When I got there, Hawk was arguing with the staff about letting him go. He had a resting heart rate of 188, and they wouldn’t let him leave. I remember hearing him say, “I’ve got a 300-pound partner who says I’m gonna leave.”
And that’s what I did. The joke was on me: you’ve got to picture me in my do-rag wheeling my 275-pound partner out of there, through the Melbourne terminal, onto our flight, through the LAX International and US terminals, and to his gate in Tampa.
I cancelled the remaining dates we had scheduled in New Zealand and took a flight back to Minneapolis. With Mike’s latest escape from the icy fingers of death, I wondered how much longer his luck would last.
About a week after returning home, Mike gave me a call to let me know what was going on. He had been diagnosed with cardio-myopathy, a condition in which one of the valves leading into the heart becomes stretched out and can’t pump blood as it should. Due to his limited diet and the uppers and downers he’d been taking, his body had crashed. Thankfully, once home in the States, he’d been able to get the right kind of medication that would keep him alive.
The bottom line, though, was that Hawk was going to be sidelined with rest and recovery for the next solid year, so I decided to get back in touch with WCW, which had now burnt out in the Monday Night Wars and was a distant second to the WWF once again. I asked Eric Bischoff if they had a place for me until Hawk was ready to come back and reform the Road Warriors, and he said in fact there was.
In January 2001 Bischoff brought me back in a solo capacity as the “Enforcer” of The Magnificent Seven, created to protect WCW World champion Scott Steiner. Since the last time I had seen Steiner, he’d completely reinvented himself during the NWO craze as the crude and platinum heel Big Poppa Pump. Scott now had an ongoing feud with Sid Vicious, which Eric and none other than my own brother John injected me into.
John had retired from active wrestling and was brought into WCW as an agent to work out matches with the talent. It was explained to me that I would make my debut at the Sin PPV during a four-way match with Sid, Scott, and Jeff Jarrett as the fourth man and help take out Vicious with his own powerbomb finisher.
Minutes before the match, John went up to Sid and said that near the end, to cue my run in, he was to go on the second turnbuckle and take a high boot to the face from Steiner on his way down. Sid didn’t want to do it. At six feet nine with long, slender legs, he simply wasn’t meant for those kinds of spots. John wouldn’t listen and told him everything would be fine.
Far from it. When the time came for Sid to jump off the rope, he came down and landed at an awkward angle and completely broke his lower left leg in half.
When I came running down for my spot to powerbomb Sid, Steiner was screaming, “Powerbomb him. Powerbomb his ass!”
When I turned to Sid and saw his leg, I wanted to puke. It was completely broken at a right angle away from his body, exactly in the shape of the letter L. If it weren’t for his boot being on, Sid’s leg might’ve been completely severed from his body. Meanwhile, the poor guy was hollering and writhing in agony, and to this day I don’t know how he managed to stay conscious.
I looked at Steiner and pointed. “Holy shit, Scott. Look at his fucking leg!”
Steiner was so hopped up on the adrenaline of the match that he didn’t notice anything and was actually stomping Sid, making his leg dangle back and forth. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a professional wrestling ring. Period.
After they wheeled Sid to the back and put him in the ambulance, I went up to him and asked him how he was.
“Tell your brother thanks a lot,” he said. “I told him it was a bad idea.”
After that match, I wrestled a couple more times in tag matches with Chavo Guerrero, of all people, against other cruiser-weights. I think they were also in the midst of pairing me up with Rick Steiner for a while until Hawk could return, but boy did all of that get permanently interrupted.
To make a very long and complicated story short and simple, back in 1996 Turner merged with Time Warner and stayed on as the chief stockholder, thus giving Eric Bischoff the financial backing he needed. With Turner in that supportive role, Warner might’ve dropped WCW entirely, but Ted was loyal to the show that had once helped him build a broadcasting empire back in the ’70s and ’80s, the classic World Championship Wrestling at 6:05 p.m. on Saturday nights.
