Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
We are all painfully aware about the love hate relationship that both the WWE and the Ultimate Warrior had with one another for many years. It led the Warrior to leave and come back to the company a few times. It also caused a litany of court battles and lawsuits between the two sides. After their bad break up in 1992, Warrior decided to spend the next few years marketing himself and his character. He had his own line of Warrior merchandise including tee shirts, posters and a comic book.
The biggest venture Warrior would take would be in 1995, when he decided to open up his own pro wrestling training school called ‘Warrior University.’ According to the Warrior himself, he had heard how several wrestlers including Buzz Sawyer had started their own wrestling schools and supposedly used it as a front to scam money from unsuspecting wrestling hopefuls. Warrior wanted to create a legitimate school to not only teach and train, but to motivate as well.
Warrior transformed his own personal gym in Scottsdale, Arizona into what would be known as Warrior University. Of course, the school required much needed publicity and advertisement if it were to be successful. Enter in Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation. Around this same time, business was bad for the WWF and needed a boost in some way. The two parties involved began discussing a potential return of the Ultimate Warrior to a WWF ring.
The Warrior said that Linda McMahon was put in charge of the negotiations between Warrior and the company. One requirement that Warrior had in his WWF negotiations, was to be able to market his own line of merchandise including his school. Both the Warrior and the WWF would share in the profits. The Ultimate Warrior would indeed return to the WWF and with him, a slew of advertisements for his merch. Commercials for Warriors school began popping up on WWF television.
Eventually, the marriage between both Warrior and WWF burned out again. The WWF accused Warrior of no showing several events, while the Warrior accused Vince McMahon and the WWF of pocketing all of the profits from his personal merchandise. Either way, Warrior disappeared again…ultimately (no pun intended) closing his school. Some accused Warrior’s school to be just like the schools Warrior’s was trying not to be…a scam.
The premise of Warrior University was to send a fee of $9.95 to a P.O. Box in Scottsdale, Arizona. You would be sent a pamphlet explaining what Warrior University was and then if lucky, get chosen to enroll in the school for roughly $5,000. Warrior promised to meet each and every student for train and learn. Nobody notable ever graduated from his school. Does that mean that Warrior University was a scam? Perhaps or perhaps not. What we do know is that the school didn’t last very long and quickly disappeared once he and the WWF parted ways.
david fullam
The irony of what was considered a truly horrible worker training someone.