Helwig/ Warrior was polarizing. He was a diva, a bigot, a superhuman weirdo on steroids who made his mark on pop culture in the WWF’s rock ‘n’ wrestling era. He was kooky and vain. He wasn’t billed from real places like Sarasota, Florida or Calgary, Alberta, Canada; they said he was from–get this–Parts Unknown. Clearly, I was destined to write about this man.
He had been retired for over a decade when I began to write a story about him. It was 2012. We both had some down time. Doing my research—I guess you could call it–I found out he had a blog. Turns out, he was a decent artist. He drew these primal-looking sketches with captions of motivational quotes. Some were written by historical figures, some by Mr. Warrior. The space he occupied on the internet was surprisingly interesting.
I left him a comment. (I wanted him to reply so I could get material, so I was super nice.) Here’s what I said:
Quote: “Persistence. The only thing that will piss off failure enough to get the fuck out of the way of your success.”
I love that quote! The quotes that you apply to your artwork from other bold and imaginative minds are great as well. For instance, the Frederick Douglass quote about getting ridiculed by others for not conforming to their expectations of you was another one I loved.
I have to confess, I get a kick out of watching your WWF promos on YouTube. They were quite silly and eccentric. But more than that, they were wildly entertaining. Plus, you don’t seem to be troubled by the negative things people think about you. Although I enjoyed pro wrestling in my youth, now I’m more of a cynic about it. But after browsing through your blog, I’ve gained a newfound respect for you as an artist. You seem dedicated to the creation of some heartfelt artwork.
Best wishes to you and your family. Take care now.
Sincerely,
Nick Olig
Less than a day later, I got a response from the Ultimate Warrior.
Mr. Warrior said: “Nick, hello. Thanks for taking the time to write and comment.
My career creating and performing Ultimate Warrior was an (sic) great and inspiring time. Also, wildly entertaining. A huge amount of creativity USED TO go into developing your ring persona. Things have changed in that regard. I’m very proud of what I achieved in the business–more proud of how I’ve moved on in my life to stay creative and inspired. Still being ALIVE is a good thing. Different than most believe, intensity for life is NOT an act for me. This life I have is NOT a dress rehearsal, and I will NOT disrespect it in that way.
Always believe,
Warrior
###
Ten-year-old me would have been ecstatic. My modern-day, manchild self got the reward of creative fuel. I got the nudge I needed to finish this story. It’s a biography of the Ultimate Warrior’s life in Parts Unknown, as told by his old friend, a geeky, mythological Griffin.
###
“Behold my presence, brothers.” That’s a common greeting where I come from, a town called Parts Unknown. We even say the “brothers” part to women. Parts Unknown, I must confess, is not renowned for chivalry or equal rights among the sexes. The only thing our women can vote on is the name of their children. The husbands also get a vote on the matter, which counts for 51% the women’s 49.
It’s a chauvinistic culture here in Parts Unknown. In my idealistic teenage years, I was dismayed by my hometown’s dismissal of all Progressive notions. A short time after graduation, I flew the coup. I didn’t last very long on the outside. The same sensitivity that prompted my escape from Parts Unknown made me vulnerable to the judgments of Normals. They gave me the leper treatment. When I returned home a failure, I was not exactly welcomed back, but accepted nonetheless. The elders decreed that I could stay, on the condition that I never leave again, nor foul the minds of the children with foolish tales of existence outside of Parts Unknown. I was given a menial job as a paperboy and modest dwelling above an alchemy lab. They put me on probation for 10 years due to my “Radical Conduct.”
Not everyone’s departure from Parts Unknown was ill-fated. In fact, a few thrived. I have crossed paths with the subject of this tale, and I wish to tell you Normals about his formative years in our fantastical town. The man made quite a splash in the pro wrestling racket some years ago. His name is the Ultimate Warrior.
His mother wanted to name him Doug, by the way. Fortunately, his father voted otherwise.
Born on the 16th of June in the Year of Minotaur to parents Mighty and Athena, the lone child in the Warrior clan spoke his first words with no delay. In a spasm of wiggling limbs that foreshadowed an adulthood rife with spasms of wiggling limbs, moments after his umbilical cord was severed by the ceremonial ax, he bellowed, “The intensity of Gorrilius, God of Combat, courses through my veins as Summerslam draws nigh!” He made this declaration years before the Summerslam, the WWF pay-per-view. The Ultimate Warrior claims he had a profound vision in his mother’s womb. What may have seemed like total gibberish back then is now mostly gibberish to the ears of Normals.
The closest thing we have to baptism is the newborn’s Rite of Power. There is no Holy Water involved. Instead, the day a baby first stands on his own feet, he must body slam a baby rhino in order to join the Church of the Brazen Souls. The Ultimate Warrior still holds the record for youngest Parts Unknowner to accomplish the challenge. What’s more, he executed not a mere scoop slam but a military-press slam on the baby rhino. He hoisted the beast above his head and posed for ten seconds before heaving the poor thing onto the sacred mat.