All of that would change in January, though, right when I came in as Time Warner merged with America Online (AOL) in a multibillion-dollar deal to form AOL Time Warner. The deal effectively removed Ted Turner from being in charge of his networks.
Without Ted Turner’s protection, WCW was left at the mercy of corporate wolves who wanted no part of the money-losing ($60 million in 2000 alone) disaster. So AOL Time Warner put a for-sale sign up in the front yard of WCW headquarters and waited to see who came calling. I’ll give you one guess who wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity this good.
For a mere $5 million, Vince McMahon swooped in like a vulture, only too happy to take advantage of the WCW carcass, and after an eighteen-year battle, bought his competition. Even though WCW had been formed back in ’88 when Jim Crockett sold the combined assets of both his company, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, and the remnants of GCW, it was still more or less the same entity that had entertained millions of people for more than seventy years. Now it was all gone.
My prediction that the Monday Night Wars would doom either Bischoff or Vince turned out to be true. If Eric had left well enough alone back in ’95 and stayed on Saturday nights instead of running himself and WCW into the ground with the Monday Night Wars, none of it would’ve gone down like that. There was room enough for both WCW and the WWF to coexist and do great business for years and years to come, but now it’s a waste of breath to theorize about any of it.
I’ll never forget standing next to Rick Steiner in the back at what turned out to be the very last Nitro on March 26. We were in Panama City Beach, Florida, and nobody had a clue what was going on when out of nowhere Shane McMahon came in and cut a promo about the sale and purchase of WCW. It reminded me a lot of Black Saturday back in ’84 when Vince appeared on World Championship Wrestling.
I nudged Steiner. “Well,” I said, “there goes the neighborhood.”
HAWK LOVED TO WREAK HAVOC. 2003.
19
SPIRITUAL REBIRTH AND THE END OF AN ERA
When Vince shocked everybody in the wrestling world by purchasing his longtime rival, WCW (with me in it), no one knew what to expect. Maybe Vince was going to maintain it as a separate company and everyone would get to keep their jobs as rumored.
Maybe not. WCW, with the exception of a piss-poor and short-lived invasion angle into the WWF, was dismantled and gone forever.
It was starting to feel as if a lifetime had passed since I’d had a full-time gig with a guarantee. Trying to pick up the pieces of a dying wrestling career, I started taking indie bookings for appearances. I was feeling really tired about that time. My morale was down, my mood was bad, and my temper was being tested. There was no doubt in my mind or my heart that I needed something to help anchor me. It wasn’t something I could put my finger on, until a sign was actually put into my hand.
After doing a shot for some small promotion somewhere in Albuquerque, I ran into Nikita Koloff. In the early ’90s, my old buddy had semiretired from the wrestling business and was now an ordained pastor. He’d wrestle during the week and preach on the weekends. I remember him giving me a copy of his autobiography, Breaking the Chains, which dealt with his personal issues as a young man and how finding Jesus Christ had changed his life forever.
Photo courtesy of the Laurinaitis family.
During my first run in the WWF, the only person who could really take me off my feet was Jessica! September 1991.
Photo courtesy of the Laurinaitis family.
Merry Christmas 1990 from the Laurinaitis family! James on my right, Joey on my left, and Julie with little Jessica on her la
p. Check out my Zubaz bow tie!
Photo courtesy of the Laurinaitis family.
Top: A little brotherly love as James practices his powerbombs on Jessica. Summer ‘94. Bottom: Coaching Joey’s Legion of Doom little league team was another favorite role.
Photos courtesy of the Laurinaitis family.
The family that plays together stays together, and hockey was a Laurinaitis specialty for James, Jessica, and Joey from day one. Bottom left: A proud moment. Joey graduates boot camp to defend the USA in Iraq. January ‘00.
Photos courtesy of the Laurinaitis family.
Above: James and Jessica flashing their bright smiles during their high school years. Bottom: Sometimes James wouldn’t even go to eat with Joey and me unless I painted him up like Daddy first! Fall ‘90.
