The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (14 page)

Many times I would start laughing on camera. I couldn’t help it. Hawk definitely got into such a groove that people couldn’t wait to see what he’d say next. I remember the camera guys telling us it was all they could do to not crack up and ruin the shot while taping us.

We got our style down to a real science, too, usually taking no more than the first try to nail it. The director and the crew even started referring to us as the One-Take Kids. It was about getting down to business and letting our opponents know how serious we were, while making the audience laugh, too.

From the fans to the other talent, everyone loved our promos. In essence, our Road Warriors gimmick was now totally complete. Now we could communicate perfectly, in true Hawk and Animal fashion, what we’d do in the ring. We were absolutely on fire, and Road Warrior fever was spreading everywhere, including faraway lands.

As I mentioned earlier, Paul told us all the time that we’d be perfect in Japan. He explained that our physical appearance and combination of power and athleticism were attributes the Japanese would clamor for. Everyone saw the potential of an impressive Road Warriors tour of AJPW.

It was a no-brainer and a win-win-win situation for the three parties involved. Verne would draw huge exposure for the AWA, as would Baba for AJPW. Baba would also be known as the first promoter to bring the Road Warriors to Japan. Of course, we won out in multiple ways. Aside from making great money and gaining a new place to work, we would get to test and fine-tune everything about our gimmick within a whole new world of professional wrestling.

To promote our arrival, we filmed a crazy video to freak out the Japanese audience even further. We ate raw chickens and drank Tabasco sauce while walking around the woods yelling nonsense. I even remember Hawk eating a dozen eggs complete with the shells. He was a total mess. At one point, we even scaled a twelve-foot wall with a running start. We were barely able to reach the top, but when we did we were strong enough to pull ourselves up and over. There’s no question we didn’t know what the hell we were doing, but we kept on doing it. We came off like a cross between aliens and Godzilla. It did the trick.

When we first touched down in Tokyo at the Narita Airport, we had to do a quick press conference right then and there. Hawk and I got off the plane, and media and fans swarmed around us. We were told that more people came to greet us than they did to greet Michael Jackson when he visited. No shit.

We went through customs and straight to the bathroom and put on our face paint. The bathroom smelled like an outhouse and had this big communal trough that everybody went in. It was horrendous, and we wanted to puke.

As we came back out, members of the press handed us 32-ounce beers and shouted, “Ike, ike.”
¹⁵
I asked Paul what they were saying.

“It means chug the beers, Animal.”

We were already a little hammered to begin with due to the drinking we’d done on the plane, but we were good sports and downed the beer. After some posing and hand shaking, Hawk and I were ready to leave when the same reporters started handing us bottles of Tabasco sauce.

“Ike, ike,” they yelled again.

Ugh. I don’t think we had a solid bowel movement the whole time we were there.

When we got to our hotel, we had the pleasure of finding out the All Japan office had booked us in the shittiest dump of a hotel you could imagine. I don’t think we quite expected the Ritz-Carlton or anything, but we also didn’t expect the Japanese version of a lousy roadside motel.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hawk said. Within a couple of days, he started complaining about being itchy all over and was scratching like crazy. It turned out he got crabs from the bed. That was it. Hawk marched right up to Joe Higuchi, an AJPW referee who happened to be our American liaison, before one of our matches and said, “I’m not staying another night in that fucking place.”

That night Baba moved us to The Pacific, a much more suitable hotel where dignitaries always stayed. Now we could focus on the work we were there for.

In Japan, wrestling is like a fine art. For the most part, the crowd is subdued and stays seated. The action they were used to wasn’t as swift and powerful as what we came in with. We were like giant cannons being secretly brought into a gunfight with an explosive display the Japanese had never seen in professional wrestling.

As soon as we kicked the door open with “Iron Man” blasting, the crowd parted like the Red Sea and collectively let out a huge gasp. They weren’t prepared for our sprint to the ring either. We came out like bulldogs, and a sea of hands reached to touch us and grab our collars. Bulldozers couldn’t have plowed through those people any better than we did. It was clear that Japan pretty much fell in love with the Road Warriors the very first moment we stormed the AJPW ring.

