There Were TWO Ultimate Warriors?!
The final Other Worlds Orbiter screening is coming October 23rd, and it’s a World Premiere! Read about THE MANDELA EFFECT film and get tickets here. As a hat-tip to film’s twisty, conspiracy-laden ideas, the OW programmers are seizing their chance to talk about their favorite conspiracy theories (or truths).
REID:
Did you know that the original Ultimate Warrior died in 1991? And he was replaced by an impostor Ultimate Warrior portayed by Kerry Von Erich starting in 1992? Because it totally happened. What? Who is The Ulitmate Warrior? Alright, strap in and I’ll explain.
The Ultimate Warrior was a professional wrestler, a muscle-bound, face paint-wearing maniac who cut incoherent promos and sprinted to the ring, shaking the ropes and making short work of his opponents. He possessed next to no in-ring skills, and his repertoire essentially consisted of clotheslines and shaking the ring ropes. But that’s really all he needed, and he became so popular in the late 1980s that he was pegged as the heir apparent to Hulk Hogan, who was giving thought to winding down his in-ring career to transition to Hollywood (I’ll allow you to figure out how that one turned out.) And so, on April 1st, 1990, he did the unthinkable and beat Hogan in the Toronto Skydome to become the (then) WWF champion. Hogan became an Oscar-winning movie star and Warrior became the wrestling star of the 90s, lifting the industry to previously unseen heights.
None of that happened. Business declined sharply during Warrior’s reign as champion and by the following year he was stagnant, forced to step aside for a humbled, non-Oscar-winning Hogan to return to right the ship. After a prolonged contract and financial dispute, he was fired, never to be seen again...
Until the following year, when business had plummeted even further and a star-power boost was needed. The Warrior returned, but something was different. He was much, much smaller in his physique. His face paint was different, covering more of his face. His hair was shorter and a different color. Was this THE Ultimate Warrior, or merely A Ultimate Warrior? The truth soon came out: the real Ultimate Warrior had died (which was why he vanished so suddenly) and this new one was being played by Texas wrestling star Kerry Von Erich, who himself had vanished from television shortly before this great conspiracy began. And we, the audience, were just supposed to unquestionably accept it.
Kerry Von Erich
None of this is true, either, except that these were very real rumors that circulated for years. It was before the internet, what can I say? The real story was not as fun: Warrior was smaller due to having to get off steroids, as the wrestling industry was caught in the midst of a PR nightmare scandal involving steroids that would nearly destroy it. The shorter hair and new paint were mere cosmetic changes (although to be fair, it did make him look a lot like Kerry.) Both of the players involved in this story would unfortunately find tragic ends: Warrior succumbed to a heart attack mere hours after appearing on a WWE television show in 2014, and Kerry Von Erich would take his own life in 1993, another casualty in his family’s horribly sad legacy.
Pro wrestling is a bizarre thing, a mix of sports and theater and fact and fiction. And stories like these just add to that surreal vibe of it all: after all, if movies and television shows recast different actors in the same role, why couldn’t wrestling?
