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

by Joe Laurinaitis

  As Sting came running down the aisle and started to make his way up the cage, we heard a loud snap. Sting’s left patella tendon ruptured; his kneecap was shoved up into his thigh. The injury would keep him out of the WCW for six months. Even though the accident was no fault of Ric’s, Herd looked to make some changes to the booking committee.

  Hawk’s and my match at the Clash was completely unremarkable but distinctly memorable only because of one of our opponents. We were facing The Skyscrapers, only Sid Vicious had been replaced after suffering a legit broken rib during a match with the Steiners. His replacement was a six feet ten, 300-pound, redheaded Texan named “Mean” Mark Callous.

  Mark was only twenty-five years old at the time and had only recently started in the business, but he performed and carried himself with the maturity of an old pro. In about nine months, the rest of the world would take notice of Mark when he emerged on the scene in the WWF as the Undertaker.

  For the rest of February and into March, we went through the motions of a few dozen haphazardly thrown together matches against Doom (who lost their masks in a match against the Steiners at Clash X) and The Skyscrapers, but burnout was setting in. In a move that would prove to hammer the final nail in the WCW coffin, Ric, under insurmountable pressure from Jim Herd, resigned as head booker.

  With Flair out of the creative picture, Herd decided to put Ole Anderson in charge of the booking committee, which also featured guys like Jim Ross, Terry Funk, “Wahoo” McDaniel, Kevin Sullivan, Jim Cornette, and even Jim Crockett (who was given a job as part of the sale to Turner). During the course of the last few weeks, Ole had been forced out of the Four Horsemen and active duty as a wrestler due to his age. He was seen as an experienced and viable candidate to take Flair’s place, which he was, until the disagreements began.

  Within no time at all, Ole and Herd started butting heads over the direction of WCW, and everything went straight into the toilet. Ole thought the guaranteed contracts Herd was giving out to all the new talent undermined his ability to control their story lines. If someone had a guarantee with Herd, where was the motivation or urgency to follow Ole’s direction? A guy feeling slighted by Ole could go over his head and appeal to Herd directly and get what he wanted. In response, Ole figured he’d roll the clock back to the early 1980s and recruit many of his trusted, loyal old talents from the GCW days.

  All of a sudden, it was like a time warp back to 1983 as Hawk and I saw Paul Orndorff, Iron Sheik, Thunderbolt Patterson, Tommy Rich, Stan Hansen, Tim Horner, and even Mr. Wrestling II walking around in the dressing room. Ever heard the expression “Take one step forward and two steps back”? Well, what we were seeing in WCW with the pissing match between Herd and Ole was more like two thousand steps back. There was a hostile divide, and nobody knew what the hell was going on.

  “Precious” Paul, in all of his infinite wisdom, decided he’d finally had enough and decided to quit. Paul was such a concise and calculated businessman that he marched right into the office and talked them into paying him the rest of the balance for the year on his contract. As I’ve said before, pure genius.

  I’ll never forget Hawk’s reaction to Paul’s leaving, which was completely directed at Herd and WCW.

  We were at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago when Paul broke the news to us. “I’ve had enough, boys. This shit with Herd has me burnt out. I’m leaving.”

  Hawk flipped out. “What the fuck? That motherfucker Herd has no clue what he’s doing to this company.”

  As I leaned over to put my boots on, I felt something fly by my head, missing me by mere inches. In his rage, Hawk had picked up a chair and thrown it as hard as he could at the wall, smashing the thermostat into a few dozen pieces.

  We couldn’t believe Paul was leaving, but we couldn’t blame him either. If Herd was hell-bent on unwittingly destroying WCW, great, but now he was fucking with the Road Warriors equation. I was sad beyond words to see my trusted friend leave. Paul had overseen everything we’d done since day one and was as responsible for the success of the Road Warriors as we were.

  Forcing Paul out was the last straw. We had to weigh our options, and if there was one thing the Road Warriors always had, it was options. We knew we could hop over to Japan or pick up the phone and call the WWF, or both. We decided to get out while the gettin’ was good.

