By Kate Sullivan
Former WWF star “The Ultimate Warrior,” spoke in the Cultural Center Theater on Wednesday about his conservative beliefs.
The ex-wrestler, who has had his name legally changed to Warrior, spoke out on issues ranging from his Wrestlemania VI battle with Hulk Hogan to the “moral relativity” of American liberals. But the true main event was the question and answer session, when Warrior and some University students butted heads over the issues.
“Twenty years from now if you are sitting on the street with your tin cup, don’t push it in front of me, because the only thing that’s gonna be rattling in it is your teeth,” Warrior yelled into a microphone.
He aimed his words at his target, a student asking a hypothetical question relating to the wealth gap in America, and who had previously questioned whether Warrior’s statements were backed up by facts. Such explosive question and answer sessions are common for Warrior, occurring at four out of every five speaking engagements, he said.
Warrior elicited a mix of gasps and claps from the crowd when he spoke about the “queering of America” through gay marriage and popular media.
He said he never met a homosexual who objected to the word queer, save those on television, he insisted that the term was technical. Queer means different from the norm, he said. “They like being called queer…They walk around in parades in a jock strap and make-up,” added Warrior, who made his career by basically doing the same thing in the wrestling ring.
Earlier, in his speech, a calmer Warrior stated that for him, conservatism is a philosophy apart from politics, and that he worries about youth both not taking responsibility for their choices and getting the wrong idea about terms like “traditional” through liberal propaganda. To Warrior, traditional means doing what has worked in the past, like the Founding Fathers, who he colorfully said “had balls that dug trenches in the ground when they walked. [And] make intellectuals today look like town drunks.”
Much of Warrior’s conservative beliefs were always part of his life, though he did not become actively interested in politics until the second term of the Clinton administration, a time he called “uniquely disgusting.” Warrior believed Clinton let down Americans looking to him as role model, a position he has taken seriously. To illustrate this, he recalled a time when he met a child via the Make-a-Wish foundation, “My own painted face was reflected back to me through his eyeball,” said Warrior. This image would stay with him, reminding him of his responsibility to others.
Because he was not political until his thirties, Warrior said he admired the early political activism of the Young Americans Foundation and the Campus Republicans. Campus Republicans admired him right back. Student, Matt Cotignola picked Warrior up from the airport Tuesday night, and had the chance to have some one-on-one time with him.
“He was the nicest guy possible; and very open to answering any questions I had for him,” said Cotignola, who was so caught up in being in the former wrestler’s presence that he overshot the exit for Meadowbrook Parkway.
Bradley Smallberg, Vice Chairman of the Campus Republicans, said Warrior’s wrestling celebrity attracted a more diverse crowd, making it possible for the conservative speaker to do more than “preach to the choir.”
Still, not everyone was saying “Amen” to Warrior.
“He talked about ‘pounding knowledge’ into youth. And I felt like I was being punched in the face while he was speaking,” Nicole Boudreau, a senior English major said, “You can’t pound conservatism into the youth of America like you pound people in the ring.”