Photos this page courtesy of the Laurinaitis family.
Top: Julie, Jessica, and I visiting James during his sophomore year at Ohio State. Fall ‘06. Bottom: James as a St. Louis Ram visiting with Houston Texan and fellow Wayzata High School graduate Dominique Barber.
Although Nikita had given me his book in the past, I’d never looked at it. This time, for whatever reason, I read it from cover to cover in one night at the hotel, and it made a huge impression on me. Nikita stopped me after a match the next night and said, “Hey, last night you were yelling, ‘I’ll kick your ass,’ and tonight you were yelling, ‘I’ll kick your butt.’ What changed?”
It took me off guard. “I don’t know, man.”
“That’s the Holy Spirit, brother,” he said. “He’s knocking at your door.”
I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking the same thing, too. Oh no, here we go again. Another athlete talking about God. Well, those of you who know me personally or from TV know that I say it like it is—no BS. The events following would prove to me that God has a sense of humor. I mean, think about it. If He could hunt down a 300-pound, Mohawked wrestler with face paint and spikes, He could hunt down anybody.
After that, I started trying to work through everything I’d read and known about Christianity. I knew a lot of guys in the business had used religion to get a second chance with the wrestling executives after making a mess of themselves, but then they’d just turn right back around and make another mess. I didn’t want anything to do with that. It had to mean something to me to give my heart up like that.
A couple days later when Julie picked me up from the airport, I told her about Nikita’s book and that maybe there was something to this spirituality thing. I asked her to drop me off at The Gym so I could clear my mind with a good workout.
After finishing a set of lat pulldowns, I went for a drink of water. When I turned around, five of the biggest guys I’d ever seen were staring right at me. It was the Christian group The Power Team. One of them, a former Hells Angel from Texas named Big Russ, asked me a question: “Hey, Animal, do you have Jesus in your life?”
I looked at him blankly. “Bro, I don’t know what’s going on.” It was true. I couldn’t process everything rolling around in my head lately.
Then the guys from The Power Team invited me to their event in town at the Living Word Christian Center. With an open mind, I decided to go with my whole family.
Sitting in the front row of this 10,000-seat facility, where the guys from the team had given us seats, we watched all of their typical strong man exhibitions: tearing phone books in half and bending frying pans and stuff. It was funny because I was sitting there saying, “Oh, I could do that.”
Looking back, though, all of it was God knocking at my door. The moment of truth came when they did what the Christian faith calls the altar call. Let me explain. An altar call is when a preacher invites you to come up in front of the congregation and invite the Lord as your Savior. Responding to an altar call means you have to decide to check your ego at the door and say, “Do I really want a relationship with God?” You admit you’re a sinner and say the sinner’s prayer.
For me, this was where the rubber met the road. I was having an internal struggle. Do I go? Do I not go?
Then a miracle happened. I’m convinced the Holy Spirit worked through my boy James, because he took me by the hand and said, “Daddy, let’s go.”
How do you say no to that? So we went up, all of us, and together accepted Jesus Christ into our lives.
Keep in mind that Julie was baptized Presbyterian but didn’t ever go to church growing up, and I was raised Catholic (I still have ruler scars on my fingers from Catholic school to prove it), but by then we were disenchanted with it all. Becoming “born again” meant we could accept the Lord into our lives and have a true relationship with Him.
That moment at the Living Word really hit James. Since that night, he’s read a chapter of his Bible almost every night, and so have I. My daughter, Jessica, was too young at the time to really understand what was going on, but now she does. To this day, even though they’re separated by a few hundred miles, James still makes a point of sending Jessica passages of scripture through e-mails. It’s really inspiring how strong James has become in his faith.
