The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (31 page)

After we unceremoniously left WCW in the dust, we called Vince McMahon to see if his offer still stood.

“Of course,” Vince said. “We’d love to have you in the World Wrestling Federation. When can you fly up to Stamford to go over the details?”

This was it. Hawk and I were finally going to the big show of the WWF. It was the last place we had yet to conquer. The excitement of wrestling started to pulse throughout my body for the first time in a long time.

When we went up to the WWF headquarters in early June, first we met with Vince to go over the business part of our deal. Even though I insisted on guaranteed contracts like we had in WCW, Vince basically offered us the exact same scenario he did when we’d sat down with him back in ’85.

“I can’t give you guaranteed money, but what you will have is the opportunity to make as much if not more than you were earning in WCW.”

We didn’t really have a choice, so after being sold on the great payoffs from PPVs and merchandise sales, Hawk and I shook Vince’s hand and agreed to a three-year deal. The next step was an unanticipated creative session concerning the direction of our Road Warriors gimmick.

“We’d like you guys to grow your hair out and take the paint off,” Vince declared. “We’d also like you to change your team name from the Road Warriors to something else.”

Hawk and I looked at each other like,
What the fuck is this guy talking about?

I spoke right up. “You’re shitting us, right, Vince?”

It turned out that he was shitting us, about the hair and paint, but he still wanted us to change our name from the Road Warriors to something that “wouldn’t confuse the public.”

I didn’t get it. Confuse the public? Did I miss something? Everybody who watched professional wrestling knew who the Road Warriors were, regardless of what organization they favored. Hawk and I had been on the front cover of every wrestling magazine known to mankind for the last seven years. Even if you lived under a rock, I’ll bet you still heard of us. I asked Vince to please explain.

“I’ve already got the Ultimate Warrior as my World Heavyweight champion,” he said. “Adding the Road Warriors to the mix is too much. Too many Warriors in one company.”

Too many Warriors? What a joke. We
were
the Warriors.

As I explained before, the Ultimate Warrior (along with Sting) was one of the Blade Runners, an amusing attempt by Bill Watts at re-creating the Road Warriors. After the Blade Runners disbanded, Warrior went to World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas, where he became the Dingo Warrior. After taking one look at his picture at the time, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Dingo Warrior was one of our estranged offspring. Even his face paint design bore a strong resemblance to Hawk’s full-faced version. We were even told not to use the press slam because Warrior used it. Neither Hawk nor I knew the Warrior from a hole in the wall, so we were more than annoyed. It was frustrating to compromise our gimmick because of someone obviously influenced by us in the first place.

After I got to know Jim, in time, I found him to be a pretty good guy who was just trying to make good business for himself, as we were for ourselves. Like Warlord, Barbarian, and Demolition, who all used Road Warrior-like concepts, it was hard to fault someone for finding and using something that works in the wrestling industry. When guys like Warrior identified with what Hawk and I were doing because of our size, strength, and unrelenting style in the ring, he was able to combine his own colorful eccentricities into the Ultimate Warrior.

In the end, our initial conflict with Warrior was nothing more than a timing issue. Had we landed in the WWF before Jim, I’m sure the Ultimate Warrior would’ve been the Ultimate Something-Other-Than-Warrior. However, when we came to the company, Warrior was right in the middle of his WWF Championship reign after beating Hulk Hogan, and the Road Warriors needed to find an alternate name.

Fortunately, because we had always been known as the Legion of Doom synonymously with the Road Warriors, we suggested it as our new moniker.

“Hmmm, the Legion of Doom,” Vince said as he looked around the room, “I love it.”

Soon enough, the WWF fans would, too.

It was also decided that we would add a little color to our gear, which was a Vince standard for all talent. Our completely black shoulder pads and boots were changed to mostly red with black accents. We even painted our chrome spikes black to go along with the new theme. It was different and a little cartoonish, but that could’ve been said about the entire WWF product at the time.

A few weeks before joining the WWF, Hawk and I had been offered a big money deal to make a three-day tour of New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) at the end of July. NJPW was the other major promotion next to Baba’s AJPW and was run by another Japanese wrestling legend, Antonio Inoki. Basically, New Japan boasted a younger talent roster than All Japan, which was seen as more of the old guard of veteran wrestlers.

