The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (10 page)

Jimmy fed us our lyrics line by line until the whole thing was done. It was like our first wrestling match: we had no idea what we were doing and had to be walked through the whole thing, and the end result wasn’t too pretty.

Hawk and I stood together in front of a big boom mic in the studio and took turns singing lines that went something like this: “There’s talk in the street. There’s trouble coming down. Hawk and the Animal are coming to town. Everybody’s talking; they don’t say a thing. But everybody knows what the Warriors will bring.”

It wasn’t exactly a toe-tapping classic, but it worked perfectly. When Jimmy took the song to the local radio stations, not only did they start to play it, but it quickly went to the number one most requested song of the week. The video of us in the studio made the TV rounds on both
Memphis Wrestling
and
World Championship Wrestling
along with promos from both teams about the big match.

When the day finally came for our big showdown in February, Memphis was electric. The public had been eating up the whole buildup of the match for weeks and couldn’t wait to see the drama unfold. To be honest, neither could I.

Inside the Mid-South Coliseum, a sellout crowd of 10,000 stood as Hawk and I made our way down to the ring. Lawler and Idol were already waiting for us as we stepped through the ropes and got right up in their faces. Paul was right there, too, waving his rolled-up newspaper in the ref’s face, telling him not to get in the way.

The match started off with Lawler and me squaring off, so I launched at him with a kick to the stomach followed by a quick press slam.
Bam!
Lawler bounced off the mat and out of the ring. The crowd was stunned, and quite a few were applauding me as I posed and yelled. Lawler stayed out on the floor for at least a minute before deciding to come back in. I backed him up into a corner, and Lawler started saying, “Punch me. Come on! Punch me.”

The last time I’d been in this situation was in Eddie Sharkey’s church basement fighting Rood. I’d tried to throw a nice working punch to his face and wound up breaking his nose. Since then, I’d avoided it at all costs. But, at Lawler’s request, I tossed a weak little punch toward his face and completely missed—like a strike in baseball. The funniest part was watching Lawler sell it as if I’d hit him with a sledgehammer. Even though I hadn’t laid a finger on him, he fell on the ground holding his face as if he’d been shot. He was great.

When I walked over and tagged in Hawk, he and Lawler sized each other up. Hawk kicked him in the stomach, elbowed the back of his head, and then pressed Lawler high in the air before slamming him down. Again the crowd was almost silenced in awe, and again Lawler stalled for another minute on the floor. Right next to him, Paul was yelling in his face, calling him a coward.

When Lawler did decide to get back in, Hawk was waiting for him and they locked up again. This time Lawler was able to back Hawk up into an empty corner and delivered a right fist to the face followed by a hip toss in the center of the ring. As Hawk was getting up, Lawler ran over to him and kicked him in the stomach, setting Hawk up for a piledriver. Lawler reached down, put Hawk’s head between his legs, lifted him up vertically, and crashed him down on his head.
Boom!

The piledriver was Lawler’s finisher, and usually no one got up from it. In fact, it kayfabe sent a lot of guys, like Andy Kaufman, to the hospital. Lawler got up and started celebrating as the crowd almost blew the roof off of the coliseum. The “King” had slain the beast. Right? Well, not exactly.

You have to imagine the reaction from the audience as Hawk totally no-sold the piledriver and jumped to his feet as Lawler’s back was turned. It was something Lawler had suggested to Hawk before the show. Hawk loved that piledriver spot so much that he added it to his permanent repertoire and probably worked it a thousand more times during his career.

When Lawler turned around and saw Hawk standing and huffing, his eyeballs almost popped out of his head, as if Hawk had risen from the dead. With clenched fists and every muscle in his body tensed, Hawk slowly stalked Lawler around the ring like Frankenstein or something right out of the movies. When they reached an open corner, Hawk leveled him with one punch. Lawler hung there on the ropes for dear life. It was amazing to watch.

Here Lawler was, a longtime respected star in the business, and he was selling and bumping all over the place for a couple of rookies he didn’t know from a hole in the wall. It was because of professionals like him and Idol that Hawk and I were able to come off looking every bit the monsters we were billed as.

