Kevin Nash says his infamous $100,000 MMA challenge to The Ultimate Warrior was never supposed to turn into a legitimate fight — but Warrior apparently didn’t see the joke.
Nash revisited the wild 2012 Twitter feud while discussing his WWE return and the shots Warrior took at him online with Inside the Ropes. The whole thing started after somebody asked Warrior why he didn’t dye his hair. Warrior responded by taking a jab at Nash, saying he wasn’t someone who “thrives on stealing limelight from younger talent.” Nash fired back publicly and challenged Warrior to put real money on the line.
“Never realized I had a problem with Jim [Warrior]. Seemed to get along fine in Scottsdale. Come on, my clown. Turn that frown upside down. A true Warrior never turns down a challenge. Put up $100,000, I’ll do the same. Three rounds, MMA rules, winner take all. I’m talking not sports entertainment. Jim Hellwig needs to put up or shut the f** up. Day before Mania in Miami.”*
Looking back, Nash said he knew exactly what he was doing. He claimed Warrior was a “strange cat” and said he intentionally posted something that would get under his skin because the two had already gotten in each other’s faces before.
“Jim’s a strange cat anyway. Well, he was a strange — I’m sure wherever the f** he is, he’s still a strange cat. But I guess he didn’t get what Twitter was at that time. I knew it would strike a nerve because I knew he was deathly afraid of me, because I’d gotten in his face a couple of different times. And I knew he wasn’t going to do it.”*
Nash said writing his challenge took him about 30 seconds. Warrior’s response was a completely different story. According to Nash, Warrior spent several days putting together a lengthy video response filled with conditions for the potential fight.
“I don’t know if anybody ever watched his rebuttal to me. It took me, I don’t know, maybe 30 seconds to type that. He spent three days to put together a seven-minute tirade that had about 45 edits and had every legal way possible out of this fighting situation covered. It had to be a million dollars. I mean, he needed a year to train and blah, blah, blah. I just said, ‘Jesus, dude, it was a work.’”
Nash believes Warrior completely missed the opportunity. In his mind, they could have turned the online beef into a worked celebrity fight years before the modern influencer boxing scene became huge.
“If he was smart, we could have done the Jake Paul before Jake Paul was even Jake Paul. You know, we could have done a draw and made some money, but no, dumbass.”
The interviewer then asked Nash what would have happened if Warrior had simply called his bluff and agreed to the fight for real. Nash didn’t need much time to answer.
“Beat his ass up.”
The feud never turned into an actual fight, and the two eventually buried the hatchet. Nash later revealed that he hugged Warrior backstage during WrestleMania 30 weekend in 2014 and said they had made amends before Warrior died just days later.
More than a decade later, Nash still sees the entire $100,000 challenge as a wrestling angle that Warrior took far more seriously than he intended. Nash also believes the two could have made serious money if Warrior had played along instead of treating it like an actual MMA negotiation.
What do you think about Kevin Nash saying the Ultimate Warrior challenge was all a work? Would fans have paid to see Nash and Warrior turn their real-life beef into a worked fight? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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