The Ultimate Warrior Still Likes Wrestling Games (And Is Still Insane)
This makes us wish The Ultimate Warrior would visit our office.
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember The Ultimate Warrior as one of the most exciting things ever to hit the wrestling ring. An enormous, frenzied mass of neon muscle, he was terrible at both wrestling and promos, and yet somehow, he made both compulsive viewing. It’s the latter talent that’s gone down in Internet history, of course, with old videos of his many bafflingly insane monologues proving consistently popular on YouTube. While other wrestlers made sure to build up their opponent and hype the coming match, the Warrior simply screamed whatever came into his head at the camera – and what came into his head was usually taken from some snorting, malarial fever dream, in which he ascends to the level of God after being trampled by elephants. Or run over with a lawnmower. No, really:
Couple that berserker style with the popular myth that he actually died back in 1991 (as covered in this excellent Deadspin article), and you’ve got a recipe for cult infamy, a fact that the WWE are all too aware of. They’ve butted heads with the Warrior several times over the years (probably literally), normally over money disputes, but The Warrior – and that is his legal name; he legally changed it from Jim Hellwig back in the ’90s – seems to have unscrambled his brains long enough to agree to be a part of WWE’s upcoming video game, WWE 2K14. The Warrior will be a playable character for anyone who pre-orders the game on Xbox or PS3, which makes sense – the popularity of last year’s WWE ’13 was predicated almost entirely on the fact that it let you play through the Attitude Era with a roster of classic stars, so it’s no surprise to see them dipping back into the nostalgia well for this year’s entry.
The upshot of all this is that we now get a new commercial for the game, featuring the Warrior himself as he lays waste to “2K Headquarters.” And if you were worried that the years may have made him slightly less crazy, rambling, and, yes, snorty, then friend, prepare to be un-worried. This is the Warrior as you (kinda) remember him, and it is glorious.
Want more wrestling content? Check out this video of Diamond Dallas Page and Jake “The Snake” Roberts teaching DDP Yoga in the Maxim office, or read this interview with The Iron Sheik.
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