The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling

by Joe Laurinaitis

  While Bob and Dan knocked down deal after deal for Zubaz, Hawk and I were kept plenty busy on the road with the POP until the end of April, which was Crockett Cup season. Yep, it was time for the third annual Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament, and even though Hawk and I weren’t slated to go over for the kayfabe check and the trophy, I had a very different interest than usual in the two-day event.

  If you looked up the Crockett Cup ’88 and saw the list of team entries, at first you most likely wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. However, when I first scanned the names on the sheet Dusty gave us, I saw two names: Johnny Ace and The Terminator, who were part of different teams. I cracked a big smile. “Holy shit, Mike. Would you look at that?”

  Hawk looked at the sheet for a second and started laughing. “Ha! There they are. I’ll be damned. Your brothers made it.”

  That’s right. Johnny Ace and The Terminator were none other than John and Marc Laurinaitis, my little bros—only they weren’t so little anymore. About a year and a half before, after John and Marc had both graduated from Minnesota State University at Mankato, they’d come a knockin’. “Joe, we want to wrestle. Will you help us out?”

  Of course I would. After all, athletics were strong in the Laurinaitis blood, and I guess seeing me become famous as Road Warrior Animal had a bigger effect on them than I imagined. I couldn’t blame my brothers at all for wanting to give it a go. Shit, if our roles were reversed, you’d better believe I would’ve come to check it all out myself. Who wouldn’t?

  John had actually gotten into the business a few months before Marc when I’d put him in touch with Nelson Royal. Nelson was a longtime wrestler and former NWA Junior Heavyweight champion who was running his own training school down in North Carolina. While John had learned the business down South, Barry Darsow had let him stay at his Charlotte home, where at the very least I knew John was being well fed. Barry’s wife, Theresa, cooked one mean country fried steak. Mmm.

  Before long, John started wrestling on his own in late 1986 as Johnny Ace down in Mike Graham’s NWA territory in Tampa at Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW). FCW was actually the old Championship Wrestling from Florida (CWF) run by Mike’s late brother Eddie. It was renamed after the company briefly closed in 1987. Shortly after John’s debut, Marc joined him down in Tampa, where he developed a gimmick called The Terminator based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. By the time the Crockett Cup came around, both John and Marc were experienced enough to get into the action with the big boys.

  I was proud to show my brothers to everyone, letting all the boys know that the Laurinaitis name was now a triple threat. In fact, a few months later, in September, John and Marc would team up and win the NWA Florida Tag Team Championship. At the 1988 Crockett Cup, however, they were on different teams, which were each defeated in the first round.

  Hawk and I didn’t fare much better, losing by DQ to the Powers of Pain in the quarterfinals. To be honest with you, aside from seeing John and Marc, the whole thing was pretty forgettable. When the show was over, Hawk and I took off on a six-week tour of the Southeast, facing a random onslaught of the POP, the Midnight Express, and Tully and Arn.

  In early June, we took off for Japan for the first time in 1988 and learned we were going to drop the NWA International Tag Team titles to Jumbo Tsuruta and his new partner, Yoshiaki Yatsu, a former Olympic wrestler. Baba decided he wanted to unify our International titles with the Pacific Wrestling Federation (PWF) World Tag Team belts, which Jumbo and Yatsu held, and establish the AJPW Unified World Tag Team Championship. On June 10, 1988, in front of 11,800 people at the Budokan Hall in Tokyo, we dropped the titles to Tsuruta and Yatsu the same way we’d won them, by count-out.

  I remember arriving home from Japan and getting a call from Warlord, who had some serious concerns to discuss. “They want me and Barb to wrestle a series of scaffold matches with you during the Great American Bash tour in July, and they want us to take the big bumps off the thing.”

  I didn’t hesitate for a second to respond. “I wouldn’t do it. You and Barb are over 300 pounds each and could get seriously fucked up taking a fall like that.”

  Warlord told me he was afraid of that and needed advice from someone who’d been on the scaffold before.