  “Fuck this shit, Animal,” Hawk said one day. “We’re way beyond a place like this. Let’s get the hell out of here and give Vince a call.”

  We decided our match at Capital Combat on May 19 in Washington, DC, would be our last for WCW. Considering what we witnessed that night, Hawk, Paul, and I couldn’t have made a wiser choice.

  First of all, one look at the match we were booked in at Capital Combat told the entire story of where our WCW career was going: nowhere. Hawk and I were teamed with a 400-pound guy named Norman the Lunatic against Bam Bam Bigelow, Cactus Jack, and Kevin Sullivan. I mean, absolutely no disrespect to any of those guys, but at that time in our career as the Road Warriors, we were used to being in main events with a purpose. That night in Washington, DC, I felt drained of all desire to step into the ring, but the capper for the event was still to come.

  You see, because Turner had a film distribution division and was about to release RoboCop 2, Herd and everybody else thought it would be a stroke of genius to cross-promote the movie on WCW programming. However, rather than simply putting Robocop promos on during the Capital Combat PPV, they came up with an even better idea: they’d have Robocop himself make an appearance. Not only would the science fiction movie character show up in person; he’d play an important role in the most pivotal story line of the whole PPV.

  Man, I’m telling you, Hawk and I watched in amazement with our mouths agape as Robocop made his way down to the ringside area. After arriving next to a small cage that Sid Vicious and Barry Windham of the regrouped Four Horsemen had thrown Sting into, Robocop ripped the iron door off its hinges. Can you believe it? Neither could we, but he sure did.

  There they were, Sting and Robocop side by side, making the Horsemen back off. The whole thing was spectacularly bad, and we had a hearty laugh at Herd’s expense as we grabbed our stuff and headed to the armory doors.

  “Let’s get out of this dump,” I said, referring to WCW. And that’s exactly what we did.

  We weren’t alone. As the months dragged on, Flair and Herd would reach such an unprecedented level of dissension that Ric would eventually defect to the WWF as the reigning NWA World Heavyweight champion, taking the belt with him to use against WCW.

  The resulting fallout from Herd’s lack of foresight to prevent such a nightmare not only cost him his job, but WCW wound up falling into its darkest era, yielding the worst ratings in company history. It would take several years and many more personnel changes than you can imagine to turn things around.

  After we unceremoniously left WCW in the dust, we called Vince McMahon to see if his offer still stood.

  “Of course,” Vince said. “We’d love to have you in the World Wrestling Federation. When can you fly up to Stamford to go over the details?”

  This was it. Hawk and I were finally going to the big show of the WWF. It was the last place we had yet to conquer. The excitement of wrestling started to pulse throughout my body for the first time in a long time.

  When we went up to the WWF headquarters in early June, first we met with Vince to go over the business part of our deal. Even though I insisted on guaranteed contracts like we had in WCW, Vince basically offered us the exact same scenario he did when we’d sat down with him back in ’85.

  “I can’t give you guaranteed money, but what you will have is the opportunity to make as much if not more than you were earning in WCW.”

  We didn’t really have a choice, so after being sold on the great payoffs from PPVs and merchandise sales, Hawk and I shook Vince’s hand and agreed to a three-year deal. The next step was an unanticipated creative session concerning the direction of our Road Warriors gimmick.

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sp; “We’d like you guys to grow your hair out and take the paint off,” Vince declared. “We’d also like you to change your team name from the Road Warriors to something else.”

  Hawk and I looked at each other like, What the fuck is this guy talking about?

  I spoke right up. “You’re shitting us, right, Vince?”

  It turned out that he was shitting us, about the hair and paint, but he still wanted us to change our name from the Road Warriors to something that “wouldn’t confuse the public.”

  I didn’t get it. Confuse the public? Did I miss something? Everybody who watched professional wrestling knew who the Road Warriors were, regardless of what organization they favored. Hawk and I had been on the front cover of every wrestling magazine known to mankind for the last seven years. Even if you lived under a rock, I’ll bet you still heard of us. I asked Vince to please explain.

  “I’ve already got the Ultimate Warrior as my World Heavyweight champion,” he said. “Adding the Road Warriors to the mix is too much. Too many Warriors in one company.”

