The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (26 page)

In all seriousness, the Road Warriors, Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, and the Four Horsemen’s stable—NWA World Heavyweight champion Ric Flair, NWA World Television champion Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, and Lex Luger (who had recently replaced Ole)—were the hottest ticket in the company. Any combinations of singles, tag team, six-man or even eight-man tag matches drew sellout business wherever we went. With that in mind, it was a no-brainer for Dusty to figure out how to take all of us and do something the world had never seen before. Crockett hyped the coming of the War Games for months on TV, too, with cool commercials for the Bash showing pieces of the cage being welded together.

I’ll never forget how excited and nervous I was for the match to start, and when our music hit and it was time to go, my mind went blank. Hawk and I looked like full-scale monsters in our giant shoulder pads as we plowed down the aisle with Nikita, Dusty, and Paul. That night, not only was Paul involved in the match as our fifth member, but so was Tully Blanchard’s manager, J.J. Dillon, the Fifth Horseman in the match.

With the lights out and spotlights scanning the screaming audience, a loud voice announced over the PA, “Let the War Games begin.” It was like something out of the movies, and I had chills up and down my arms. It was so loud in the Omni that it was hard to hear anything.

When it all finally started, it was Dusty and Arn first and then Tully, me, Flair, Nikita, Luger, Hawk, J.J., and then Paul. The event was total chaos, and I absolutely loved it. Everyone was hurt, exhausted, and bleeding by the end.

When I first jumped into the cage, I leveled Arn and Flair and then took Tully and launched him like an arrow over the ropes and into the second ring. I raced over there and, with my back to the cage, hooked his legs under my arms and picked him up sit-up style into the cage. After five or six face-first cage smashes, Tully was pulverized, and I dropped him like a big bag of bones.

Tully also served as cannon fodder for Hawk when he first tore into the War Games like a starving tiger. After climbing into the ring and knocking Lex Luger half unconscious, he grabbed Tully and yelled, “Press. Spear.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant until I saw him press Tully over his head, then throw him like a human spear into the corner, where he landed in a crumpled heap.

Because everyone, especially Dusty, had been so impressed with our new Doomsday Device finisher, we’d been told we had the honor of bringing the match home. It was also decided that J.J. Dillon would have the distinct pleasure of receiving our fine little maneuver.

The plan was to be extra careful. Well, sometimes things don’t go quite as planned.

Referee Tommy Young started frantically yelling over to us, “Wrap it up. Wrap it up. Let’s take it home.”

We knew there were time constraints, so we hastily got ourselves into position. The ceiling on the cage complicated the whole Doomsday dynamic. When I had J.J. up on my shoulders, he had to kind of hunch over to the side in order to fit upright. When Hawk clotheslined him, he jumped off the top a little before I was ready and poor J.J. fell awkwardly on his side and separated his shoulder.

As soon as he landed, I knew there was a problem.

“Oh, shit. I’m hurt.” J.J. groaned. “I popped my shoulder out.”

To end the match, we quickly made J.J. submit and the bell was rung. I have to admit, winning the War Games was bittersweet because of the injury. Rule number one in the code of professional wrestling is to protect each other at all times.

When we got to the back, Flair, Tully, and Arn weren’t happy at all. They said we were careless, but J.J. spoke up and came to our defense. “It wasn’t their fault. There wasn’t enough room between me and the top of the cage. I couldn’t take the bump right.”

Although I felt horrible about J.J. and appreciated that he defended us, I personally didn’t think it was anybody’s fault. The War Games were too fast-paced and out of control. Hawk, J.J., and I rushed the Doomsday together and, far beyond our control, J.J. took the fall. It was just one of those things. One thing is for sure, though: the ten of us made professional wrestling history that night. Over twenty-three years later and counting, I get asked more about the War Games than anything else I ever did.

War Games was such a huge success, in fact, that Dusty decided immediately to have a sequel. War Games II took place at the final show of the Bash on July 31 in Miami at the Orange Bowl. All of us returned for the big sequel, except of course J.J., who was replaced by War Machine, who was actually Big Bubba Rogers under a mask.

