InsaneJournal

I've been reading up on some wrestling stuff going into WrestleMania 25 this weekend. One thing is a list of "The 24 Worst Matches in WrestleMania History." Among those, from WMXII, is the Ultimate Warrior vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley, better known now as Triple H.

The entry for that match says: "The Warrior return yielded no fruit (except for that awful Warrior comic book and the great time on RAW where Warrior ran out to the ring, hated his entrance, ran into the back to redo it only to find out that RAW that week was live and he screwed up royally)..." Well, I just had to see this, and searched YouTube, sadly to no avail. I think I remember it, but it was so long ago...

This yielded some other weird links, including one to a crazy Arsenio Hall interview from the build-up to WrestleMania 6.

I eventually decided to see what other strangeness I could learn from his entry on Wikipedia.

What's all of this have to do with comic books, you ask? Don't worry, I'm getting to that now.

One part of the entry goes into the Warrior's short-lived comic book, of which I admittedly have an issue or two (never saw them on sale anywhere, they came with the WWF Magazine I bought at the time). And then I came across this:

The comic's most enduring issue, and the one which has received the most ridicule and is now worth the most money, is one of the final issues, which breaks away from the main storyline into a Christmas tale. The plot of the comic is hard to decipher, as it contains no dialogue, monologue, or text boxes. Inexplicably, Warrior attacks the North Pole, usurps Santa Claus' authority over the elves, and in the final frame, which gained the comic its enduring popularity, a sweaty Warrior forces Santa into bondage gear and poses beside him. The apparent sexual undertones, lack of an actual plot, and non-sequitur nature (nothing from the previous issue served to segue into the Santa attack issue) gained the comic cult popularity, especially on the internet. Though nothing sexually explicit is depicted in the comic, some fans have come to describe it as the "santa rape" issue; more commonly, it is referred to as "the one where Warrior puts Santa in bondage".

Upon reading that, the first thing I thought was "Scans Daily would love this." And so I decided to hunt down the image in question-- surely it would be online, right?

Well, as it turns out, yes. But not nearly as much or as prominently as I had imagined. A Google Image Search-- a couple of different ones, actually-- only yielded the following:



This small scan comes from Joe Sports Fan, who has an entire article about the man's craziness, including a section on the comic with a few more scans, including one of Warrior stealing Santa's pants. It closes that part out by saying:

"In a twist of irony, Warrior Warrior would make headlines a few years later, for publicly speaking out against the homosexual lifestyle."

I guess things didn't work out very well between Santa and himself, and he could never love or trust another man again. Or something.

Edit: Actually, I decided to include the pants thing here, just because I can imagine there's probably at least one person here who would make an icon out of it:



...no, I have no idea what the white stuff is on Santa. Sure, I can speculate, but context, etc.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"