Lawler knew that by taking all of the punishment we could dish out, he’d also be absorbing huge sympathy from the fans. He crawled around playing the martyr while Idol was always out of arm’s reach, pleading to be tagged in. That was the key. A worker like Lawler was brilliant in this type of situation because he knew exactly how to play off of the people desperately wanting him to get that tag.

Lawler would reach toward the outstretched hand of Idol, and then at the last minute Hawk or I would drag him away and pummel him some more. Finally after several attempts to get to his corner and with the tension of the fans at fever pitch, we finally let Lawler break away and give the hot tag to Idol.

Boom!
The whole Mid-South Coliseum exploded like a powder keg as Idol jumped through the ropes and began scoop slamming Hawk and me left and right. We probably took about three slams each. As we were walking around dazed, Idol grabbed us both by the backs of our heads and noggin-knocked us face-first into each other.

When Lawler got back into the action, I split off with him in one corner, and Idol and Hawk were in the middle of the ring. I picked Lawler up on my shoulder and started to walk slowly backward. Not knowing Hawk was laid out right behind me, I tripped and fell with Lawler on top of me. Idol, seizing the opportunity, jumped onto Lawler so that I was being pinned by two people. The ref made a two count before I completely launched both of them off me with a big kick-out that impressed even me.

The finish came with all four of us in the ring brawling. At the same time, Paul was trying to hold Idol against the ropes so I could hit him with a running knee. When I jumped toward Idol, he moved out of the way and I nailed Paul instead. Paul got up and tried to climb back into the ring, but the ref was wrestling him to keep him out. Then Paul shoved him down, causing an immediate disqualification. Lawler and Idol got the win, but we kept our belts and showed a whole new audience what the Road Warriors were all about.

When we returned to Georgia, we continued to feud with everyone who got in our way. King Kong Bundy in particular had such a vendetta against us that anytime Hawk and I were double-teaming someone, you could rest assured Bundy would come running down for the save. Because of his massive size and surprising speed, Bundy was the closest thing GCW had to Road Warrior control, becoming an equalizer of sorts for anyone suffering from our attacks.

In singles matches, Bundy would take on two guys at a time in handicap matches and still win in brutal fashion. He also made the claim that no one could body slam him, offering a $15,000 bounty to anyone who could. Week after week, known strong men like Nikolai Volkoff and Joe LeDuc tried to collect on Bundy’s offer but couldn’t pick up the 450-pounder for the slam.

On April 1 at the Omni, Bundy got on the mic and asked if anyone in the back had the guts to come out and go for the money. The crowd went ballistic when I started walking down to the ring. Whether they loved me or hated me, those people knew I stood the greatest chance of winning the challenge and making a fool out of Bundy on April Fool’s Day.

Bundy and I stood our ground and yelled shit at each other, acting like we were about to go to blows. Then I scuffed my feet, rubbed my hands together, and went for the slam. I picked him up about halfway before I felt him deadweight me, and I had to let go of him. I grabbed my back in kayfabed pain.

When Bundy raised his hands to the crowd as if he’d won, I clocked him in the face and picked him up easily for a perfect slam.
Bam!
The whole ring shook when the big man landed, and I walked around the ring beating my chest like King Kong, which was ironic considering
he
was the one named King Kong Bundy. (By the way, Bundy, if you’re reading this, I’m still waiting for my $15,000.)

Bundy was far from finished when it came to his grudge, though. He found a new partner, the Masked Superstar (Bill Eadie). As the Superstar, Eadie was already a true legend if there ever was one, and I don’t use that term loosely. At six feet three and 300 pounds, Superstar was a brute force and had held virtually every GCW title many times over. He was also a hell of a great guy. Hawk and I got to know him better when he wrestled as Ax in the WWF tag team Demolition, along with Smash (my pal Barry Darsow).

On May 6, 1984, at the Omni in Atlanta, Hawk and I dropped the National titles to Bundy and the Superstar. It was a phenomenal match against two powerhouse teams who didn’t fail to deliver. I quickly realized how strong Eadie was when we locked up and I could barely move him. He was also just as stiff as Hawk and I were, throwing potatoes
¹¹
that could’ve easily knocked out a lesser man if he wasn’t careful.