Our team again won the Match Beyond, but in my opinion it didn’t compare to the first one. Sure, all of the key players were back, but like many part twos, the magic wasn’t the same. A lot of people don’t know that we actually had two more War Games that August: one in Chicago at the Pavilion and one in Long Island at the Nassau Coliseum. We won both of those as well.

The Great American Bash ’87 was another success for the NWA and Jim Crockett Promotions, and Jimmy sure wasn’t shy about spreading the wealth to his main players (us, Dusty, Nikita, and the Horsemen). Not only did Jimmy start treating us to Caribbean vacations, city-to-city limousine rides, and four-star hotels and restaurants, but he even reached in really deep and sprung for a company Falcon 50, one of the most exclusive private jets money could buy. Honestly, there was nothing cooler than leaving a show and being chauffeured directly to our own plane.

We were all having so much fun that no one ever stopped to wonder how long it would last. When business is booming like it was in 1987 in the NWA, no one ever imagines a day when things might take a different turn. Right then and there, the only things we were all concerned with were making sure the jet was fueled up and the champagne was on ice. There were others, however, in the business who weren’t faring as well.

Bill Watts’ Mid-South Wrestling, now called the Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) for a more global marketing appeal, was starting to tank. As a result, Jimmy Crockett figured it would be a great idea to buy out Watts and absorb the UWF, which he’d done around the same time as the Crockett Cup back in April.

When the Bash rolled around in July, several UWF talents, such as announcer Jim Ross and wrestlers like Dr. Death Steve Williams, “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert, Rick Steiner, and Sting (the former Blade Runner) were able to successfully make the transition into the NWA over the months leading up to Starrcade ’87 in November.

Usually the premier event for the NWA and Jim Crockett Promotions, Starrcade proved to be a monumental disaster in 1987. First, Jimmy decided to hold Starrcade in Chicago instead of Atlanta or Greensboro, removing the event’s traditional territorial Southern roots for the first time.

It was also Crockett’s first attempt at doing a PPV, a market Vince McMahon and the WWF had firmly monopolized since the first WrestleMania back in ’85. When the WWF discovered Crockett’s bold ambition to host the Starrcade ’87 PPV on Thanksgiving night, they decided to step in and squash it.

In retaliation to Starrcade, Vince developed the first ever Survivor Series PPV to air opposite our show on the same night. He then called up all of the major cable companies he normally did business with, the same ones that had already intended to commit to Starrcade, and informed them that if they didn’t exclusively run Survivor Series instead of Crockett’s show, then they’d lose out on all future WWF PPVs, including WrestleMania.

One thing you have to understand is that earlier, in April, WrestleMania III had featured Andre the Giant against Hulk Hogan at the Pontiac Silverdome. The show had become the biggest indoor sporting event of all time, with a live attendance of almost 94,000 people. It crushed all buy rate projections with revenue in the ten-million-dollar range. It was record business.

With that fact still fresh in the minds of cable executives, the thought of losing out on a guaranteed moneymaker like the WWF caused many of them to quake and opt to heed Vince’s ultimatum. The outcome? The WWF outsold Starrcade by more than a two-to-one ratio and really stuck it to Jimmy, killing profits and stirring up a lot of uneasiness within the company.

It was a shame, too, because Starrcade ’87 was a damn good show. Hawk and I wrestled a hell of a match in front of our kayfabe hometown of Chicago against Tully and Arn for the tag team titles. We didn’t go over that night, but rest assured that crowd was ours from beginning to end.

The competitive war between Jim Crockett Promotions and Vince McMahon was really getting out of control by that point. The two of them were hell-bent on beating each other and emerging as the clear victor, but at what cost? What happened with Starrcade caused Jimmy to kick into overdrive to develop an answer to Vince’s tactics. Should he have slowed down and focused on the strong points of his NWA franchise? Probably. But there was no hitting the brakes. With Jimmy Crockett, it was all or nothing.

By early 1988 Hawk’s and my attention was once again directed into the path of a new feud. This time it was against our newest set of clones. The Powers of Pain (POP) was Paul Jones’ freshly formed tag team of his two biggest and baddest clients, the Barbarian and Warlord, my old student. Barbarian, or Barb, had been in and around the business about the same amount of time as we had and his gimmick looked very similar to mine.

