I hardly know what to say. I’m completely shocked.
WWE.COM broke the news just now that the Ultimate Warrior passed away at the age of 54 just a day after he returned to Monday Night RAW.
“WWE is shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the passing of one of the most iconic WWE Superstars ever,” a statement on WWE.COM read. This past weekend, Warrior was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and on Sunday came out in front of 75,000 fans at WrestleMania XXX.
I haven’t seen any of those appearances yet, but I guess I’d better enjoy them.
I’m not sure if I’ll remember him more as the lunatic who legally changed his name to Warrior, traveled around making speeches on such topics as how “queering doesn’t make the world work” and had a tendency to write rambling, borderline incoherent essays on his website or as the lunatic Ultimate Warrior character, who’s strength, energy and rambling, borderline incoherent promos made him a favourite of most kids my age. It’ll probably be a bit of both, with a dash of the guy who would sometimes scare my 2-year-old sister half to death, sending her running for the safety of the nearest closet or lap mixed in.
I just got a link to his segment from Raw, which considering where we are now seems a little weird.
He sounds like a guy who finally has closure, having made up with the McMahon family after decades of an on again, mostly off again relationship and getting the recognition he deserves as a Hall of Famer. It almost sounds like a spoken suicide note, but based on this, I’m going with really creepy coincidence. But the most important thing is that our last memories of him and hopefully his final days were happy ones.
I can’t seem to find the whole thing on YouTube, but I’ll end this with the last few minutes of the Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior match from Wrestlemania 6 in Toronto, one of the most memorable things I’d seen in what at that point were my 5 or was it 6 years of watching wrestling.