It’s easy to talk about guys in the WWF who had a terrible gimmick that were then repackaged with a new persona that brought them fame. The one that always comes to mind is Chilly McFreeze himself, the Ringmaster Steve Austin. But what I find more interesting is guys who had a persona that wasn’t quite right, so it was tweaked slightly to make it something that DID work. Such is the man in our match today, the Dingo Warrior!
Yes kids, the Ultimate Warrior wasn’t the Ultimate Warrior at all when he first came to the company where he’d achieve his greatest fame. No, he was the DINGO Warrior. Now you would think that would mean he was from Australia or something, but according to Howard Finkel, he hailed from Queens, New York. Here he is doing leapfrogs and arm drags on his opponent Jose Estrada, before settling in to try to figure out how to put on one of the most complicated moves in all of wrestling, an ARMBAR.
I should also note he had yet to have his iconic theme, instead coming to the ring in early appearances to “The Warrior” by Scandal. That’s not only a super weird song for a guy like Jim Hellwig to come out to, but it would be a horrible theme for ANYONE to come out to as it’s almost more a power ballad. How is that going to psych anyone up in the crowd?
Another arm bar comes next, followed by a windmill smash! I love that not only did Warrior wind up like that, but he literally leaped in the air for extra impact!
To be fair, Warrior was still learning the ropes here. And by that trying to understand how to run them, as he nearly breaks himself in half on the rebound to Jose. Yes kids, Warrior was somehow WAY worse early in his career than what we’d eventually see.
Now you may be asking when we’re going to see some of the legendary Warrior moves like the gorilla press. Well here you go, as he busts that out to escape a side headlock. He follows that up with an arm drag and yes…more arm bars!
Warrior uses a big sissy kick to Estrada as he bounces of the ropes, then does an early version of his taunt. I mean, it looks way more like he’s doing the pee pee dance than what we’d eventually get, but work with me here.
No doubt at this point you just want to see the end of the match, eagerly anticipating the big splash to give Warrior the duke. Nope! Instead, check out this finishing sequence: an atomic drop into a clothesline in which Dingo takes a flat back bump! I THINK what he was going for was the clothesline Randy Savage used early in his career and looked VERY cool. So much so in fact it was featured in the first ever WWF arcade game, WWF Superstars. Suffice to say, Warrior’s wasn’t 1/10000th as awesome as Macho’s version. In fact, Dingo Warrior was downright awful in pretty much every regard. Yet a couple tweaks here and there and he’d become one of the biggest stars in the history of wrestling. Life can be weird…but so was Jim Hellwig!