The Ultimate Warrior was one of those people that embodied lighting in a bottle, and on this day in wrestling history he made his debut in the WWE on October 7, 1987.
Warrior started out in bodybuilding, then switched to wrestling as Jim “Justice” Hellwig of Powerteam USA. It was a team of bodybuilders that included Steve Borden (Sting) and were trained by Red Bastien and Rick Bassman in Continental Wrestling Association.
Warrior and Sting quickly became a tag team called The Freedom Fighters with Sting called Flash, and eventually moved on to Universal Wrestling Federation and were renamed the Blade Runners.
Despite the gimmick changes, the two of them found decent success before going their separate ways.
WWE debut
Warrior eventually found his way to the WWE where his ring name was changed from Dingo Warrior to the Ultimate Warrior and he defeated Terry Gibb on Wrestling Challenge in his debut match.
Special thanks to @awrestlinghistorian for the following transcript.
“At that time, though, I was trying to work out a deal to go to Japan and I had approached Fritz Von Erich to get a pay raise from $50 a night to $100 a night, but he didn’t want to do it, so I had no other choice, but to leave for Japan. George Scott caught wind of that and told the WWF who then called and said they wanted to get a look at me before I left. So I went to Waco (Texas) and I ended up getting a better reception than anyone they had on the card because we used to wrestle in Waco all the time and everyone knew me.
“So they brought me in for about eight or nine months and kept me down with the C-talent, just testing me, seeing if I was going to listen, seeing if I had what it takes to travel, see where my head was at, if I was halfway together. Then came the time when they were going to put me on TV and they told me that they liked the Warrior, but they didn’t like Dingo.
“But for the entire time I was behind the scenes, they told me that they weren’t going to use the Warrior thing, because that’s what they did back then, they didn’t use people’s identities that they brought in, they created their own. But since my character was getting over so well, they decide to go with the Warrior thing. So they put me on camera and I said ‘I’m not this kind of Warrior, I’m not that kind of Warrior, I’m the Ultimate Warrior!’ And that’s how that got started.” – The Ultimate Warrior, IGN interview, February 19, 2004.
Warrior would go on to have a brief but awesome career that fans still remember to this day. As a young adult, he captured my attention completely and his entrance music was one of the best at the time.
While some of his actions and comments outside the ring can’t be excused, what he did in the ring will always have a place in many of our hearts and it started on this day in wrestling history.
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