Warrior mailbag question
By Scott Keith on 14 April 2014
Hi Scott! Long time reader from your wrestleline days in 99. I have a question in regards to The Ultimate Warrior's title run. People always say that his run was killed because Hogan didn't go away. I always felt that he was killed out the gate because the hottest heel at the time was Earthquake, which would have been logical for the champion to be plugged in with the hot heel. Do you think Warrior would have fared better if placed with earthquake rather than a repackaged "serious because I got a haircut" Rick Rude?
KB
Yup, definitely. But part of the problem was that they so thin on the heel side that there really wasn't anyone else for Warrior to face on top. That's why they had to repackage Rude in the first place, even though we had just seen Rude-Warrior in 89. And really, the Hogan-Earthquake feud did big business so it's hard to argue for changing that one. Dibiase and Savage were both fading fast in the midcard so neither of those were any help. Had Undertaker debuted earlier he would have been perfect, or maybe moving up the Jake Roberts heel turn to freshen him up. Actually that probably would have been a hell of a deal. Mr. Perfect flopped on top with Hogan, but maybe if they had held off on breaking his unbeaten streak until he got to Warrior it could have done business? The problem becomes that they were lacking in top heels that Hogan hadn't already destroyed around the horn.
I dunno, it was a bad situation all around.