Because we had always been exclusive to Baba, Inoki respectfully asked him if he could use us, probably in exchange for a monetary kickback. After we signed with Vince, who let us meet our New Japan obligation, he said we needed to tape a couple of matches for TV to help build our introduction to the WWF fans.

In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for the WWF to tape several weeks’ worth of programming in a single day and air them over the course of the next month or two. Vince was famous back then for scripting story lines almost an entire year in advance. Even WrestleMania for the following year would be booked match for match, and then the WWF creative team would work backward, building the angles to the present day.

Crazy, right? Try living it.

Those tapings were memorable for so many reasons, including the fact that Vince was pissed about our new red boots and entrance music not being ready. Even though it was Vince’s idea for us to update our gear and used his guys to make everything (except the shoulder pads, which I made myself), it was somehow our fault that they weren’t ready for the tapings.

The music issue sucked because we could no longer use “Iron Man” due to copyright laws. While we waited for WWF music composer Jim Johnston to come up with something, we used some generic rock song he must’ve had lying around. To his credit, though, Jim came up with a cool track influenced by “Iron Man” that perfectly complemented us.

To customize the new entrance theme even more, Jim had Hawk record one of his trademark interview lines to kick off the music. When we sat down to listen to it for the first time and Jim pressed play, Hawk and I heard, “
Oooooooohhhhh, what a rush!
” And when the music kicked in with a hanging guitar chord followed by a nice heavy drumbeat, we both knew it was the perfect fit.

On June 25 in Dayton, we made our official WWF debut for the July 21 episode of
WWF Superstars
. In front of seventy-five hundred LOD faithful, we defeated Black Bart and Tom Stone in about ninety seconds with the Doomsday. Tom Stone worked the entire match by himself after Bart was knocked to the floor at the opening bell. We were like the Mike Tysons of professional wrestling, making people think twice about blinking because they just might miss our match.

We also made an appearance on
The Brother Love Show
, one of many mock interview programs (like
Piper’s Pit
with Roddy Piper) inserted into the many WWF TV shows. This one aired on the July 28
Superstars
. Brother Love himself, portrayed by producer Bruce Prichard, was a loud, red-faced, heel parody of a TV evangelist. On the show, Love accused us of being Demolition imposters. We laughed, said it was the other way around, and walked offstage.

Earlier in the day, when we’d arrived in the locker room at the Hara Arena, it had been like an old high school reunion. Barry Darsow (Demolition Smash), Dusty Rhodes, Curt Hennig, Rick Rude, Ronnie Garvin, Big Bossman, Warlord, Jake Roberts, and even Sgt. Slaughter immediately welcomed us. Those guys really helped make the WWF feel like home.

The next night on June 26 at the Civic Center in Huntington, West Virginia, we annihilated Al Burke and Bob Bradley (for the July 15 WWF
Wrestling Challenge
) in under two minutes. Because the WWF wanted to set up our first feud with Demolition, they inserted pretaped interviews with Ax, Smash (Barry Darsow), and Crush (six feet five Brian Adams, their newest member) into our match at the bottom of the screen. It was funny to see Demolition calling us out for copying their gimmick, as Brother Love had said to us.
Their
gimmick?

“The Legion of Doom,” Ax yelled in his deep, gravelly voice, “or should we say Demolition imposters with spikes and paint all over their faces? Well, we’re gonna kick the paint right off their faces.”

It was a great, natural way to set up the obvious rivalry between the two teams. (The funny thing is that we didn’t even get to see this until we came back from Japan, which is where we were when our TV debut aired. Just like that, after two days of light work, we were good for an entire month of WWF programming while we were in Japan.)

After the show, I got to catch up on things with quite a few of my old pals, especially Rude. We stayed up all night at a bar called Robby’s in Huntington and talked about the last three years in the business since we’d parted ways in ’87. We told him all about the downfall of Crockett, the horrors of Jim Herd, and being burnt the hell out in the new WCW. Interestingly enough, Rude confided that he was feeling the same way in the WWF and was seriously considering checking out WCW.

