Hulk Hogan vs The Ultimate Warrior was one of the biggest WrestleMania matches of all time.
The duo main-evented Wrestle VI, putting the WWF and Intercontinental Championship on the line in a historic clash.
It pitted two of the biggest icons against one another in a huge clash. Hulk Hogan had carried the company through the 1980s and became the most popular wrestler in history.
However, Hulkamania was waning in power and the WWE needed a new superhero to take the reins. Vince McMahon had my choices, with stars like Randy Savage and Jake Roberts proving popular with fans.
However, McMahon had his own favourite. A bodybuilder from Indiana called Jim Hellwig, who would find fame in the WWE as the absolutely mental The Ultimate Warrior.
Warrior was not a great wrestler, but the fans loved him. While not technically sound, he was strong, charismatic and electric everywhere he went.
His promo style was excentric, nonsensical but it drew you in. You couldn’t look away from his coke-fueled rants about Planet Warrior and the summoning of the something or other *pig noise*.
The Ultimate Warrior beat Hulk Hogan in the main event of Wrestlemania VI after a big splash to win the WWF Championship.
This added to his already won Intercontinental title, which he vacated shortly after.
Warrior’s big win over Hogan was a passing-of-the-torch moment for the WWE, although it didn’t quite work out. Warrior was not good enough to carry the company with his limited skills and dropped the title to Sgt Slaughter at the 1991 Royal Rumble.
Hulk Hogan won the belt back from Slaughter at Wrestlemania VII, although never forgot his match with the Ultimate Warrior the year prior.
Hulk Hogan on the Ultimate Warrior
Hulk Hogan had some choice words to say about The Ultimate Warrior during a recent interview. The former WWE and WCW Champion did not let up when describing Warrior’s shortcomings in their WrestleMania match.
Speaking with Bubba The Love Sponge, Hulk Hogan claimed that Warrior “didn’t know what was going on in the ring” and was completely blown up early into their clash.
‘He got in the business, and he just didn’t know what was going on in the ring.
I had one good match with him, and he blew up real quick. I mean I remember being in the Sky Dome and about eight minutes into the match he goes “Let’s go home, let’s go home”, which means “Let’s end the match”.
I said “No, brother”. I grabbed him in a rear chin lock. He was sucking [Breathing Heavily] when I said “No, we’re not going anywhere, because 75 000 people in here, brother, and we’re gonna tear this place down!”
“We’re gonna go home after you press me over your head and I kick out. Then, when I drop the leg on you, you’re gonna kick out and we’re gonna go all the way through the finish until you beat me.”
But you know what the problem was? He was lost in there, brother. He had a great gimmick that Vince was madly in love with. I’ll leave it at that, but you know what brother? He just couldn’t cut it in the ring’
Hogan being Hogan, he needed to get his win back over Warrior. He brought the former WWE Champion into WCW in 1998, 8 years after their last encounter.
The match infamously horrible. Hogan was never the best worker in the world, but The Ultimate Warrior was never a good worker at all.
He’d also spent a long time out of the ring and had not improved at all. If anything, he had got worse since their WrestleMania VI clash and really should not have been in the ring.
However, that didn’t work for Hulk Hogan, brother. He defeated The Ultimate Warrior thanks to interference from his nephew Horace Hogan, walking out of Halloween Havoc 1998 as the winner.
