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The Ultimate Warrior was one of the most loved and hated individuals in professional wrestling. From rising to the top of the food chain in WWE to falling down by having strained relations with Vince McMahon, The Warrior had seen it all. The former WWE Champion did not have the best relations with the locker room members due to his aloof nature and many stories about him regarding this. One such story was narrated by Bret “The Hitman” Hart in Bret’s autobiography, Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling. The Hitman accused him of much more than just being an introvert.
Bret Hart’s Hatred For The Ultimate Warrior
In his book, Bret Hart explained an incident that happened backstage at Omaha involving a fan who was mortally ill and The Ultimate Warrior. The Make-A-Wish child was stationed on a stretcher, a few feet away from the locker room. He looked very sick, breathing through a ventilator tube. There was not a single strand of hair left on his head, probably due to chemotherapy, and to Bret, he seemed to have only the last few hours left.
The kid was a true Ultimate Warrior fan and had the face paint, a purple Warrior t-shirt on, and green and orange tassels tied around his arms to honor his hero. His mother, father, older brother, and sister were waiting with him, so he could meet The Warrior, and fulfill his dying wish. Moreover, Bret and other wrestlers also greeted the kid on their way to the dressing room.
In the dressing room, The Ultimate Warrior was also sitting with the wrestlers, which was odd because he usually waited in his private room. When the third match started, a WWE public relations employee poked his head through the door and politely asked if Warrior was ready to meet the dying boy. To this Warrior ruthlessly replied, “In a f***in’ minute. I’m busy,” with Bret Hart thinking to himself about what he was busy doing as Warrior was just talking to other wrestlers. As the night proceeded, the family kept waiting at the exact same spot for their hero.
After his match, when Hart was returning to the dressing room, he noticed the family was not there. He assumed the child must have met his hero and left with his family. Bret and his teammate, Jim Neidhart quickly took showers, got dressed, and left the building before the crowd could block their way, but as they were around the corner, near a backstage ramp, they saw the weary family still waiting there.
They had just been moved out of the backstage area to make way for The Warrior’s entrance. That day, Bret Hart lost whatever little respect he had for Warrior. He understood that the kid’s hero had made him wait all night, unable to summon the compassion to see this real little warrior. Bret said that Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre The Giant, and many others never hesitated to meet a dying child. The Hitman’s disgust for The Ultimate Warrior magnified a thousand times, and to him, Warrior was “a coward, weakling, and a phony hero.”
RELATED: 10 Stories from Bret Hart's Autobiography That WWE Fans Need To Know
The Ultimate Warrior’s Self-Destruction
The Ultimate Warrior was one of Vince McMahon’s biggest stars ever. He was a bodybuilder who looked like a million bucks, exactly what the WWE chairman looked for. But The Warrior’s biggest enemy was The Warrior himself. He sabotaged his relationship with McMahon, the man who literally created him, by being greedy. He held Vince McMahon hostage before the SummerSlam 1991 main event by demanding a six-figure ransom, or he would not participate in the event. Vince agreed but fired the crazy man right after the show.
McMahon hired him back to boost ratings, but he left again within a year. His final return lasted only four months after he started going MIA for events before he was fired. He also felt WWD wasn’t paying him royalties on merchandise. After WWD, Warrior’s one-year WCW run turned out to be a disaster as well.
For the next decade, he wanted nothing to do with Vince and his company, even refusing the 2010 induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. After a lot of bad blood and finger-pointing, Triple H played the peacemaker and Warrior was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame in 2014. Sadly, three days after his induction, he died from a heart attack.
RELATED: 'The Self Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior' Remains The Weirdest Documentary WWE Ever MadeThe ultimate problem with The Ultimate Warrior seemed to be his erratic and unpredictable nature. Most of his opponents like Hulk Hogan and Sycho Sid testified to this. Only if he had better business acumen and sensibility, he would have been the face of the company for years to come.
