Michael Hegstrand grew up with Joseph Laurinaitis together in Minnesota before a move split them up from attending school together.  After graduating high school, the two ran into each other at a local gym and renewed their friendship.  Both were avid bodybuilders and they earned money bouncing out rowdy patrons at nearby biker bars.  Their passion for bodybuilding and their fondness for a good scrap leading them to consider careers as professional wrestlers.  Both men attended former wrestler Ed Sharkey's school where they learned the basics of professional wrestling.  Hegstrand wrestled in Western Canada as Crusher Von Haig before relocating to Georgia.        After one of his wrestlers got into legal trouble, World Championship Wrestling from Georgia (WCWG) booker Ole Anderson had to quickly throw together a tag team.  He chose Hegstrand and Laurinaitis to form his team and christened them Hawk and Animal, the Road Warriors.  Prior to their teaming, Anderson had toyed with the idea of pairing them against each other on separate teams.  After changing their look from that of bikers to characters from Mel Gibson’s post apocalyptic action film "The Road Warrior", Hawk and Animal quickly became the top team in Georgia. With the help of former wrestler “Precious” Paul Ellering (the Warriors’ behind the scenes as well as on camera manager), Hawk and Animal soon began to capitalize on their increasing popularity.      With the Road Warriors as his centerpiece, Ellering assembled a heel stable known as the Legion of Doom.  The Legion of Doom comprised Jake "the Snake" Roberts, King Kong Bundy, the Road Warriors, and the Spoiler.  The Road Warriors won their first tag team championship in WCWG when they won a tournament to become the National Tag Team Champions.  The Road Warriors first title loss was to the team of Buzz and Brett Sawyer but they regained the belts after Buzz Sawyer was fired.  Over time, the Legion of Doom lost most of its members and the Warriors eventually ended up feuding with King Kong Bundy and the Masked Superstar over the National Tag Team titles.  After the Masked Superstar left Georgia, another tournament was held and the Warriors defeated the Junkyard Dog and Sweet Brown Sugar in the finals to win the National Tag Team titles a third time.  After dropping the titles to Ron Garvin and Jerry Oates, Hawk and Animal left for the American Wrestling Association (AWA).               The Road Warriors entered the business right before Vince McMahon Jr’s national expansion of WWF sparked a boom in the wrestling industry.  The Warriors couldn’t have picked a better time to have started wrestling as McMahon’s war with the AWA and the NWA made for lucrative contracts for wrestlers who could draw.  Verne Gagne was delighted to sign the Warriors after having lost Hulk Hogan and others to the WWF.  The Warriors were eager to sign with the AWA, especially when they saw that the Georgia territory was fading financially.  For Hawk and Animal, this was their chance to work with many of the wrestlers they had grown up idolizing such as Dick the Bruiser, the Crusher, and Baron Von Raschke.  The hero worship was mixed with the reality of the Warriors seeing their heroes’ overshadowed by the Warriors.  While the Warriors were supposed to play heels, they were often cheered by fans who appreciated their brutal style, cool look and entrance music (Black Sabbath’s "Iron Man") which contrasted sharply with the AWA’s roster of babyfaces who looked old (Crusher, Dick the Bruiser, and Verne Gagne) and were anything but hip (the Crusher and Dick the Bruiser’s entrance theme was "The Beer Barrel Polka"       (Above) Just two of the Pro Wrestling Illustrated covers devoted to the Road Warriors during their early years.                 It didn’t take the Warriors’ long to win the AWA Tag Team titles from Von Raschke and the Crusher.  Their popularity continued to soar as they tore through all competitors. The Road Warriors battled the top teams in the AWA as well as in Memphis' Championship Wrestling Association (CWA).  Hawk and Animal withstood the challenges of Jerry Lawler & Austin Idol, the Fabulous Ones, "King Kong" Bundy & "Ravishing" Rick Rude, and Larry & Curt Hennig,   Some of the teams in the AWA resented the Road Warriors' quick success there. Part of the resentment was due to the Road Warriors not selling for other teams.  This lessened a bit after Larry Hennig and Crusher Blackwell worked a match against the Road Warriors where they refused to sell a move.  Given the toughness of Blackwell and Hennig, there was nothing Animal and Hawk could do.   The Road Warriors faced some of their toughest competition when they feuded with the Fabulous Freebirds.  During a match at Superclash, the Freebirds defeated the Warriors for the tag team titles but the decision was later reversed by Verne Gagne.  After holding the tag team titles for over a year, the Road Warriors were upset by the team of Jimmy Garvin and "Mr. Electricity" Steve Regal.        After the Warriors defied the orders of promoter Verne Gagne to do a job to the Fabulous Ones they felt that they began exploring other options.  Given their success in the industry, it didn’t take long for them to find work.  By now, the Warriors had become wrestling’s equivalent of free agents, working in Japan and for the NWA.                         Jim Crockett Promotions’ "World Championship Wrestling"(WCW) quickly signed the Road Warriors, putting them into a promotion with their top team of Nikita Koloff and Ivan Koloff.  This was a dream match for the fans as the Koloffs were unquestionably the toughest team in WCW and the Road Warriors seemed like natural opponents.  Although the Warriors wrestled in the same brutal power-based style they had employed as heels, fans cheered them wildly against the much hated Koloffs.  The battles between the Road Warriors and the Koloffs was brutal.  At one point, Paul Ellering sustained a neck injury at the hands of the Koloffs and the Road Warriors injured the Koloffs' partner Krusher Krushchev.         