I am in shock. I have spent twenty years making snarky jokes about the Ultimate Warrior. Today I regret it. I'm sorry. RIP Jim Hellwig RIP Warrior
death is always hardest on the living. He had is wife, mother and two daughters at the Hall of Fame with him... they looked like they adored him. Someone had posted a really nice picture of Vince & Warrior embracing with huge smiles on their faces on Sunday.
Wow. Absolutely shocked. RIP Warrior. It looked like he had finally patched things up with Vince/WWE - inducted into their HOF and got another highlight video released that put a better spin on events than the previous one. What I had heard lately from him sounded so much better than the things he was saying a few years back. So sad.
I think he did. Did you see how labored he was getting into the ring? A lot of people were speculating on Monday night that he didn't look well. RIP Warrior
Yeah, even at the Hall Of Fame he was sweating bullets. I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but he really went out on a high... made peace with his legacy and the WWE, he was honored for his contributions sort of erasing a lot of misconceptions about him as a man... was able to share with the world what the fans, his family and the business meant to him... almost like he was holding on to finish up a last piece of business. But, damn... his adorable daughters and his wife... that is really heartbreaking.
Mike Johnson has written an excellent must read tribute article @ PWInsider.com titled ALWAYS BELIEVE: THOUGHTS ON THE PASSING OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR http://pwinsider.com/article/84862/...-the-passing-of-the-ultimate-warrior.html?p=1 Here's the opening few paragraphs, for the rest please click the link: Wow. What can one say? The passing of the Ultimate Warrior, literally hours after he returned home to Arizona following his first appearance for WWE since 1996 on Raw, is going to either be remembered as one of those tragic coincidences or a truly amazing final chapter in his life. In a way, that's sort of fitting for the life and the career that Warrior led. There was no middle ground for him, no grey area. You were either on his side or you were against him - and it didn't matter if you were Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan or an independent promoter....if Warrior didn't feel he was being treated fairly or was being represented fairly, you were going to suffer his wrath, publicly and privately. That led to a lot of people seeing Warrior in one of two ways - the man who stood up for himself and would walk away from anything...or the man who was impossible to deal with. The reality is that he was both, sometimes at the same time, but he was also someone who was that way because he had a strong belief in himself, his family and his legacy - and that is something that has to be admired, especially today. I spent about six hours with Warrior in a hotel room once in October 2004, filming a shoot interview that was later released by Ringside Collectibles. Off camera, he was warm and funny and friendly, even though he was very tired from his flight to NYC. His primary concerns were to call his family during every break. Once the camera turned on, there was an intensity to him and on many points during the filming (and on a lot that was never seen - Warrior had final approval over the final cut, of course: he was Warrior) we argued about different points. He even at one point mocked me for asking him about different memories, which made his WWE Hall of Fame speech pretty amusing to me as he went on and on and on with what else? Memories. http://pwinsider.com/article/84862/...-the-passing-of-the-ultimate-warrior.html?p=1
My blog for Keeping Kayfabe has just been posted. Enjoy this summation of the UltinateWarrior! http://www.keepingkayfabe.com/tribu...ed:+keepingkayfabesite+(Keeping+Kayfabe+Site)
Life is strange, isn't it? If you told me one new member of the Hall of Fame would pass away this week, I would have said Scott Hall. I saw the news on the ESPN bottom line yesterday. I was totally shocked. R.I.P. Jim Hellwig.
When it's your time to go, not a damn thing you can do about it. I remember coming home last night and seeing it on the web. Shocking. They say a cause of death hasn't been indicated yet, but honestly......we know. Too much on the heart. RIP Jim.
The physical abuse their body takes doing 300 + shows a year is brutal. That tends to get them hooked on pain killers to get through the next gig, the next day. Add to that steroid abuse to get the look and recover physically from the shows. Many of them get lonely on the road and tend to party hard with the boys. Especially back in the day when groups of wrestlers would rent a car together to get from show to show. That all adds up.
From pwinsider.com: WWE TO PAY TRIBUTE TO WARRIOR ON MONDAY by Cohen Morrison @ 1:46 PM on 4/11/2014 At the start of Smackdown that aired on Fox 8 in Australia, they showed a graphic of Ultimate Warrior with Michael Cole saying that on Monday's RAW WWE will pay tribute to Ultimate Warrior his legacy and memory. http://pwinsider.com/article.php?id=84919&p=1
I am so proud of Seth Rollins. Another of my boys(Chicago branch), known around these parts as Tyler Black. Current guys in WWE are Seth, Daniel Bryan(Brian Danielson), Antonio Cesaro(Claudio Castignioli), and of course Christian(Cage). I still cannot get over Chris Hero being dumped. Ah well, at least Kassius Ohno was the stupidest ring name since the Red Rooster.
From certain accounts, Hero dug his own grave by refusing to maintain NXT's workout requirements and refusing to adapt to the WWE style. It was the complete opposite attitude that Bryan had when he was rehired in 2009 - WWE wanted to put him on the main roster immediately because of his notoriety on the indies and the fact that he had already been with the company before(with the hopes that he would be another CM Punk-type success). Bryan, however, requested that he go through their developmental system so that he could re-familiarize himself to the WWE style. Hero is back to wrestling in high school gyms and armories while Bryan just finished drawing a live crowd of 75,000 fans at pro wrestling's biggest annual PPV show.
It sounded to me like they expected him to bulk up. I do not see that ever happening. He is absolutely the wrong body type for it. No one ever faulted Hero's work in the ring. I look forward to seeing Chris sometime in the near future and ask him myself.
I was surprised to see ROH footage in the recent DB doc on the network. I think you got a flash of Hero in one of them.
The They also used ROH footage in CM Punk's DVD and even shot one of the interviews at ROH's training facility. Plus wwe.com did a recent article on ROH that had quotes from Bryan, Rollins, and I believe, Cesaro. http://www.wwe.com/inside/the-indie-influence-26179913
