The family that I live for only breathes the air that smells of combat.
— The Ultimate Warrior
I was actually going to school to be a chiropractor but was also succeeding at bodybuilding - I did well in a few national contests.
The Ultimate Warrior was explosive, confident, heroic, and ready to get into battle. He was a character who had his own set of rules.
I did the Dingo Warrior thing down in Texas in WCCW.
I have an intense personality, and a lot of the qualities that the Ultimate Warrior had still apply to my everyday life.
I remember travelling up and down the road, and I kept journals during my whole career, and I was always making notes about things I wanted to say, words I wanted to create, actions I wanted to do, things I wanted to do to make the character more imaginative and fantastical.
The toughest opponent for me would have been Randy Savage, the Macho Man, because his intensity paralleled mine.
Training has been really good to me over the years. It's bettered the quality of my life.
I could have been in a house show the day before being flown in to do the Survivor Series. I'd do that pay-per-view, then fly out the next day to go do another house show. The pay-per-view just happened in the middle of a 30 or 40-day road tour. For us back then, the WWF talent, it was just another day of work, another day of being on the road.
My Ultimate Warrior fans mean the world to me.
During the second term of the Clinton presidency... I thought, 'Here is the literal and figurative role model for the United States of America behaving like a perverted little kid.' I just found it all really unmanly and undignified.
Queering don't make the world work.
I own my life. I get to do what I want when I want.
Back at the beginning of my career, I had to make all these sacrifices - sleeping in a car on nights where I'd wrestle in front of 20,000 people - because I wasn't making any money.
Ultimate Warrior was a character who made an impression on people. It was his intensity, his colorfulness, but also, Warrior as an identity means something to everyone. Even through all of the grumbling and haphazard approach at the beginning to developing the character's persona, there was something that people connected to.
I was one of the first guys to talk about their characters in the third-person, and I think the character of the Ultimate Warrior certainly is a legend.
If I was young again and wanted to be a professional wrestler, first thing I'd do is get jacked all to hell is what I'd do.
The Ultimate Warrior character relative to professional wrestling or WWE, he's definitely a Hall of Famer. He's a Hall of Famer whether he gets into the Hall of Fame or not.
I don't think you can push your body too far. Just do the basic exercises, deadlifts, squats, presses. The best times that you have with it will be when you get older: you're not all broken down like other people.
I know a little about CM Punk in that he does his own thing. I'm inspired by people who do that in their own life. That they just do their own thing no matter what the consequences are.
Pay-per-view events for us were really just another show while we were out on a road tour.
There's a frenetic energy in screaming and yelling and being a rebel in a way.
The spirit of the Ultimate Warrior will live forever.
No WWE talent becomes a legend on their own.
I think when you grow up - and this is a simple thing that I've said numerous times - you should think and act like one.
When you're caught up in your career, you're not thinking about becoming a legend one day or how, 25 years from now, you'll be immortalized in something or that you might be going into the Hall of Fame.
When I go out and talk to people about how unique they are as a human being and that there's a niche for them that they need to follow through on for their lives, it's what I truly believe in.
I hung out a lot with the ring crew guys. I got along better with them then I did the other guys, the other talent. The guys that show up early in the morning and set the ring up and stay there all day and then take the ring down and drive five and six hours that night to get to the next show.
When I developed the Ultimate Warrior character and kept evolving the character, I knew, there was no question that it would work because it was working.
In comic books, every character exists in this comic book world, and the wrestlers were the same thing. They were responsible for creating that world and putting it out there - having the confidence to go forward and do that and behave in a certain way.
I remember Wrestlemania VI, being in my locker room painting my face, about halfway done, and the production guys came, and they knocked on the door, and they came in. I was looking in the mirror at them, and they said, 'Hey, Warrior, we've got a cart to take you to the ring.' I just looked at them, and I said, 'I'm running to the ring.'
Thanksgiving Day, the holiday, has a certain feeling to it.
No one interacts with their fans like I do. No one.
Live your own life; practice what you preach.
Martin Luther King can have his own self-titled birthday recognized as a national holiday, but not our country's first president?
Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe a final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others, and makes them bleed deeper and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized.
