The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (34 page)

When Tenryu ran in, Hawk grabbed him and looked at me for the signal. Then I pulled Hogan to the center of the ring and nodded at Hawk, and we both yelled, “Press.”

Now, I knew Hogan was a big boy, but I figured he’d go up about the same as Terry Gordy or Killer Khan had, but it wasn’t the case. When I had him up on my chest and collarbone, I started having trouble balancing Hogan’s long legs. It also felt like he was deadweighting me a bit. I remember feeling slightly bad for Hawk because after pressing Tenryu, he had to stand there holding him up until I was ready.

After wobbling slightly and adjusting, I pressed Hogan straight up for a lockout and slammed him down. I almost passed out after letting him go and was thankful I hadn’t failed on the lift.

The entire match continued with stiff exchanges in and out of the ring until Hawk and I finally picked up the victory by count-out. I always wondered if Hogan was a little pissed off about the original finish conflict, because he came into the match really aggressively and pumped up. He even had a scowl on his face and was kicking Japanese cameramen out of the way during his entrance.

If I didn’t know any better (and I don’t), I would’ve sworn Hogan turned heel for that match. Maybe he did toward us that night to show he could dish it out to the Road Warriors. Who knows? He never said a word about it or ever acted any differently toward Hawk or me past the fact. But any way you sliced it, between defeating the Harts in Biloxi, destroying Power & Glory at ’Mania, and having scored a landmark victory over Hulk Hogan and Tenryu in Japan, our March of 1991 was one of the greatest months of my professional life.

16

HAWK SOARS TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN

It’s funny how sometimes you can be at a place in life where everything is going great and you’re just sailing along and then,
bam
, something comes along and screws everything up. After coming off a huge month of accomplishments in March and then running around the country with the Nasty Boys throughout April, I got a crushing blow in May.

“Joe, I’ve got some shitty news,” Hawk told me. “I failed a drug test, and they’re suspending me for sixty days.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Mike, you’ve gotta be kidding me. What the fuck?” I felt like all of our hard work in the WWF was for nothing.

As mad as I was, Hawk was equally remorseful. “I’m sorry, man. I’ll get help and do whatever it takes to make things better. It won’t happen again.”

I wanted to believe him and just make the problem go away, so I let it go. Hawk had also chosen a really poor time to get in trouble with substance abuse. For the last year, a steroid scandal had been rocking the WWF, and particularly Vince, to the core.

Apparently, one of the WWF staff physicians by the name of Dr. George Zahorian III, had gotten a little too friendly with some of the boys and sold them steroids. Well, to make a long story short, Zahorian was found guilty on July 4, 1991, of selling steroids and named not only Hogan and Piper as among those he sold to but Vince as well. By the time Hawk had his little mishap, the whole company roster was under a microscope, and he got nailed.

It really sucked to see Vince kind of transform over the last year from the confident, in-your-face businessman to someone under federal investigation with his back against the wall. He’d also been spreading himself a little thin by focusing too much of his energy on the ill-fated World Bodybuilding Federation (WBF). Vince, an avid bodybuilding fan, decided to create his own WWF-style version of the sport. By the time the whole steroid thing was being aired out in public in mid-1991, the WBF was a multimillion-dollar disaster and was shut down.

As you’d imagine, it was like walking on eggshells at the shows. Everyone in the locker room was also now on high alert about their own extracurricular activities and didn’t want to find themselves in the spotlight. They’d be toast for sure. Actually, Hawk’s punishment of sixty days could’ve been much worse, all things considered. He could’ve been used as an example and outright released. Thank God that wasn’t the case.

Although he told the office he was going to rehab, Hawk actually just went home to Tampa and hung out for two months. On the other end of the reality spectrum, I was left alone to fulfill all of our bookings against the Nasty Boys until late July. I didn’t mind working singles matches against Sags and Knobbs, but I did feel bad for all of the people who had looked forward to seeing both Animal and Hawk, as advertised.

To add insult to injury, I was also disappointed to learn that I was taken off all TV tapings, including a big show in NYC at Madison Square Garden on July 1, because both members of the Legion of Doom weren’t available to face the Nasties.