As I look back on my life, I am so thankful to the Lord because I know that He protected Joey through his years serving in the Army, He’s protected James and Jessica through their years of intensely competitive athletics, and He’s protected me and Julie. Today, I travel telling people about what God has done in my life, and I know He guards me as I fly through the airways and when I’m bringing His saving grace into the devil’s neighborhood. God had His hand on me all along. I’m far from perfect. I lived a crazy life, but after giving me an opportunity to get my own name out there on every major television network over the years, God turned my life around to make His own name great. I have Him to thank for everything, especially for leading me and my family to the Living Word that night.
About a year after my family and I turned our lives over to Christ, Hawk, who had recovered enough to take some light bookings, called and said he had a show for us in June.
“I can’t, bro,” I told him. “I’m meeting with Nikita and Ted Dibiase (also born again) in Phoenix for the Athletes in Ministry Conference (AIMC).”
By this time, Mike was more than familiar with my faith and respected it. “Really?” he said. “Let me call you right back.” A minute or two later, the phone rang. “Hey, Joe, can Dale and I come, too, if we want?”
Wow. I was surprised as hell at Mike’s request but quickly said it was okay by me but to call the pastor in charge with Nikita and get all the details. And you know what? That’s exactly what Mike did.
But before any of us had a chance to get really excited about the trip, I got word of even more tragedy. On May 18, at a resort somewhere in Canada, Davey Boy Smith died of heart failure caused by drug usage. I remembered seeing Davey Boy a few years back at Owen’s funeral, and he looked as if he’d lost about 30 pounds of muscle, but he’d been battling a really bad pill addiction for years. In the end, all of Davey’s abuse finally caught up with him, and his heart couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t make it to forty, dying just shy at the age of thirty-nine.
When I did arrive with the whole family (except Joey, who was in Iraq) at the Phoenix First Assembly, guess who was the first one to greet me. Mike, with an ear-to-ear smile. He was so excited to be there with everyone. You could feel the positive energy.
When I looked around the room, I saw all kinds of guys, including Sting, Terry Taylor, and Shawn Michaels, who were all newcomers to the faith as well. It was like a big family. And it was before the members of that family that Julie, James, Jessica, and I were baptized into our new faith by Nikita, Pastor Larry Kerychuk, and Phoenix First director Tommy Barnett right there in the congregation wading pool. At one point, Tommy Barnett told me he’d been a closet wrestling fan, but not anymore. He’s a fan and unashamed. You know, there was a time when believers were closet Christians, but the time for closet Christianity is over. Wrestling is cool now, and so is Christianity.
Later, when we divided into groups a
nd it was time for the altar call like I’d been a part of at Living Word the year before, I got the surprise of my life when Hawk and Shawn both got up, hugged, and turned their lives over to Christ in front of the whole place.
It didn’t stop there for them. The great thing about being a Christian is that it’s not about going to church. It’s about having a personal relationship with the Lord, and that is what changes people. Those guys were a great example. They used to hate each other. I had a quick flashback to a time in Germany during our first WWF run, when Hawk, Shawn, the Nasty Boys, and I were going to this really high-class strip club. I think Knobbs was being too loud as we were walking into the building. I hadn’t even started down the stairs when Hawk and Knobbs came barreling back up. Hawk had grabbed him and smacked the taste out of his mouth and then turned to Shawn, who was also mouthing off, and picked him up against a garage door and, just before decking him, let go and walked away, laughing it off. Later that night, I found Shawn passed out in the hotel lobby and holding a wrapped up pillowcase filled with bottles, rocks, and all kinds of stuff. He had been waiting all night for Hawk to come back to do God-knows-what.
And now, ten years later, you should’ve seen those two crying in each other’s arms like babies. It was one of the most touching and enduring moments between two human beings I’ve ever seen in my life. It was something I think was long overdue for Mike. I could see some of those heavy personal burdens lift right off of his shoulders in that room.
When Hawk accepted Jesus into his life, there was such a change in him. He cleaned up a lot and became the true partner I remembered from the early days. When we’d talk on the phone, which was much more often than usual, he’d always end with “Hey, Joe. I love you, man.”
The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling Page 30