  What happened next was surprising but perfectly understandable. Warlord and Barbarian decided to tell Dusty they had no intention of going up on the scaffold, and I guess they all got in a disagreement over the whole situation. Next thing I knew, the Powers of Pain walked out of Jim Crockett Promotions and headed for the open doors of the WWF.

  Once Barb and Warlord made the jump over, they were introduced as babyfaces and started a successful feud with Demolition. Even with the POP out of the picture, Hawk and I weren’t off the hook. We were given replacement opponents, Ivan Koloff and the Russian Assassin.

  Because Ivan was in his forties and the Assassin was another big guy around six feet five, 300 pounds, we ended those Skywalker matches as quickly as possible, in the five-minute range, to avoid the likelihood of serious injury to any of us.

  Wouldn’t you know it? Aside from the scaffold matches, Dusty still had another card up his sleeve for the Great American Bash. In retrospect, I think he should’ve left it up there.

  Taking a cue from the groundbreaking event that the first War Games proved to be, I think Dusty felt he had to top his previous blockbuster ideas. What he came up with was a mess called the Tower of Doom, a disastrous three-story, triple-cage match that was a classic case of someone going to the well too often. I thought the whole thing was complete bullshit.

  The Tower of Doom featured three different-sized cages stacked on top of each other, from largest to smallest (bottom to top). Like War Games, the Tower had two teams of five members, with entrants starting out in the small cage at the top trying to make their way to the bottom and out of the large cage. Once all five team members exited the Tower of Doom, the match was over. Man, I’m telling you, that whole thing was an overcooked disaster.

  On July 10 at the Baltimore Arena, Hawk and I teamed up with Steve Williams and Ronnie and Jimmy Garvin against Kevin Sullivan, Mike Rotunda (with his healed-up penis after that drunken swim incident), Al Perez, Russian Assassin, and Ivan Koloff. From the minute the Tower match started, I wanted it to end.

  To begin with, I can’t exactly say I approved of the caliber of guys in the match. I mean, come on. Al Perez? The Russian Assassin? Who the hell were these guys, and why were they in a match of this magnitude with us? It was beyond me. Now, in regards to the actual Tower itself, the word “clusterfuck” comes to mind right off the bat.

  Because the flooring of the top and middle cages was regular fencing attached to the corner supports, it felt like you could fall through it at any second. There was no way to balance, and there was nothing to hold on to. By the time I got in there, I couldn’t even focus on the action with the other guys because my footing was so shaky on the bending metal.

  I also remember the production guys not finishing the Tower itself until a day or two before the show. The black paint they sprayed all over the cages wasn’t even dry, and we were all coated in it by the end of the match.

  After the event, pretty much all of the boys told Dusty the horrors of the Tower of Doom. Fortunately, he took it off the road, except for a date or two in early August.

  To recoup all of the other events originally scheduled to feature the Tower, Dusty brought back the War Games, which was sure to please the masses. But in hindsight, creative booking catastrophes like the Tower of Doom were the least of everybody’s problems in Jim Crockett Promotions.

  Like Georgia Championship Wrestling in ’84 and then the AWA in ’85, by September ’88, the Crockett Promotions’ faction of the NWA was starting to billow smoke from every crack, nook, and cranny. And where there’s smoke, especially in the wrestling business, you can rest assured there’s fire. I was starting to wonder if Hawk and I were cursed.

  Seriously, though, betwe
en Jim Crockett’s careless spending habits and vain attempts at competing with the WWF, rumors were swirling that the company was bottoming out. It was all bound to happen, especially considering the recent financial disasters of Starrcade ’87 and the Bunkhouse Stampede and the fruitless purchase of the UWF.

  In the midst of all that shit, Dusty started flying the Falcon 50 back and forth to Texas. He had a vision of expanding the Crockett/NWA franchise out West, where he had already taken over Bill Watts’ old UWF office in Dallas. As it turned out, that valuable and dwindling Crockett Promotions money could’ve gone to much better purposes, such as keeping our top guys fairly paid and therefore in the company.

  Aside from the Powers of Pain leaving us for the WWF because of the booking conflict with the Skywalkers matches, other top drawing names in the NWA, like Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, and even fan favorite Robert Gibson (half of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express) left after payday disputes. Gibson actually left the company first during the middle of the Great American Bash ’88 after allegedly receiving an $1100 check for a full week of shows, which he took as an insult.