When Hawk did finally return, we basically picked up right where we’d left off, and neither Vince nor I said a word about the suspension or warnings for the future. In fact, I was completely surprised (but relieved as hell) when we were told we would still win the tag titles at SummerSlam ’91 on August 26.

Vince must have figured too much investment had been made during our long-running feud with the Nasties and wanted to see how it would all play out. I also think he was interested in testing us under the pressure of being champs and dealing with Hawk’s drug issue. He was feeding us enough rope to see if we’d hang ourselves.

When the big day arrived for SummerSlam in NYC, both Hawk and I were able to show Vince exactly what the LOD was capable of at its best.
¹⁷

With the WWF World Tag titles firmly around our waists after SummerSlam, we hit the road for a couple months of obligatory rematches with Sags and Knobbs. In October, we went over to London, England, for a series of shows, one of which was against Power & Glory at the famous Royal Albert Hall near Hyde Park in Westminster.

Before the match, Paul Roma came up to me and said he wanted to have a quick word. “Animal, it’s about the Doomsday Device.” He looked worried. “I don’t mind taking a finish that everyone will be happy with, but I don’t want to go up for that thing again.” Paul continued to explain that when he took the Doomsday back at WrestleMania VII he landed awkwardly and it scared the shit out of him. I perfectly understood.

Many guys were afraid of our finish, and in most of the cases, as with Paul, we came up with an alternative. Nine times out of ten, if you saw us taking a victory in those days without using the Doomsday Device, it was to cater to someone’s fear. When the time came for us to win this match, I simply caught Paul from a dive off the top and flipped him over for a powerslam.

When we got back to the United States, I was happy to see another show scheduled at Madison Square Garden. New York City was the absolute pinnacle of wrestling for the WWF, and whenever you went there it was electricity beyond belief. This time, though, the electricity wasn’t provided by our match, the crowd, or Con Ed.

You see, around the time of SummerSlam, none other than “Nature Boy” Ric Flair joined us in the WWF after finally being fired from WCW by Jim Herd. When Ric came in, it was like a breath of fresh air, and I couldn’t wait to see how he’d shake things up. Well, after the show at MSG, Flair indeed got right into the mix the old-fashioned way.

Anyone who knew Ric knew he was the twenty-four-hour life of the party. Whether in the club, restaurant, hotel room, yacht, or airplane at 30,000 feet, you could rest assured that Flair was dancing with a drink in his hand, sometimes clothed and sometimes completely Nature Boy under one of his $5000 sequined robes. Sometimes when he’d had a few too many cocktails, which was often, Ric would get into fights, too.

After the MSG show was over, a bunch of the boys, including me, went to the China Club on West 47th Street. I was quietly hanging out in a booth with Mike Enos (Blake Beverly from the Beverly Brothers) when, out of nowhere, a big commotion broke out and a crowd formed near the bar. It was Flair and the Nasty Boys.

Ric had slapped Knobbs across the face. When Sags saw what was going on, he ran right over and socked Flair in the eye. All I knew was that I was never one for getting my ass in trouble with the cops, so Enos and I bailed and got a cab. The next day, all the boys were talking about Flair and the Nasties; it was classic pro wrestling bedlam. Man, was it ever good to have the Nature Boy back into the “swing” of things.

In November at Survivor Series ’91 in Detroit, we teamed with our old buddy Big Bossman against I.R.S. (the guy I knew better as the accident-prone Mike Rotunda) and the Natural Disasters, Earthquake and Typhoon. Earthquake was actually a guy named John Tenta, and Hawk and I had actually wrestled him a couple of times in Japan back in the ’80s. Tenta was a legit six feet five, weighed around 450 pounds, and was a Japanese trained sumo wrestler. One look at Earthquake in the locker room and I knew he’d been eating his Wheaties. And everything else, for that matter. He was huge.

Hawk and I scored the pin and the victory of the match by welcoming Rotunda into the WWF with the Doomsday Device, a move he was more than familiar with from our days together in WCW.

The match was actually a setup for our new tag feud with the Natural Disasters, which we’d be involved with for the next few months into 1992. But before all of that, the entire WWF roster converged upon the state of Texas for a series of TV tapings in early December.