That’s the thing about wrestling. Guys are always stricken with a “grass is greener in the other promotion” syndrome and constantly flip-flop.

Rude was particularly sick of his almost two-year feud with the Ultimate Warrior. Earlier that night, he’d lost in a big main event cage match to Warrior for the WWF Championship and was less than thrilled. “I’m tired of leading that guy every night for nothing,” Rude said. “I was hoping they’d eventually give me the strap or bigger paydays.”

He got neither. By November, Rude was back in WCW.

Meanwhile, in Japan, we wrestled what would prove to be our last match there together for about six years. While working for the WWF, we had to be exclusive to them, which meant no more moonlighting for Baba, Inoki, or anyone for that matter. On July 22, Hawk and I faced the team of Masahiro Chono and Keiji Mutoh and lost by DQ.

Chono and Mutoh were two of the fastest-rising, most popular stars on the Japanese scene. Mutoh in particular was interesting because he was equally well-known for his alter ego, the face-painted, mist-spraying acrobat, the Great Muta. Mutoh wrestled (and still does, as of this writing) full-time as both himself and Muta, even working different matches on the same show as each character.

When we got back to the United States, we started preparing for our first official PPV appearance for the WWF at Summer-Slam ’90 in August. Our new black and red outfits were finally ready, and when we suited up, I had mixed feelings about our new image. The red and black kind of softened our usually dangerous solid black-and-chrome appearance, but Hawk and I knew it was business, plain and simple. Being on WWF television and getting pushed into the spotlight with Vince’s promotional machine of home videos, toys, T-shirts, and video games was the last frontier for us to explore. For better or for worse, sink or swim, we jumped in with both feet and never looked back.

SummerSlam ’90 was on August 27 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, and Hawk and I were booked to interfere during Demolition’s World Tag Team title defense against Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, better known as the Hart Foundation.

After gearing and painting up, I had a chance encounter with none other than Rowdy Roddy Piper, the same Roddy Piper who had told me I wasn’t going to make it in the wrestling business when I was a nobody.

“Hey, Roddy.” I approached him in full gear and paint. “Whaddya think of my chances at making it now?”

Piper looked at me with a big, funny Piper smile and clapped his hands. “Not bad, kid. Not bad at all.”

Oh, man, I’d been waiting to run into him again for a long time.

So for our SummerSlam angle that night, we ran down and exposed Demolition’s cheating during the match. Smash and Crush (who was added to assist and eventually replace the ailing Bill “Ax” Eadie) were scheduled to face the Hart Foundation, while Ax was banned from coming to ringside. Well, that didn’t stop Ax from running down and switching places with Smash two different times as the referee was distracted by Crush.

Being the new sheriffs in town, Hawk and I came out to a huge ovation as we made our way to the ring and dragged Ax from underneath the ring. With the Harts’ disadvantage removed from the match, they scored the win and the belts. The Legion of Doom had made their presence known in the WWF as the new force to be reckoned with.

The next day, we started our first run of WWF house shows in Wheeling, West Virginia, being paired up with none other than the Ultimate Warrior for a three-month series of six-man tag matches against Demolition. I guess Vince thought teaming us up with the Warrior was a natural way to put his three biggest baby-faces (with undeniably related gimmicks) together, so that Hawk and I were evenly pitted against the three members of Demolition.

To be honest with you, although I got along great with both Warrior and Crush, I was a little disappointed we didn’t get to face the original Demolition team of just Ax and Smash by themselves. I think the fans were, too.

When Demolition first came on the scene in ’87 and all of the comparisons between us were made, they were made between us and Bill and Barry. Unfortunately, Bill had gotten sick after an allergic reaction to shellfish and was hospitalized for enough time to worry Vince about the longevity of the Demolition gimmick.

When that happened, Vince brought in Brian Adams to fill the void as Demolition Crush and to eventually replace Ax, who started taking a less physically demanding role in the team. Our arrival into the WWF combined with Demolition being scaled down from their earlier heights meant they weren’t booked to win even once out of the hundred or so times we faced them.