Wrestling in Japan was a real learning curve for us. There was a formality and respect to everything here, including wrestling. Hawk and I were used to running down the aisle, storming the ring, and starting the action upon immediate impact. In Japan, you’d get through the ropes and there’d be the announcer, maybe two or three company officials, and usually three or four girls dressed in gowns and holding bouquets of flowers.

The Japanese were used to these opening ceremonies and lengthy introductions for each match. We weren’t. Sometimes we’d be respectful and subdue ourselves a little, but other times we went about our business and blitzed our opponents as usual. It was hilarious to see those girls run for their lives.

The audience was equally interesting. Most of the time when Hawk and I would jump into the ring, the fans would throw huge loads of confetti into the air from the upper seats and it went everywhere like the white flakes in a snow globe. It was a spectacle we’d never seen before.

During that first tour of Japan, we wrestled six matches in six nights and barely had time to catch our breath—and we loved every second of it. Here we were, just a couple of bumpkins from Minnesota with no worldly experience, and we were about to perform in front of a foreign audience. It was an epic platform of East versus West, and we were the big, badass Americans filled with piss and vinegar. At least that’s the way I imagined it. We were sick to our stomachs for every show, but miraculously Hawk and I kept things down.

Our very first match for AJPW was on March 8, 1985, in a city called Funabashi in Chiba, Japan, against the team of Killer Khan and Hiro “Animal” Hamaguchi.

I remember thinking,
Two Animals? Looks like I’m going to have to show these guys who the real Animal is.

Khan and Hamaguchi were two strong and experienced wrestlers who were considered a monster tag team. Khan had some high profile matches against Andre the Giant in the WWF, and Hamaguchi was renowned for his great physical strength. Japanese fans couldn’t wait to see how we stacked up against two of their most powerful performers.

Before the match, Hamaguchi, along with a translator who spoke broken English, approached me. “Um, Animal-san, Hamaguchi-san please request big honor in front of hometown.” As it went, we were in Hamaguchi’s home city, and he wanted to know if I’d take some bumps and help put him over.

“Sure, no problem,” I said. “But when I get up, tell him to get ready for a big return.”

They both bowed, shook my hand, and then left.

When it was time to storm the ring for the first time, we knew that all the flower girls and the announcer would be standing there for their usual presentation, but we didn’t slow up for one second. We came barreling down at lightning speed and tore through the ropes, charging Khan and Hamaguchi with our usual blitzkrieg. The girls and the announcer went diving out to the floor to avoid being flattened like pancakes while Hawk and I hammered away at our opponents. Within seconds, we dumped them out to the floor as well.

I quickly jumped out, grabbed Hamaguchi, threw him into the steel ring post, and hopped back in. Hawk and I stomped around the ring looking at 4,500 people cheering and throwing long streamers into the air toward us. I flashed a big double biceps pose to one side of the ring. The audience erupted like thunder, and flashbulbs ignited.

The match itself was a four-minute squash, which basically served as a demonstration of our list of Road Warrior power moves. Hawk started off with Hamaguchi and slammed him, elbowed him off the ropes, gave him a shoulder-breaker, dropped about another four or five elbows, and then tagged me in.

I went right to the center of the ring and pressed Hamaguchi straight up over my head and threw him like a missile into the ropes. Without even thinking about it, I snatched him by the back of the head, whipped him into the ropes, and caught him for a huge powerslam that really popped the audience. Hamaguchi’s pained expression indicated I’d knocked the wind out of him, but I didn’t stop there. I hit the ropes and came back for a big splash, but Hamaguchi put his knees up and nailed me right across the rib cage. While I was doubled over in pain, Hamaguchi tucked and rolled over to the waiting Killer Khan and gave him the hot tag.
Whap!

Khan, a six feet five, 300-pound Mongolian monster, was all over me in a heartbeat. He started giving me double judo chops to the sides of my neck and then backed me up against the ropes before sending me across the ring into the ropes. Khan bent down and tried for a sunset flip, but I kicked him in the chest and sent him flying. Then I tried to drop an elbow, and he rolled out of the way and jumped up to tag in Hamaguchi, who climbed to the top turnbuckle.