After the show we did in San Antonio on the third, I finally got a chance to hang out with none other than Vince McMahon, who decided to check out what we were all up to. We were at a strip club in San Antonio called The Yellow Rose having a bite and unwinding in privacy. Davey Boy Smith, Warlord, and I always ate at strip joints after the shows because they filtered out the majority of crazed autograph seekers, who were mostly under twenty-one. I don’t care who you are, from the president to a janitor, everyone needs their downtime away from the elements of the job. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt that way that night, because we all had an unexpected visitor share the bar with us.

I remember being midbite into a chunk of prime rib when my eyes caught Vince himself casually walking through the doors. We all stopped to watch as he made his way past all of us to the bar to grab a beer. I’ll tell you what, within about thirty minutes Vince was like one of the boys. He was holding court and telling big stories while all of us, including Hogan himself, listened and laughed.

At one point we were all standing around, and out of nowhere Hulk came up to me and put his thumbs in the air. “Hey, Animal. Why don’t you get Vince up for your finish? Give him the Doomsday.”

Hawk and I looked at each other and smiled. In a flash, Hawk took off across the room over to the dancing platform while I came up behind Vince and proceeded to pick him up onto my shoulders.

He was crying out for help. “Hey, what the hell are you guys doing? Let me down.” He wasn’t up there two seconds before Hawk came running off the platform with a jumping clothesline right between two dancing strippers.

Before Vince knew it, he was gently caught by Hogan, who’d been standing there the whole time. When McMahon got up, he started celebrating. He said to Davey Boy Smith and Warlord, “I did it. I took the Warriors’ finish. What do you think of that?”

Everyone was laughing and cheering for the guy. We all knew what Vince had been going through with the whole investigation, which was far from over, and we were happy to let him have the moment. He deserved a break from the monotony. When someone at the club called the cops on us for rowdiness, everyone, even Vince, dove into Sgt. Slaughter’s camouflage limo for the getaway. As always, thank God for the Sarge.

That was the first time I was able to say to myself,
You know what? I really like that guy.
Vince had such a mystique about him and was always such a walking gimmick that it was nearly impossible to get a handle on the guy. That’s just the way he had to operate, you know? He had to place a distinct line between him and us in order to run the company. After all, you can’t get too close to the inmates, right? But in San Antonio at The Yellow Rose that night, Vince finally opened himself up in front of me for the first time, and I liked what I saw.

After San Antonio, it was business as usual as we continued our new rivalry with the Disasters, even facing each other in another WWF/SWS show in Japan on December 12. I even got Typhoon up for a modified bear hug so we could hit him with the Doomsday Device. We pretty much duplicated the match for the Royal Rumble with ’Quake and Typhoon on January 19, except they got the count-out win. We still kept the titles but not for long.

A couple of days after our triumphant title defense at the Royal Rumble, I got the call that Hawk failed another drug test and we were forfeiting the belts. At that point, I didn’t have a clue how to even approach my partner about what his latest infraction with the company meant for us, or my family. He was well aware on his own, especially considering that he was suspended without pay for another sixty days.

Hawk was completely defiant about the situation. “Fuck this shit, Joe. I’m not going to let somebody tell me how to live my life.”

Hawk wasn’t as apologetic as he’d been before, and suddenly I realized our career was in more serious jeopardy than I’d thought.

At the January 27 TV taping in Lubbock, Texas, for WWF Wrestling Challenge, which aired March 1, it was announced that we lost the titles to the team of I.R.S. and the Million Dollar Man, Ted Dibiase (known as Money Inc.) in Denver. The truth is, that match never happened. After years of building up to winning the WWF Tag Team Championships, it was all taken away in a matter of seconds without our ever stepping into the ring.

After sitting on the sidelines and sulking for the better part of ninety days, we were invited to come to WrestleMania VIII in April at the Indianapolis Hoosier Dome, and we brought a surprise along. During our time off, I had been talking to “Precious” Paul Ellering about working with us again. After having been away from the wrestling business for about two years, Paul was interested in checking out the WWF and cut a deal with Vince to return.