The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (15 page)

When the bell rang, Hawk and Tenryu squared off and exchanged several tests of strength during their lock ups, which they worked evenly back and forth. Then Hawk grabbed a headlock and gave Tenryu a knee to the stomach before picking him up for a big press slam.

It was impressive as hell to witness from inside the ring, because the fans had never seen anything like this before. They were like little children jumping up and down, losing their minds. It was cool, too, because we were all making up everything as we went for the most part.

Backstage before we’d come out when we were working out the details of the match, communication had been very limited. Joe Higuchi did a good job of translating, but we still had a problem going over spots. We finally got the basics down, determining which team would win each fall, but other than that, we would all call the match as we went.

Back in the ring, Hawk threw Tenryu into the ropes and went for what looked like a powerslam attempt, but he was countered. After a continued struggle in the corner, Hawk came over and tagged me in. As I glared down the ring at Tenryu, he followed Hawk’s lead and gave Tsuruta a tag into the match. The crowd started chanting in unison as the two big boys of each team stalked each other in the center of the ring.

When we finally locked horns, I had to show off a little by shoving Tsuruta off of me, sending him reeling backward into the ropes. While Tsuruta was trying to regain his bearings, I leaned out of the ring and acted like I was taking instructions from Paul. When we finally tied up again, Tsuruta moved behind me and got me into a full nelson. It was a classic show of strength as I slowly moved my arms down forcefully and broke the hold. I was yelling at the top of my lungs to show the intensity of the moment.

To take the whole show of strength angle even further, Tsuruta and I raised both of our arms and locked our hands in the strong man showdown. Whoever was forced down on his knees was always the outmatched man, and in the blink of an eye I had Tsuruta on his knees and then onto his back. I was flexing every muscle in my body and felt like King Kong himself.

But like any good strong man in wrestling, Tsuruta needed to shift the momentum and make his comeback. Tsuruta struggled with everything he had to get back up on his feet and push me back into the corner, but I grabbed a headlock on him and sent him into the ropes. I caught him with a gigantic powerslam.
Bam!
(Even I was impressed by that one. Tsuruta was one big dude.) I jumped up, posed for the crowd, and tagged in Hawk, who punched, then clotheslined, then pinned him.

As soon as Tsuruta got up from being pinned, he knew he had to save face in front of the Japanese fans and settle the score. He started overwhelming Hawk with big punches and kicks and then threw him into the ropes and charged at him with his own running clothesline, knocking the hell out of him. Tsuruta let out a big yell, picked Hawk up off of his feet with a belly-to-back suplex, and slammed him hard on his neck and back. It was as hard of a bump as I’d ever seen Hawk take. Tsuruta covered him and took the three count and the fall.

Now it was even, one to one. Paul, appearing disgusted by what he saw, ran over and got a steel chair, entered the ring, and started swinging at Tsuruta. By then Tenryu and I ran in and started beating each other all over the ring while Hawk took the chair and went after Tsuruta. The ref was completely incapacitated as he was getting thrown all over the place, so he signaled for the bell.

The announcer came over the speakers and said Tsuruta and Tenryu won the fall by disqualification, making them the majority winners, two to one. In a rush, we grabbed our AWA belts and stormed off to the back.

When Tsuruta and Tenryu finally made it back, we all congratulated each other for a great match. Personally, I had an even more profound respect for Tsuruta and Tenryu as workers. They could dish it out, take it with a smile, and always stand their ground. In that respect, they were a lot like us. It wouldn’t be the only match we had with those guys.

The rest of the four-day tour we wrestled four more times in cities all around Tokyo: Yokosuka, Himeji, Yakkaichi, and Nagoya. We also met a lot of great new wrestlers, including Riki Choshu, Yoshiaki Yatsu, and Yuki Ishikawa, who became our lifelong friends. We were shuttled around at such a dizzying pace that everything sort of blended together and looked exactly the same. It also didn’t help that we were still majorly jet-lagged from our fourteen-hour flight and the insane seventeen-hour time difference. Still, there was some downtime when we took to the streets to see what was going on.