  In my opinion, the worst of the walkouts at that time were Tully and Arn leaving for the WWF. Apparently, following the Great American Bash, they both found out that they were making significantly less than quite a few others, including a couple of managers, like “Precious” Paul. When they went to Dusty and Crockett for an immediate raise and were told no, they jumped up North to the WWF.

  It’s always a shitty feeling when your peers, especially good friends, leave the company you’re in. Being a part of Jim Crockett Promotions during the previous two years had bonded all of the main players like a big family. And now it was like some of our brothers were running away from abusive parents and leaving the rest of us in a soon-to-be foreclosed house. My stomach was turning on a regular basis because of the turmoil and stress. I knew right then and there that the golden era of the NWA was over.

  Sometimes in chaos there lies opportunity. With all of the shifting and pulling within the company, Hawk and I got a knock on the door for something new. For three and a half years, we had been among the top babyfaces in the promotion, along with Dusty, Nikita, and the Rock ‘n’ Rolls. Dusty suggested it was time for us to turn heel. We’d also get the World titles.

  It sounded fine to us. It’s not like we had a real choice anyway, but I honestly didn’t think the people would accept us as heels anyway. We had way too much momentum on our side as superheroes with the new generation of young fans. But, hey, business is business and if that meant we had to betray some allies, win the straps, and have a nastier mean streak than usual, who were we to argue?

  It all went down in a specific three-step process.

  The first step was Tully and Arn dropping the World Tag Team titles to the Midnight Express in a match on September 10 that also helped turn Bobby and Stan into bona fide babyfaces. After that, on October 7 at the Richmond Coliseum, Hawk and I turned on our six-man tag partner and “brother in paint,” Sting, in a match against the Varsity Club of Mike Rotunda, Kevin Sullivan, and Rick Steiner.

  We worked it as if Sting was trying to steal the win against Rotunda after we did all the work. As he tried to put Rotunda in his Scorpion Deathlock submission hold, we interrupted Sting and cut him in half with a double clothesline.

  As soon as Sting landed, I ran over, picked him up, and pressed him over my head. As soon as I had him up, Hawk jumped off the top rope with a big elbow to the back of his head. Crack! As if that weren’t enough, we followed all of that up with a Doomsday Device that knocked Sting for a perfect backflip. Bam! The hot Richmond fans were jumping and screaming their heads off—only they weren’t booing like they were supposed to. They were cheering.

  The carnage continued when Lex Luger, who was now a fan-friendly babyface and personal buddy of Sting, came running down to help. I personally laid his ass out with a nasty clothesline. Finally as Nikita and a bunch of other guys arrived to chase us off, we scattered out and tromped back to the dressing room, where Hawk summed it all up at the end of a scathing interview for commentator Tony Schiavone.

  “We did what we’re best at, and that’s bustin’ face. If it’s Sting, if it’s anybody. He was in there trying to make us look bad, and we don’t need any of that. We’re tired of carrying people. We’re tired of making everybody else look good at our cost. Well, now it’s just us, the way it used to be. Forget about the rest, ’cause we don’t need ’em and we never did.”

  After announcing to the world that the Road Warriors were back in business for ourselves the way we preferred, we were sent on a collision course with the World champs, the Midnight Express. On October 29, 1988, in New Orleans at the Municipal Auditorium, Hawk and I destroyed Stan and Bobby in less than five minutes for the NWA World Tag Team Championships. Even though we were coming in with heel personas and we brutalized Bobby outside of the ring, busting him wide open, the fans were still cheering for us. I’m telling you, man, the only way we could’ve successfully gotten over as heels would’ve been if we went to the WWF and jumped Hulk Hogan. And even then, I’m not too sure.

  Over the course of the next month, we brutalized both the Midnight Express and the team of Sting and Luger. By November 21, however, I found out that Jimmy Crockett was the one who had suffered the greatest beating of all. Bankruptcy.

