Why This Site?

On October 24th, 1987 a 28-year-old named James Brian Hellwig made his primetime debut with the World Wrestling Federation portraying “The Ultimate Warrior”.  Less than three years later he would be chosen to serve as the face of the largest wrestling company in the world, becoming the champion by defeating the legendary Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania VI on April 1, 1990.  Hellwig’s rise was nothing short of meteoric by industry standards.  Yet, as quickly as he reached the apex of his career, he fell from wrestling’s Mount Olympus even faster.  Less than a year after being chosen by Vince McMahon to serve as the new face of the WWF, Hellwig would lose his status as world champion, an honor he would never regain.  Hellwig would be suspended by McMahon on August 26th, 1991 immediately following SummerSlam as a result of turmoil brewing behind the scenes.  The relationship between McMahon and Hellwig would never fully recover.

Jim Hellwig would return to the WWF in 1992 and 1996, but both attempts to reestablish his Ultimate Warrior character ended in a matter of months by suspension or termination.   The souring of the relationship in 1996 led to a series of lawsuits that lasted more years than Hellwig ever wrestled with the company that helped make him a star.  For nearly twenty-years Jim Hellwig, who legally changed his name to Warrior in 1993, would be embroiled in a war of words with his former colleagues.  Additionally, years of litigation between Hellwig and Titan Sports made any notion of reuniting appear next to impossible.  Both sides displayed a level of contempt for the other that at times spilled into vitriol.  Then in early 2014, World Wrestling Entertainment announced that Jim Hellwig, Warrior, was being inducted into their Hall of Fame. 








The shocking reconciliation between Titan Sports and Warrior seemed almost like a storybook ending.  Hellwig even appeared on WWE’s flagship program “Monday Night Raw” on April 7th, following his induction and Wrestlemania XXX.  Yet the dramatic reconciliation would be shattered by the news that on April 8th, the day after his television appearance, Jim Hellwig had died at the age of 54, leaving behind a wife and two children.  Fans of wrestling and the Ultimate Warrior were stunned by the news of his passing.  Nearly two decades of feuding with the company that had helped create his iconic character came to an end just before his death. 

This website came into existence after several years of research that was aimed at trying to answer this question:  Who was Jim Hellwig as a person?  The pages of this site are dedicated to answering that question through an exhaustive process of interviews, both personally conducted, and done by others, and reading thousands of pages of documentation gathered from legal briefs and other sources.  To understand Jim Hellwig’s career is to understand the human being and the challenging terrain he navigated from his youth.  There are several pages to help the reader research his life at unique junctures.

It is my hope that this information will be valuable for you to more fully discover the man behind the character.

Chad Venters