9:52 PM PT -- Officials tell TMZ ... Warrior collapsed outside an Arizona hotel at 5:50 PM on April 8th ... while walking to his car with his wife.

Warrior was transported to a nearby hospital ... where he was pronounced dead.

The Ultimate Warrior has died ... this according to the WWE.

Warrior -- real name James Hellwig -- was a true WWE legend ... and was one of the most iconic wrestlers of all time.  He was 54-years-old.

Warrior was just inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame the night before Wrestlemania XXX this weekend ... and last night, he made his first appearance on "Monday Night Raw" in year
Triple H just tweeted, "Saddened to announce the passing of the Ultimate Warrior. Icon and friend. My sympathy to his wife Dana and his daughters."

Stephanie McMahon also tweeted, "#RIPUltimateWarrior Your strength of character is to be admired. There will never be anyone like you. Your spirit lives on in your family."

Hulk Hogan -- Warrior's greatest rival -- has also tweeted, "RIP WARRIOR. only love. HH"

Kevin Nash wrote, "So happy I embraced Warrior with a hug when we saw each other backstage Saturday night.My heart goes out to his family.Always Believe."

Warrior posed for some pics at the airport in New Orleans around 6am this morning.  We're told he was in great spirits and offered to take photos with any fan who approached him
WWE posted a message on the official website saying, "WWE is shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the passing of one of the most iconic WWE Superstars ever, The Ultimate Warrior. "

"Warrior began his WWE career in 1987 and quickly went on to become one of the biggest stars in WWE history. Warrior became WWE Champion at WrestleMania VI, defeating Hulk Hogan in an epic encounter. We are grateful that just days ago, Warrior had the opportunity to take his rightful place in the WWE Hall of Fame and was also able to appear at WrestleMania 30 and Monday Night Raw to address his legions of fans."

"WWE sends its sincere condolences to Warrior’s family, friends and fans. Warrior was 54 and is survived by his wife Dana and his two daughters

Heroes fall. Legends fade. History is rewritten.

We’ve learned to accept these truths about many things in this world, but not The Undertaker’s Streak. It was WWE’s one constant — a decades-long unbeaten WrestleMania run that had never been done before, and will never be done again. Every year, The Deadman would face down a worthy adversary — be it Triple H, Shawn Michaels, his brother Kane — and every year he would add another number to his win column until it stood at a towering 21-0.

The Undertaker’s match against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania was meant to make it 22-0. The Phenom would conquer The Beast — although he’d suffer a tremendous beating in the process— and he’d return at WrestleMania 31 to do it all over again.

However, stories don’t always end the way we want them to. And numbers never lie.

On April 6, 2014, Brock Lesnar did the very thing his T-shirt promised he would do: He beat The Streak.

It took countless punishing blows, multiple wrenching submissions and three F5’s, but Paul Heyman’s manmade monster became the first competitor to pin The Undertaker on The Grandest Stage Them All, and mark a 1 in The Deadman’s loss column.

There’s a story about the night Bruno Sammartino lost the WWE Title to Ivan Koloff in Madison Square Garden to end his 11-year reign as champion. The crowd was so quiet you could hear the whoosh of the cars passing on the street outside. A new generation of WWE fans will talk about the night The Undertaker lost with the same reverence. The sound of 75,167 rowdy people going silent all at once? It’s indescribable.

Seconds of mass confusion inside the Mercedes Benz Superdome felt like minutes. A bell rang. A graphic flashed on the massive screens reading “21-1.” Heyman’s jaw dropped. WWE cameras panned across fans who wore expressions of horror on their faces like the rubber masks in a Halloween store.

They said no man could break The Undertaker’s vaunted WrestleMania Streak, but what about a Beast?

Lesnar was the Superstar who did what everyone from Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka to Randy Orton couldn’t do, but his victory celebration didn’t last long. Soon, Brock and Heyman were gone and The Undertaker was alone in the ring in front of 75,167 WWE fans whose shared sense of shock was quickly giving way to adoration. People stood on their feet and cheered the single most enduring Superstar in WWE history.

He rose, too, but he barely acknowledged the scene. His mind was elsewhere. On broken Streaks. On a friend who once stood at ringside. On a career in the ring that may have just ended.

It took a long time for The Undertaker to make that long walk up the ramp as every step literally took him further away from a WWE Universe that thought he’d always been there.

And then he was gone.

A Streak had been broken, yes, but the legend lived on