Hawk and I couldn’t believe we were in another country. Only two years earlier, we’d only been two punk kids throwing guys out of Gramma B’s, and now we were in Japan performing before thousands. Talk about fish out of water! It was like being on Mars.

We must’ve looked like aliens, too. We were so much bigger than everyone that we got curious stares all day long. Kids would take turns running up to us to touch our arms and would sometimes give us little gifts. I thought it was adorable. We communicated with them sometimes in made-up sign language. It’s funny how people can get along without saying a word.

Just as we were getting a foothold on our new surroundings and schedule, it was time to turn around and go back stateside. But that first trip to Japan was eye opening, and over the next phase of our career Japan became a second home to us. Our popularity there at one time in the mid-’80s may have even eclipsed our following in the United States.

Hawk and I were humbled by the loyalty of the Japanese fans. When we came in for that first run, we were built up to be a force and spectacle they had never seen before. We brought the best we could offer, allowing us to capture Japan’s interest and imagination for the rest of our careers. It was simple. We showed up and performed at our best, and our bond with the Japanese grew stronger and stronger.

We were also very honored to have established such a sound business relationship with Giant Baba and All Japan Pro Wrestling. We knew we’d hit a home run with Baba and made him happy because Mrs. Baba was happy. That was the litmus test with him.

I remember Mrs. Baba giving us boxes of Road Warriors T-shirts they’d made to take home with us. In fact, we always left with interesting souvenirs. On my way out, I’d make sure to stock up on cool Japanese toys for Joey, like remote control cars and robots, so he could share in my experience. Once in a while other guys, including Ric Flair, would even ask me to grab toys for their kids, too. I was glad to help. It was always like Christmas when I came home from Japan.

7

THE BOOM OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

When we got back from Japan, I thought we’d have some time off to recoup and decompress for a couple of days. Man, was I wrong! Not only did we get no rest, but on our very first day back on the road, Hawk and I wrestled two matches, in two cities, in one night. We’d just stepped off a flight from Japan that might as well have been a trip home from the moon. I was totally spent, and Hawk was hung over.

We started off in Denver at the Auditorium Arena for an afternoon match against Larry and Curt Hennig, which they won by DQ when Paul saved me from being pinned. Then without any time to breathe, we hauled ass to the airport and caught a flight to Minnesota for a rematch with the Hennigs, where we got the win thanks to some help from Paul.

I can’t remember how many times Paul got involved in our matches when we were heels. Actually, I can’t remember a time he didn’t interfere in our matches when we were heels. That was the beauty of “Precious” Paul.

Whether he’d distract the referee, throw us a chair, or jump into the match and start brawling, Paul wasn’t just the third Road Warrior; he was an integral part of our ring psychology. Nothing drove crowds crazier than when Hawk and I could start choking or hammering opponents because Paul had the ref’s attention. To foil our Paul advantage and give the fans an answer to our cheating, Greg Gagne started pairing teams up with third partners to act as enforcers. You’d see matches like the Road Warriors versus the Fabulous Ones with Baron von Raschke or with the Crusher (each of whom dressed up like the Fabs with glitter suspenders and bow ties) in their corner, or six-man matches like the Road Warriors versus Larry and Curt Hennig with Jerry Blackwell or with Steve-O. We probably wrestled more six-man matches in 1985 than any other team in the business did.

After Denver and St. Paul, we made a few stops up in Winnipeg and Quebec, facing patchwork teams like Jim Brunzell and Greg Gagne and Dino Bravo and Rick Martel, the current AWA World champion. Rick and I had made friends since our little misunderstanding at The Gym a couple years back.

Anytime we wrestled against Rick in tag matches, which was rare and usually only in his native Canada, we always had to take the dive and DQ ourselves. No matter how popular the Road Warriors were, we weren’t going to be booked to beat the company singles champion, let alone on his home turf. Most of the time, when you have champions of any kind facing each other, both sides need to come out looking strong regardless of the finish.

