title in the end. However, through his entire WCW run, one loss still hung over his head like the Sword of Damocles: the Ultimate Warrior.
Hogan’s first try at reviving the Warrior feud was bringing in Rick Wilson and dubbing him “The Renegade," complete with Warrior-ripoff music and similar (but not so similar that anyone in the WWF legal department could sue) moveset. Wilson got a brief push and won the WCW TV title in what was probably Arn Anderson’s low point in the sport, but then flamed out and dropped the entire gimmick by 1996, before getting fired and unfortunately committing suicide in 1999.
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After leaving the WWF in mid-1996, most people had assumed that Warrior was done with the business for good, but once again we learned that desperation and nostalgia can make wrestling promoters do crazy things.
With WCW suddenly losing the ratings war to “Monday Night RAW," Eric Bischoff placed a call to Parts Unknown, care of Warrior University, and brought the Warrior back to TV on “WCW Monday Nitro."
This was great, until Warrior opened his mouth.
See, not only was Warrior being paid a lot of money, he also had creative control over his character, which meant WCW didn’t have a lot of say over what bizarre and nonsensical ramblings came out of his promos on live TV. In fact, his initial promo ran so long that they had to rewrite the "Nitro" episode on the fly to make up for all the time Warrior used.
Warrior made his WCW in-ring debut at Fall Brawl '98 as a part of the worst WarGames match in history — the match was so bad that it killed the gimmick for 18 years — and it was here that we learned that Warrior had acquired the power to teleport in and out of the ring during his hiatus from the sport.
Sadly, this magic was accomplished via a trapdoor in the ring, which resulted in British Bulldog getting slammed on top of it and hurting his back, leading to a painkiller addiction that destroyed his career and eventually ended his life in 2002.
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Meanwhile, Warrior’s run went further off the rails, as he formed the "One Warrior Nation" by kidnapping the former Brutus Beefcake (now dubbed “The Disciple”) and turning him into some kind of bizarrely hypnotized manservant with weird sexual overtones. You’ll note that there were two people in the “One” Warrior Nation, so obviously Warrior University didn’t offer math tests. (Or steroid tests.)
Then, everything hit what seemed to be the low point when Warrior appeared in Hogan’s mirror backstage during an episode of “Nitro," apparently having the power to show himself specifically to Hogan and to the viewers at home, but not Eric Bischoff.
This all led up to the long-awaited rematch between Hogan and Warrior at Halloween Havoc ’98. a match that likely would have done double the buy-rate if Warrior had never been put on TV again in the first place.
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Whereas the original match between Hogan and Warrior at WrestleMania VI was a carefully rehearsed affair planned weeks in advance, this match was … not. It was more like two supposed professional athletes getting winded after less than a minute, and then putting on a match mostly akin to a blind man trying to wrestle a hibernating bear.
The finish was supposed to be Hogan throwing fire at the Warrior, but he couldn’t even pull that off properly, and Horace Hogan had to improvise a finish where he ran in and hit Warrior with a chair instead. It was an easy “winner” for Worst Match of the Year for 1998, and Warrior cut one last rambling promo on “Nitro” the next night before disappearing from the business for good.
Warrior's WCW run basically exposed how straight-up nuts he really was, and how incredibly difficult it really was to work with him. His career was ended for good as a result.
These days, he’s held up as a saint and an icon by WWE because he died while in their good graces — and because Hulk Hogan flushed his own career down the toilet — but we can always remember the two months in 1998 when WCW tried to harness the power of the Warrior and failed so spectacularly.
