[1990-07-08-WWF-Wrestling Challenge] Interview: Ultimate Warrior

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Nothing really to say about this, but it's surprisingly okay.

[PeteF3]

Yeah, better than usual stuff from the Warrior--his talk is about meeting challenges and the threat of the cage and retaining the title. No film over eyes, poisoned bloodstreams, or even any talk of "the Normals."

 

Heenan is great on commentary. "Looks like a worried man."

[soup23]

I think Hennan inserting jabs added a whole lot and Warrior stayed more on point than usual. I especially liked Hennan yelling that he was running away at the end.

[Kevin Ridge]

They are actually going to have a Rude/Warrior match between the two before Summerslam. The Warriors are lowering Ultimate Warrior’s dosage. He must be pissed.

[garretta]

He was a little different here, but not much. He was still talking about the poison running through his veins, etc. He's still weird enough that it's really hard to get behind him. I don't know how much more normal he could have gotten without becoming a different character altogether, though, so it's really hard to fault him for playing what he was given as well as he could. It was the character he was given and the lack of a truly hot challenger (the Rude angle was started too soon and was already getting boring, and Hogan/Quake was more compelling regardless) that really did him in.

 

Heenan was gold here as usual, even covering for Okerlund after Gino harped on him for not mentioning that in order to win the cage match, someone had to reach the floor. He also correctly states that Warrior never mentioned leaving SummerSlam as champion, then tries to play it up as a lack of confidence on Warrior's part. Talk about a master psychologist!

[GSR]

Mean Gene runs down the rules of the cage match for Summerslam and says that it’s been signed to conclusively determine, once and for all, who the better man is. He then introduces his guest at this time, the WWF Champion, the Ultimate Warrior.

 

Gene says that he will be taking on Rick Rude for the title at Summerslam, but before the big one in Philadelphia he will be facing him on the road first. Warrior says that on the road is no different than this day, yesterday or tomorrow, and he’s had enough of the promises of ‘new challenges’ and ‘new strengths’ that Rick Rude is going to bring to him. He then loses me by talking about withdrawal symptoms, as the Warriors have lowered the dosage of the poison that they’ve spread??? Bobby Heenan on commentary then claims that the Warrior looks like a worried man, when in fact he looks nothing of the sort! Okerlund says that there is a possibility by the time that Summerslam rolls around he will no longer be the WWF Champion, but this match at Summerslam will be held inside a steel cage. Warrior says that he walked into the ‘Ultimate Challenge’ as a challenger and left with the WWF Championship. He shall never walk into combat as a challenger ever again, and a 15ft steel cage is no different from the places he came from, and no different to the challenges that were thrown down to him as he lay waiting for the opportunity. He will leave Rick Rude in one piece for now, but at Summerslam he will walk into the ring as the champion and he will leave with the full power of all his Warriors! Heenan then picks up that he never said ‘leave with the championship’, and surmises this to mean that he is scared.

 

I had no idea that they were running Warrior/Rude house show matches prior to Summerslam, and even making reference about it on TV. If Rude can’t beat the Warrior around the horn before Summerslam, ‘how’ is he going to beat the Warrior inside a cage? He’ll be able to have Bobby Heenan helping him at the house shows, whereas he’ll be on his own here. If the two of them can’t get the job done, how is Rude on his own going to be able to do it? If I’ve seen this match at a house show and Warrior won, why would I want to pay to watch him face the same man in a cage? It’s clear that Hogan vs Earthquake is the ‘real’ main event and the match that they are hoping people will buy the PPV for. It does feel like they have given up on the Warrior already.