It was after those dates in Canada that I started hearing of some locker room grumblings about us. Apparently quite a few of the boys felt we not only didn’t deserve our ongoing push in the AWA as champs but we also worked too stiff and never sold anybody else’s moves. It was the same old story. We’d been getting that kind of shit since the early Georgia days when other teams routinely complained to Ole about us. Now we were hearing it in the AWA from some of the older guys.

One night in Milwaukee, Hawk and I finished a typical Road Warriors display against Dick the Bruiser and the hometown hero, the Crusher. You should’ve seen them go to the ring as the “Beer Barrel Polka” played. Afterward, Bobby Heenan was standing there in the back, staring at them, his arms folded.

Finally Crusher said, “What are you looking at?”

Without missing a beat, Bobby replied, “I was wondering why you didn’t have nosebleeds from being up that high.”

The look on Crusher’s face said it all as he sat there silenced. He had to be humiliated. This was a man honored with his own statue in downtown Milwaukee and for decades one of the quintessential tough guys in wrestling. And now he was at the other end of the spectrum, running out his time putting younger wrestlers over.

But that’s pretty much the way it goes in all businesses. Out with the old and in with the new. Hawk and I would experience the same thing later in our own careers, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Still at the height of our career, we were dealing with resentments for our relentless style. What could we do about that, though? It was the master plan from Dr. Frankenstein himself, Ole Anderson. Ole set us up, programmed us, and sent us out into the wrestling world with Paul to light the way.

Sure, it was easy as hell to get caught up in our own hype, but we never forgot the whole thing was a work. Backstage and after the shows, Hawk and I were everybody’s friends, but when it was go time, it was like Hawk used to say: “In this world, there are two kinds of people—weasels and weasel slappers. And we’re the weasel slappers.” He was right. Weasel slapping was equal opportunity, had a great benefit plan, and was the steadiest employment we ever could’ve asked for.

A gimmick like the Road Warriors with pistons like us backing it up was something those guys had never seen. There’s no doubt everyone, including us, had to make quick adjustments when that bell rang, because we dished it out and usually had no idea what the other guys were all about.

Hawk and I loved it most when guys, especially the Japanese and AWA old schoolers like Crusher, Baron, Jerry Blackwell, and Larry Hennig, dished right back at us with attitude. That’s what it was all about. Every one of us was portraying a tough guy gimmick in one form or another, so why not go in there and make it look believable?

I’ll tell you one thing: Larry Hennig knows what I’m talking about. In April, we faced Larry and Curt at the Meadowlands and had a funny encounter. The arena was shoehorned with 10,000 people for an eleven-match card featuring us in the main event. What was great about wrestling Larry that night was his attitude.

I think he’d had enough of being a Road Warriors punching bag during the last few months and decided to vent some steam in Jersey. When Larry and I locked up, I could feel him using all of his 275 pounds to muscle me into a corner. Then, as he let go, he smiled and gave me an open-handed slap in the face.
Crack!

That got my attention
really
fast. I looked at him as he was backing up, and Larry was smirking.
Okay, you son of a bitch
, I thought.
Let’s see you try that again
.

As we tied up for the second time, I’ll be damned if he didn’t back me into a corner again.
Smack!

Aw, shit
. With the speed of light, I reached out and whacked Larry right back in his big-bearded face.
Pow!

He looked at me and put his dukes up for real.

I shouted out, “Let’s end this shit and fight right now ’cause I ain’t taking another one of those slaps.”

We squared off for a couple of seconds with only referee Scott LeDoux keeping us separated.

I looked over at Hawk, who was chomping at the bit in the corner like a rabid dog with his tongue hanging out. “Yeah, Animal, knock his block off.”

Then I shot a quick glance over at Curt, who was standing there shaking his head. You could tell he wanted no part in a potential throw down. Truthfully, neither did I. Larry was actually a good friend of mine and Hawk’s by that time. I think he just got a little carried away with his frustration. Even though wrestling’s a work, it can be really easy to blow a gasket in the ring and lose control.

Fortunately, our little standoff ended abruptly when Larry snapped out of the moment and resumed working our match. Afterward, we had a laugh about it and squashed the tension—or so I thought. But later that same night, I was told Larry had mentioned something on the way out about still needing to “teach the Road Warriors a lesson.”