He had a Mohawk, face paint, and the exact same tights and boots as we did. Not to mention, at six feet two and near 300 pounds, Barb was about my equal in size and strength. When Warlord was brought into the picture, he was given Hawk’s reverse Mohawk, face paint, and the same gear as Barb’s. Together, the POP looked almost exactly like us and had their own conniving manager in Paul Jones, who spoke exclusively for them just as Paul Ellering had for us in the early days. They were immediately booked into a program with us.

The angle was pretty simple. Jones came out on TV and announced that he had this new monster tag team and started making claims that Barb and Warlord were stronger than the Road Warriors. From there, we started working against the POP in house shows throughout early January, which warmed us up for Jim Crockett Promotions’ second attempt at a PPV, the Bunkhouse Stampede.

The Bunkhouse Stampede was another Dusty invention and another ambitious move by Jimmy Crockett to compete with the WWF. Dusty and Crockett even decided to take the show up to Long Island at the Nassau Coliseum. It was a bold statement. It would’ve been like Vince taking the WWF to North Carolina at the Greensboro Coliseum and thumbing his nose at Jimmy.

Well, history repeated itself in the form of the Starrcade/Survivor Series scenario from the previous November. As soon as the Stampede PPV was announced, the WWF decided to create the first annual Royal Rumble and offer it for PPV on the same date. Man, it was getting ugly. Not only were the gloves off, but there were brass knuckles.

Hawk and I and the majority of the locker room had zero idea how bad things were actually getting. All I knew was that I had a great time in the Bunkhouse match itself, which was basically an every-man-for-himself, no-rules battle royal in a cage.

Six thousand fans watched as the POP, Dusty, Ivan Koloff, Arn, Tully, Lex Luger, and I kicked the crap out of each other for a kayfabe $500,000 prize and a big bronze statue of a cowboy boot. After personally eliminating Ivan and Warlord, I took a boot to the back of the head from Barb, which sent me through the cage door and out of the match. When it was all over, Dusty emerged as the winner of his own main event.

Hawk, on the other hand, got another chance to wrestle Ric Flair for the World title. He was really amped for that match. He always loved working with Flair, so when the rare opportunity popped up for him to step into the spotlight with the Nature Boy, Hawk soared to the occasion. It was essentially the same match as their Bash ’86 encounter, only this time it was Flair who DQ’d himself by hitting Hawk over the head with a steel chair.

Unfortunately, as solid of a show as the Bunkhouse Stampede might’ve been, it was blown out of the water by the inaugural Royal Rumble, which also featured a huge battle royal for its main event. Jimmy Crockett was against the ropes and needed to come up with an answer to the WWF and try to stop the bleeding.

When the Stampede was over and Hawk and I resumed our tag team rivalry with Barb and Warlord, wouldn’t you know it? I got injured for real. On January 28, we were in a six-man tag match with Paul against the POP and Ivan Koloff in Hammond, Indiana, when things went very wrong. During an attempted Samoan Slam, in which the 330-pound Warlord would prop me laterally behind his back and slam himself and me down to the mat, he landed on the side of my head.
Bam!
When we first impacted, I swear my left eyeball popped out of and back into the socket like a jack-in-the-box, and it completely freaked me out. All I knew was that I was in a ton of pain and couldn’t see out of my eye. I grabbed my face, rolled out of the ring, and yelled to Hawk, “Aw, shit, man. I think my eyeball’s hanging out of my head.” Fortunately, it wasn’t, but I knew something was wrong. The pain was excruciating, and my whole head and face were pounding. It was agony.

But Hawk thought I was kidding. He hadn’t noticed the fall. “Yeah, your eyeball’s hanging out. And your head’s off of its shoulders, too.” And then he pushed me back into the ring.

When I slowly got to my feet, Ivan was coming at me, and I told him, “Ivan, I’m messed up. Let’s take it home.”

We quickly finished the match with me getting a super quick, weak clothesline off on Ivan and grabbing the pin. As soon as it was all over, Paul and Hawk drove me to the emergency room.