  In a panic, Crockett called upon the mighty Ted Turner, owner of WTBS and CNN, to bail him out. In an unprecedented move, Turner bought the flagging Jim Crockett Promotions and all of its assets, laying to rest the fifty-seven-year-old tradition of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. In an effort to rebrand the product, Turner renamed his new organization after its flagship show, World Championship Wrestling, and hence WCW was born.

  To his credit, though, for the most part, Turner came on board to maintain the NWA product as it already was, and nobody lost their jobs. Aside from some basic aesthetic changes, like ring and logo redesigns, the company seamlessly kept doing business as usual.

  WCW was now the consolidated effort of Ted Turner himself, who always enjoyed the high ratings World Championship Wrestling brought to TBS for such a low production cost. Turner also had it out for Vince McMahon ever since the Black Saturday fiasco when the Briscos had sold out their majority share of GCW stock to him back in ’84.

  However, with the purchase of Crockett Promotions, Turner himself handed down some regulations to make the show more family friendly. When the new WCW rule book came down the pike into the hands of Dusty, I think he got frustrated with the corporate interference. In response, Rhodes decided to make a statement the best way he personally knew how, and for our old friend and trusted booker, it proved to be a fatal move.

  On November 24, during a World Championship Wrestling taping at the WTBS studio in Atlanta, Hawk and I were recruited by Dusty himself to participate in a now infamous TV angle that would lead to his removal as booker and subsequent firing. It all started off when Hawk and I cut promos about our newfound antipathy toward Sting, Luger, and Rhodes. I personally put the exclamation on the interview to commentator David Crockett that ignited the fuse for the upcoming explosion.

  “You know, David Crockett, I heard I’ve got a match December 7 against Dusty Rhodes, right? Dusty Rhodes, you seem to forget we ain’t new in this sport. Just like us, your credentials speak for themselves. You have a long history of wins against great opponents, but we made a name for ourselves beating legends. Legends just like you. You’re gonna find out what I’m made of December 7, and you ain’t gonna like it one bit.”

  Just as Hawk and I left the interview, Dusty entered and challenged me to come out right then and there to take him on. He climbed into the ring, and I came right back out with Hawk and Paul to answer his challenge. I jumped through the ropes and pushed Dusty back into a corner to start dishing out some kicks to the gut. Bam, bam, bam! Then I whipped him across the ring into the opposite corner and charged with a clothesline only to miss when Dusty ducked out of the way
. He turned and ran straight back at me with a big clothesline of his own and took me off my feet. Whoom!

  At that point, Hawk was already plowing into the ring to batter Rhodes into kingdom come while I recovered. While Hawk was taking care of business, I reached over for my shoulder pads, which Paul had set in the corner, and unscrewed one of the big seven-inch spikes.

  As soon as the spike was free, I ran over with a double-over-handed thrust to Dusty’s forehead. Then the big drama came as I carefully made it look like I was trying to stab Dusty’s eye out of the socket.

  Jim Ross, one of the commentators back at the podium, was going crazy. “He put it in his eye. He put the spike in his eye!”

  While Dusty was rolling around bleeding like a stuck pig, Sting, Luger, Bam Bam Bigelow, and a bunch of other guys ran in for the save.

  Oh, did I forget to mention that one of the most important new rules handed down from Turner was no bloodletting on TV? Oh yeah, it sure was. WTBS was flooded with hundreds of angry callers complaining about what they and their children had seen. Before Dusty even had time to wonder what management thought of his little stunt, he was swiftly relieved of his booking duties. But the worst for Dusty was still to come.

  On December 7 in Chattanooga, I went over Dusty in a singles match by DQ after Rhodes bashed me with a chair as retribution for his heavily bandaged eye. Then, a few weeks later we met on December 26 at Starrcade ’88 (moved up a month from its traditional Thanksgiving night slot to avoid competing with WWF’s Survivor Series). Hawk and I lost to Dusty and Sting by DQ due to Paul’s interference.

  Right after the match, Dusty Rhodes, the former World Heavyweight champion and creator of some of the greatest wrestling events in NWA history, was fired due to backlash from the spike incident. From beginning to end, 1988 was a turbulent year of big changes, some good and some bad.