How Six Weeks In California Launched Ultimate Warrior's Wrestling Career

The Ultimate Warrior may be among the most famous pro wrestlers in history, but his career has often taken a back seat to other aspects of his life. That includes Warrior's post-wrestling career in public speaking and writing, which revealed racist and homophobic views that have continued to cloud his reputation more than a decade after his death. Frankly, Warrior's death has also taken precedence over his legacy, in large part due to the fact that it occurred only days after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame and one day after he appeared to cut a promo on "WWE Raw." When one has such controversial views as Warrior did and died under bizarre circumstances as he did, it's a little bit harder to care about Warrior's matches with Rick Rude or Hulk Hogan.

It also, however, doesn't make those things go away. Indeed, for all the other baggage in his life, and death, Ultimate Warrior's wrestling career remains among the most interesting. He was beloved by fans and reviled by just as many, often for the same reasons; his high energy, incomprehensible promos, limited in-ring work, outlandish storylines, and inability to not fall out with his employer at the time, be it WWE's Vince McMahon in 1991, 1992, and 1996, or WCW's Eric Bischoff in 1998. And he's one of the few wrestlers ever to reach the top of the business, only to lose his spot almost as quickly as he gained it. Truly, Warrior's career was one full of contradictions, perhaps a reason he remains, to some fans, a figure the likes of wrestling had never seen before or since. And it all wouldn't have been possible without a six week period Warrior spent in California back in the mid-80s.

Given his impressive bodybuilder look, most fans probably assume Warrior was born, raised, and eventually molded in California by the bodybuilder lifestyle. Not quite. In fact, Warrior was born in Indiana, and spent his early life in the midwestern state, graduating from Fountain Central High School in Veedersburg, Indiana before briefly attending Indiana State University, the same school that famously housed NBA legend Larry Bird. Even after that, he went south instead of west, attending Life University in Georgia with an eye towards becoming a chiropractor. Along the way, however, Warrior developed a taste for bodybuilding, and began competing in amateur competitions. He was successful enough that, as he told IGN in 2004, Gold's Gym decided to fly him out to California in 1985 to train for six weeks for a competition.

The trip proved to be life changing, but not for the reasons Warrior surely thought at the time, as he was soon after contacted by a fellow competitor who informed him that a stable of bodybuilders was being put together to compete as pro wrestlers. It wasn't long after that Warrior found himself with several other muscled up young men, including wrestling legend and AEW star Sting, training to enter the pro wrestling business. And where most of the other members of their troupe ultimately flamed out, Sting and Warrior persisted, pursuing more work in wrestling even after the group folded, and eventually finding work as a tag team in both Memphis' Continental Wrestling Association and Oklahoma's Universal Wrestling Federation in the mid-80s. From there, the rest took care of itself for both Warrior and Sting. But if not for those six weeks in California that got Warrior noticed, it may have been someone else standing next to Sting and donning the face paint.