  Too many Warriors? What a joke. We were the Warriors.

  As I explained before, the Ultimate Warrior (along with Sting) was one of the Blade Runners, an amusing attempt by Bill Watts at re-creating the Road Warriors. After the Blade Runners disbanded, Warrior went to World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas, where he became the Dingo Warrior. After taking one look at his picture at the time, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Dingo Warrior was one of our estranged offspring. Even his face paint design bore a strong resemblance to Hawk’s full-faced version. We were even told not to use the press slam because Warrior used it. Neither Hawk nor I knew the Warrior from a hole in the wall, so we were more than annoyed. It was frustrating to compromise our gimmick because of someone obviously influenced by us in the first place.

  After I got to know Jim, in time, I found him to be a pretty good guy who was just trying to make good business for himself, as we were for ourselves. Like Warlord, Barbarian, and Demolition, who all used Road Warrior-like concepts, it was hard to fault someone for finding and using something that works in the wrestling industry. When guys like Warrior identified with what Hawk and I were doing because of our size, strength, and unrelenting style in the ring, he was able to combine his own colorful eccentricities into the Ultimate Warrior.

  In the end, our initial conflict with Warrior was nothing more than a timing issue. Had we landed in the WWF before Jim, I’m sure the Ultimate Warrior would’ve been the Ultimate Something-Other-Than-Warrior. However, when we came to the company, Warrior was right in the middle of his WWF Championship reign after beating Hulk Hogan, and the Road Warriors needed to find an alternate name.

  Fortunately, because we had always been known as the Legion of Doom synonymously with the Road Warriors, we suggested it as our new moniker.

  “Hmmm, the Legion of Doom,” Vince said as he looked around the room, “I love it.”

  Soon enough, the WWF fans would, too.

  It was also decided that we would add a little color to our gear, which was a Vince standard for all talent. Our completely black shoulder pads and boots were changed to mostly red with black accents. We even painted our chrome spikes black to go along with the new theme. It was different and a little cartoonish, but that could’ve been said about the entire WWF product at the time.

  A few weeks before joining the WWF, Hawk and I had been offered a big money deal to make a three-day tour of New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) at the end of July. NJPW was the other major promotion next to Baba’s AJPW and was run by another Japanese wrestling legend, Antonio Inoki. Basically, New Japan boasted a younger talent roster than All Japan, which was seen as more of the old guard of veteran wrestlers.

  Because we had always been exclusive to Baba, Inoki respectfully asked him if he could use us, probably in exchange for a monetary kickback. After we signed with Vince, who let us meet our New Japan obligation, he said we needed to tape a couple of matches for TV to help build our introduction to the WWF fans.

  In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for the WWF to tape several weeks’ worth of programming in a single day and air them over the course of the next month or two. Vince was famous back then for scripting story lines almost an entire year in advance. Even WrestleMania for the following year would be booked match for match, and then the WWF creative team would work backward, building the angles to the present day.

  Crazy, right? Try living it.

  Those tapings were memorable for so many reasons, including the fact that Vince was pissed about our new red boots and entrance music not being ready. Even though it was Vince’s idea for us to update our gear and used his guys to make everything (except the shoulder pads, which I made myself), it was somehow our fault that they weren’t ready for the tapings.

  The music issue sucked because we could no longer use “Iron Man” due to copyright laws. While we waited for WWF music composer Jim Johnston to come up with something, we used some generic rock song he must’ve had lying around. To his credit, though, Jim came up with a cool track influenced by “Iron Man” that perfectly complemented us.

  To customize the new entrance theme even more, Jim had Hawk record one of his trademark interview lines to kick off the music. When we sat down to listen to it for the first time and Jim pressed play, Hawk and I heard, “Oooooooohhhhh, what a rush!” And when the music kicked in with a hanging guitar chord followed by a nice heavy drumbeat, we both knew it was the perfect fit.