The Road Warriors ability as a tag team was once again acknowledged when they went on to win the first annual Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup.  Twenty four tag teams competed for the $1,000,000.00 prize.  The Road Warriors defeated Wahoo McDaniels and Mark Youngblood and the Midnight Express before advancing to the finals where they defeated Magnum T.A. and Ronnie Garvin for the tournament win.        After feuding with the Koloffs, Hawk and Animal battled with the other top heel teams in WCW such as the Four Horsemen and the Midnight Express (including the famous scaffold match at Starcade where Hawk wrestled with a broken leg atop a 30 feet scaffold and Jim Cornette blew out both of his knees after falling off the scaffold).  Despite their best efforts, the Road Warriors were unable to win the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) World Tag Team titles.  The Road Warriors felt that they had softened in WCW and decided to go back to their violent roots.  During a match against the NWA World Tag Team champions, the Midnight Express, the Warriors annihilated "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton outside the ring, creating a 2 on 1 situation between the Warriors and Eaton's partner "Sweet" Stan Lane.  The Warriors’ tactics paid off as they defeated the Midnight Express for the World Tag Team titles.   After winning the titles, the Road Warriors cemented their heel turn when they brutalized Dusty Rhodes, co-holder of the NWA World Six Man Tag Team championship.  The Warriors nearly took out Rhodes' eye after stabbing him with one of their spikes from their shoulder pads.        The Road Warriors' heel turn did not last long however and they eventually dropped the tag team titles to the Varsity Club (Rick Steiner and Steve Williams). In addition to the Road Warriors, WCW boasted some of the toughest tag teams in the world such as the Steiner Brothers, Doom (Ron Simmons and Butch Reed), and the SST (Samoan Swat Team of Samoan Savage and Fatu).  The Road Warriors once again proved their dominance when they won an Iron Man Tournament at Starcade '89 against the Doom, the Steiner Brothers, and the SST               After growing tired of the direction WCW was taking when Jim Herd took it over, the Warriors moved to the one national promotion they had never wrestled in, the WWF.  Hawk and Animal debuted in the WWF as "The Legion of Doom" (a name that Vince McMahon could own since Hawk and Animal owned the Road Warriors name) The Road Warriors immediately began feuding with Demolition.  (a Road Warriors copycat team the WWF created after the Warriors didn’t sign with them and one that gained a good deal of popularity on their own), After establishing an unbeaten record in the WWF, the Road Warriors challenged the Nasty Boys for the WWF Tag Team titles.  At SummerSlam, Hawk and Animal battled the Nasty Boys in a tough no-disqualification, no-countout match.  Despite the Nasty Boys fighting with every weapon at their disposal, the Warriors went on to win the WWF Tag Team titles.  The Road Warriors faced some of the top teams in the WWF including the Hart Foundation, Money Inc. and the Nasty Boys.   As his personal problems worsened,  Hawk quit the WWF without notice, leaving Animal to wrestle on his own.  Animal blew out his back in match with the Beverly Brothers which sidelined him for quite a while.  Meanwhile, Hawk formed a new team in Japan with Kensuski Sasaki (known as the Power Warrior) without consulting Animal.  This led to feelings of betrayal on Animal’s part putting both men odds for years.             Hawk and Sasaki became known as the Hell Raisers and went on to achieve considerable success in Japan.  The Hellraisers won the IWGP International Tag Team titles from Scott Norton and Tony Halme and would battle other teams including the Nasty Boys, Haku & John Tenta, as well as the Jurassic Powers (Scott Norton & Hercules Hernandez).  Hawk also wrestled in WCW and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) during this time, teaming with Sting and Dustin Rhodes on separate occasions.                 Eventually, Animal was cleared to wrestle, and he and Hawk reconciled.  During the beginning of the Monday Night War  , they showed up on WCW’s  "Monday Night Nitro".  However after being promised the 2nd biggest contract in WCW by Eric Bischoff (a claim Bischoff denies was ever made), they returned to the WWF as LOD 2000, a team managed by Sunny.  Former manager Paul Ellering returned only to turn on his former team for a feud with his new team the Disciples of the Apocalypse.  Concerned that Hawk might walk out on them again, the WWF added newcomer Droz as a member of the Legion of Doom.  In a storyline that hit close to home, the WWE showed Hawk struggling with “personal demons” which led to Droz replacing Hawk as Animal’s tag team partner.  The storyline ended abruptly though and the Road Warriors disappeared from the WWF again.        Hawk eventually conquered his personal demons after converting to Christianity.  Those who knew him were amazed at the peace Hawk had found and the change in his lifestyle.  Hawk and Animal decided to make another run and the WWE gave them a tryout match against RVD and Kane.  Unfortunately before anything could materialize, Hawk died suddenly from a heart attack, ending any chances of a Road Warriors run in the WWE. Shortly after Hawk's passing, The Dudley Boys dedicated a match to their hero Hawk by performing the Doomsday Device at the end of one of their matches.

 

SOURCES:

"Road Warriors." . 6-22-2005. wikipedia. 6-22-2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Warriors

Various. "Obsessed with Wrestling." Wrestler Profiles. 6-22-2005 http://www.obsessedwithwrestling.com/profiles/r/road-warriors.html 

WrestlingTitles.com. . 06-23-2005 http://www.wrestling-titles.com/us/midatlantic/nwa/ma-nwa-t.html.

"Road Warriors: The Life and Death of the Most Dominant Tag-Team in Wrestling History" WWE Home Video 2005