Khan grabbed me and flipped me on my back with a snapmare, setting up a big splash from Hamaguchi from the top rope. Remember earlier in the night when Hamaguchi asked for the honor of getting in some offense against me during the match? Well, this was his big moment. Hamaguchi dove through the air with his arms and legs spread way out.
Bam!
He hit me hard, and I felt every bit of it. The crowd cheered as he went for the cover, but I kicked him off me at the count of two. Then Hamaguchi launched at me with two fast dropkicks.

That was enough for his moment. Now it was my turn. When Hamaguchi went for a third dropkick, I pushed him out of the way and then tagged Hawk for our big finish. For months now, Hawk and I had been working on developing a cool finishing move that involved both of us at the same time. What we planned in Japan for Hamaguchi was what I called the Guillotine.

I tagged in Hawk and then took Hamaguchi and threw him into the ropes. When he came back, I picked him up with a bear hug and held him there. Meanwhile Hawk charged into the ropes and came running up behind me and jumped up in the air for a huge decapitating clothesline on poor “Animal” Hamaguchi. He had been the first execution victim of the Road Warrior Guillotine.

After it was all over, Hamaguchi came up to me again with his translator. “‘Animal’ Hamaguchi-san wanted to thank you for big honor tonight.”

I was floored. It was a huge sign of respect and a perfect example of how humble and gracious the Japanese people were. I took personal note of the moment. And that was how we started six days of wrestling action in Japan.

The next day, we woke up and saw ourselves on the front page of the
Tokyo Sports
newspaper, the most respected sporting periodical in Japan. The story featured all the details of this big American team that defeated the mighty Killer Khan and “Animal” Hamaguchi and how we were set to face off with the NWA International Tag Team champions, Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu, that very night.

It was news to us. I kept thinking about the tension and drama we were creating in the wrestling world. It really was playing out as if we were these evil and unstoppable Americans sent over to destroy the Japanese. It was like something right out of the movies.

Our declared opponents, Tsuruta and Tenryu, were one of the most solid teams in all of professional wrestling. They were real-life athletes, too, which I respected. Tsuruta had been an Olympic basketball player and was even slightly bigger than Killer Khan at six feet five and 280 pounds. Tenryu was no slouch himself. At six feet two and 260 pounds, he was a former sumo wrestler and as tough as they come.

Our match was at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, one of Japan’s historic sumo halls. In fact, this was the very first night professional wrestling was presented at the famous venue. A sellout crowd of 11,000 people witnessed us wrestle Tsuruta and Tenryu in a best two-out-of-three falls series for the NWA International title, one of the two tag championships in AJPW along with the Pacific Wrestling Federation (PWF) World Tag Team belts.

This match, like the one with Khan and Hamaguchi, was also a platform for Giant Baba to show us off to the Japanese public on a much grander scale. All of the major news outlets came from around the world to cover our championship match and to see something they never had before. That night everybody got exactly what they wanted.

This time our entrance was a little more subdued to give Tsuruta and Tenryu the respect they deserved. We came running down as usual, but when we got inside the ring we didn’t jump them. Instead, we paced back and forth during the announcements. Standing straight, arms folded, they didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned about us. They wouldn’t be bullied by anyone, and they were totally unconvinced by the Road Warrior hype machine, which had been busy at work for months before we’d even touched down in Tokyo.

The atmosphere was reminiscent of our AWA title match with Baron and Crusher in Vegas. It was youth against experience, only this had a much more obvious political tone to it due to our perceived American patriotism. In a lot of ways, Hawk and I symbolized what the Reagan era was all about in the United States: being the top superpower in the world and hotdogging it all the way with force, flash, and balls. For that fact alone, it was very interesting to see many of the Japanese waving American flags as we stormed down the aisle.

During the introductions of both teams, fans in the upper tiers were sailing paper streamers by the dozens into the ring. Even though it made a mess in the ring, I have to admit it was a pretty cool custom. The only things people in the United States usually threw at the ring were half-eaten snacks, cups of dip spit, and batteries. It was a nice change of pace.