  On June 25 in Dayton, we made our official WWF debut for the July 21 episode of WWF Superstars. In front of seventy-five hundred LOD faithful, we defeated Black Bart and Tom Stone in about ninety seconds with the Doomsday. Tom Stone worked the entire match by himself after Bart was knocked to the floor at the opening bell. We were like the Mike Tysons of professional wrestling, making people think twice about blinking because they just might miss our match.

  We also made an appearance on The Brother Love Show, one of many mock interview programs (like Piper’s Pit with Roddy Piper) inserted into the many WWF TV shows. This one aired on the July 28 Superstars. Brother Love himself, portrayed by producer Bruce Prichard, was a loud, red-faced, heel parody of a TV evangelist. On the show, Love accused us of being Demolition imposters. We laughed, said it was the other way around, and walked offstage.

  Earlier in the day, when we’d arrived in the locker room at the Hara Arena, it had been like an old high school reunion. Barry Darsow (Demolition Smash), Dusty Rhodes, Curt Hennig, Rick Rude, Ronnie Garvin, Big Bossman, Warlord, Jake Roberts, and even Sgt. Slaughter immediately welcomed us. Those guys really helped make the WWF feel like home.

  The next night on June 26 at the Civic Center in Huntington, West Virginia, we annihilated Al Burke and Bob Bradley (for the July 15 WWF Wrestling Challenge) in under two minutes. Because the WWF wanted to set up our first feud with Demolition, they inserted pretaped interviews with Ax, Smash (Barry Darsow), and Crush (six feet five Brian Adams, their newest member) into our match at the bottom of the screen. It was funny to see Demolition calling us out for copying their gimmick, as Brother Love had said to us. Their gimmick?

  “The Legion of Doom,” Ax yelled in his deep, gravelly voice, “or should we say Demolition imposters with spikes and paint all over their faces? Well, we’re gonna kick the paint right off their faces.”

  It was a great, natural way to set up the obvious rivalry between the two teams. (The funny thing is that we didn’t even get to see this until we came back from Japan, which is where we were when our TV debut aired. Just like that, after two days of light work, we were good for an entire month of WWF programming while we were in Japan.)

  After the show, I got to catch up on things with quite a few of my old pals, especially Rude. We stayed up all night at a bar called Robby’s in Huntington and talked about the last three years in the business since we’d parted ways in ’87. We told him all about the downfall of Crockett, the horrors of Jim Herd, and being burnt the hell out
in the new WCW. Interestingly enough, Rude confided that he was feeling the same way in the WWF and was seriously considering checking out WCW.

  That’s the thing about wrestling. Guys are always stricken with a “grass is greener in the other promotion” syndrome and constantly flip-flop.

  Rude was particularly sick of his almost two-year feud with the Ultimate Warrior. Earlier that night, he’d lost in a big main event cage match to Warrior for the WWF Championship and was less than thrilled. “I’m tired of leading that guy every night for nothing,” Rude said. “I was hoping they’d eventually give me the strap or bigger paydays.”

  He got neither. By November, Rude was back in WCW.

  Meanwhile, in Japan, we wrestled what would prove to be our last match there together for about six years. While working for the WWF, we had to be exclusive to them, which meant no more moonlighting for Baba, Inoki, or anyone for that matter. On July 22, Hawk and I faced the team of Masahiro Chono and Keiji Mutoh and lost by DQ.

  Chono and Mutoh were two of the fastest-rising, most popular stars on the Japanese scene. Mutoh in particular was interesting because he was equally well-known for his alter ego, the face-painted, mist-spraying acrobat, the Great Muta. Mutoh wrestled (and still does, as of this writing) full-time as both himself and Muta, even working different matches on the same show as each character.

  When we got back to the United States, we started preparing for our first official PPV appearance for the WWF at Summer-Slam ’90 in August. Our new black and red outfits were finally ready, and when we suited up, I had mixed feelings about our new image. The red and black kind of softened our usually dangerous solid black-and-chrome appearance, but Hawk and I knew it was business, plain and simple. Being on WWF television and getting pushed into the spotlight with Vince’s promotional machine of home videos, toys, T-shirts, and video games was the last frontier for us to explore. For better or for worse, sink or swim, we jumped in with both feet and never looked back.