As a toddler, the Warrior’s favorite toy was the tusk of a woolly mammoth. He found it while digging a hole in the backyard. He loved to throw it like a spear and impale bee hives. He also used the tusk as a baseball bat to club the skulls of decomposed Bigfoots high and far.
When I was just learning how to fly, one of those airborne Bigfoot skulls clipped my wing. Suddenly I was in a frantic tailspin. I crash landed in the Warriors’ yard, badly bruised. Athena rushed outside, took the tusk from her boy, scolded him, and tended to my wounds. I whimpered as she dabbed the blood-stained feathers of my left wing.
The Warrior seethed from across the lawn, no doubt cursing me for being so foolish as to get in the way of a skull he had launched so impressively. His mother saw this misbehavior. An indignant tear ran down her face paint. It rolled into a glob of radiant color that dropped from her cheekbone as she turned to him.
“Ultimate, you have done harm to a fellow creature, for careless reasons the Gods of Combat frown upon. May the shame dwell in your heart until you know what it means to be contrite.”
Her words vexed her son. He took a knee and contemplated. Finally, he nodded and stood up. He looked me in the eyes. I could see that a wild transformation had taken place. He walked over to his mother and me.
“I have insulted the Gods of Combat,” he said. “From this day forward, you are my friend, noble bird. You ride on my back for my protection.”
This declaration struck me as a reversal of logic. It was the sort of expression the Ultimate Warrior would be derided for saying years later by the likes of Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. But that hardly mattered to me. I had just made my first friend.
The mayor of Parts Unknown is a homely and wise ogre who dwells inside a cave made of sweet, delicious chocolate. His name is Kruffmobler, the Elder. He’s so disciplined that he only lets himself snack on his home once a year, on Halloween—the most sacred of holidays in Parts Unknown.
Ultimate went as Tarzan every year we went trick-or-treating. It is rare for a film made in Hollywood to find its way into Parts Unknown, even more rare for it to be embraced here. The residents of Parts Unknown were smitten with Tarzan, King of the Jungle, and Ultimate was his biggest fan. Our friend Juno, an adorable and spunky cyclops girl, always played the part of Jane. It was known in our neighborhood that Ultimate cared not for candy, that he preferred red meat rich in protein. While the others amassed chocolate bars and taffy, Ultimate was given roasted ducks, veal tacos, and mastodon burgers.
For show and tell in kindergarten, Ultimate did the same presentation every time. When the teacher announced it was his turn, he sprinted to the front of the class and started flexing his muscles at us. To conclude the presentation, he would tell us, “This freak of nature right here is just beginning to swell!”
Parts Unknown can be a savage place, and so bullying is a common practice. Goro, a humongous four-armed monster who went on to be a villain in Mortal Kombat, was one to harass and pummel the weakling creatures of our town–including me, your humble narrator. On one occasion, Goro dunked my head in a toilet while combing his ponytail and juggling daggers. Ultimate barged into the bathroom at the precise moment I realized Goro might be so cruel as to drown me in filth. I’ll never forget the words my friend and hero shouted at Goro.
“Now you must deal with the creation of all the unpleasantries in the entire universe as I feel the injection from the Gods above!”
Goro took several seconds to think of a comeback. At last, he smirked with satisfaction, having found his brilliant response.
“Prick,” he said.
Thus ignited a ferocious battle. The fight lasted two hours and sprawled from the bathroom to the gym to the boiler room to the playground. They obliterated walls, tore down ceiling fans, ripped pipes from the infrastructure to use as foreign objects, and destroyed the jungle gym. The school was decimated. The damage they caused exceeded the cost of repairs following the Great Chupacabra Tornado of olden times.
At long last, Kruffmobler, the Elder, was called to the scene to put an end to the fight. He broke it up by flinging a bucket of leeches on the boys, then posing the question, “Boys, what is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Ultimate and Goro puzzled over this question, which allowed their dads to dart in and knock the boys out with chloroform rags.
My best friend once said in a promo that the only way for a Normal to gain entry into Parts Unknown was to overpower the pilot of a plane, grab hold of the controls, and steer the plane into the side of a mountain.
That was claptrap. He was on coke. In reality, Parts Unknown is located 60 miles southwest of the Spirit World. Type that into your primitive Google Maps and see if you can find us.
The chief exports of Parts Unknown are: devastation in pursuit of honor, the creator of the show LOST, and dragon hormones. Our chief imports are wrestling speedos, medicine balls, and swimming pools filled with liquid Creatine.
In high school, I was part of a Saved by the Bell sort of clique, along with Ultimate, as well as Hoff-man: Jewish Cousin of He-Man, and Juno. Xena: Warrior Princess and Judy, the lost daughter from Family Matters, rounded out the crew. We were dear friends who had some crazy times and learned some life lessons along the way. Dick Cheney was our ill-tempered principal.