Near the end, Eadie got his famous cobra clutch
¹²
around Hawk’s neck and started to wrench his whole body back and forth pretty violently. Hawk played opossum for a minute, looking like he was totally out, then jolted back to life and broke out of the hold. It was a big move! (Much like Bundy’s $15,000 body slam challenge, Eadie previously had a $10,000 cobra clutch contest and claimed no one could escape it.)

As great of a match as it was, Hawk and I walked out of the Omni without the belts we’d held for almost four months. Bundy had finally gotten his revenge, but it was bittersweet. Eadie dropped out of the team with Bundy and headed to Japan, leaving the titles vacant and up for grabs in a tournament, which Hawk and I claimed.

We were happy to have the belts again and not surprised about Eadie’s departure. Back in the days of the territory system, there weren’t any guaranteed contracts, so guys routinely drifted in and out of various promotions if they saw better opportunities. We knew we’d run into Eadie again.

As for us, in the final match of that tournament on May 20, Hawk and I defeated Junkyard Dog (JYD) and Sweet Brown Sugar to become champions one more time. All I remember of that match was the crazy following JYD had. Whenever we’d take him down, large sections of the crowd chanted, “Who dat? Who dat? Who dat gonna beat that dog?”

As great as things were going for us at the time, the landscape started to change. Both Jake Roberts and the Spoiler had broken away from Paul and us to pursue independent careers again. This left me and Hawk as the only members of the Legion of Doom, which is how we also wound up using the name alongside our Road Warriors moniker.

Far worse, though, especially for Ole, it turned out that things were deteriorating behind closed doors in Georgia Championship Wrestling. For the LOD, they were crumbling beneath our very boots. As Hawk and I had been enjoying the time of our lives being monster heels wrestling all over the place that spring, something else had been going on that we weren’t even aware of. The other guys backstage started rumbling about serious problems in the company again.

Hawk and I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on, but we weren’t too worried about it. With our rising fame and success in so many different territories, we knew we could find a place to work.

What did bother me was that Ole was losing control of his baby despite his efforts. Even Ole didn’t realize the enormity of what was really happening. The series of events from April to July of 1984 would change the course of history for the professional wrestling industry around the world. And there was one man at the center of it all: Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

McMahon, who had taken over the WWF from his ailing father, Vincent J. McMahon, in 1982, had big ambitions for the territory. When Vince assumed control, he decided to expand the WWF nationally and compete with all of the territories his father had done business with for decades. Once known for being a primarily Northeastern territory with a home base of Madison Square Garden in New York City, the WWF had exclusively run shows and reigned supreme from Maryland to Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania as well. Vince discovered new ways, like home video distribution, to promote his product without even setting foot outside of his region.

The WWF was also the only other company besides GCW that had a national TV deal
. All American Wrestling
was a WWF showcase program airing on USA Network on Sunday mornings. It had great ratings, but that wasn’t enough for Vince.

After looking around, Vince found that the only other available time slot that could serve his purposes was none other than a two-hour block starting at 6:05 p.m. on Saturday nights on Superstation TBS. See something familiar there? It was the slot of our very own
World Championship Wrestling
. Crazy, right? Well, when Vince has his eyes on something, he’s a machine.

Vince actually went down to Atlanta to see Ted Turner himself about the purchase of the airtime. Without even thinking about it, Turner told McMahon he wasn’t interested. It was well known that Turner enjoyed having wrestling on TBS and was proud of its high ratings. Undaunted, Vince started looking for a way around Turner into the time slot—and he found it.

A group of shareholders, including Jim Barnett, Jack and Jerry Brisco, and Ole, owned Georgia Championship Wrestling. Knowing Barnett and Ole would have wanted nothing to do with him, Vince started negotiating with the Briscos to try to buy out their shares for a large sum and company jobs. As part of the deal, the Briscos would have to convince the majority of remaining shareholders to do the same.