Saying that Ultimate and Juno had a Slater-Jesse, love-hate dynamic would not be accurate. Ultimate and Juno were a couple before Slater and Jesse, so it’s more like Slater-Jesse had an Ultimate-Juno sort of thing happening, not the other way around.
I won a beauty pageant at Thor High School. Me, a skunk-colored Griffin with the voice of comedian Emo Phillips: beauty pageant winner. It was a fine boost to my self-esteem. I don’t recall the details, but remain certain I learned some sort of a life lesson.
During our senior year, Ultimate got into music. For a whole summer, he was a member of the shock-rock band GWAR. He played the woodchipper. Jackyl, a band with passionate yet tasteful chainsaw solos, had a profound impact on Ultimate’s musical tastes. He believed the woodchipper could expand on the gnarly snarl established by the chainsaw.
One fateful night, Ultimate got into a dispute with the singer about which type of wood should be fed into the machine. Ultimate insisted on Strack, a genus of wood unique to the Forest of Tortured Souls on the outskirts of town, while the singer argued for the simple merits of oak.
The Ultimate Warrior quit GWAR during soundcheck that night at Sludgemaster’s Bar. Ever since then, Ultimate has had a grudge against those strange heavyweights of metal. In a letter he wrote to me, splotched in chicken blood, Warrior mocked GWAR, still upset that oak “sounded too mainstream.” He added, “GWAR sounds soft to Warrior. Soft like ‘Ravishing’ Rick Rude, may the Gods have no mercy on his cowardly soul.”
My best mate began to see that, for good or ill, Parts Unknown wasn’t big enough for him. Whenever I slept over at his house, he fell asleep first, and in no time he was rambling nonsense about steel cage matches at Survivor Series and “sending the power of the Warrior down everyone’s throat in the WWF until they became sick of it.”
Ultimate had weird night tremors.
He did, however, say something genuine and borderline-wise during one of his sleep outbursts. I’ll never forget it. I’m not allowed to forget much; as the town historian, it’s my job to recall that somewhere beyond that fog of incomprehensibility, the Ultimate Warrior had something to say. So, before we arrive at the rather somber conclusion in this note, I’d like you to hear what passed for advice from my old friend.
”Intensity enslaves the impossible!”
The words of the Ultimate Warrior.
Our high school prom was held inside a Thunderdome. Ultimate conquered all challengers in a 30-man Royal Rumble to win the Prom King Championship belt. He kicked all four of Goro’s balls when ref Cheney wasn’t looking to help him win, but so what? Goro would have done the same to him, except Ultimate had two balls.
Anyway, the Ultimate Warrior lost his virginity to Juno that night. Afterwards, he gave me the details. He said they made love at the foot of a volcano. At the exact moment of his climax, the volcano erupted. He then picked her up, chests heaving, soaked in each other’s sweat, and ran her back to safety from the flowing lava. Then he laid her down on the grass, kissed her tenderly and held her close. I couldn’t believe it.
“Whoa, really?” I asked.
“Nah,” he confessed, unable to lie. “We did it in the parking lot of a bowling alley. Warrior came too fast.
Our time together ended in a tragedy, I’m sad to say. Lovely Juno was a perfectionist. Her ambition was a force that sometimes clouded her judgment. She kept secrets. She got addicted to caffeine pills that allowed her to stay awake all night to study for final exams. Unaware that she had high blood pressure, she took one too many of those dreadful pills. In the wee hours of the morning, scrutinizing books to raise her test scores from a 99 to a 100, she died suddenly of cardiac arrest.
We had to trudge on as numb puppets of ourselves until graduation day, and beyond. Ultimate was never the same. The day after we got our diplomas, he boarded a plane to leave Parts Unknown forever. After his plane took off, I found the only thing he left behind. I kept it. To this day, I have it. It was a watery glob of his face paint.
Acknowledge my absence, brothers. And always believe.
Sincerely,
Crumwell, the Griffin.
###
You’d think Death could bow out of this story, but nope. Outside of Parts Unknown, Mr. Warrior was inducted into the wrestling hall of fame on April 5th, 2014. He made a big speech and everything. The next day, he got recognized for his career at Wrestlemania. The day after that, he did a promo in the ring to thunderous applause on Monday Night Raw. And the day after that… he died. Heart attack due to cardiovascular disease. He was only 54.
Now, early in the story, I did point out the man’s flaws. He was sometimes malicious, petty, homophobic, unprofessional, and ignorant. But for the last few days of his life, he was treated to sweet moments of redemption on a grand stage. And I could never say he didn’t deserve that. I don’t know everything that happened in that loopy mind or overworked heart, but I know that in my one exchange with him, the Ultimate Warrior was kind and thoughtful. And I still have the nerve to judge him.
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