The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (37 page)

On January 29, 1996, Hawk and I made our
WCW Monday Nitro
debut with a victory over the Faces of Fear, which was the team of our old bud the Barbarian and his new partner Haku, or Meng, as he was now known. When we came walking down the ramp to the ring, it was the first time we’d been in front of a WCW audience in five and a half years, and the people made us feel as if it were 1986 again.

When I started off with Barb and exchanged a couple of pushoffs, I threw him into the ropes and picked him up for my first powerslam.
Bam!
I followed up with one of my trademark vertical jumping elbow smashes.
Crack!
I got up, let out a huge scream, and flexed my arms out to the side to show what it felt like to be back. I hadn’t even so much as stepped into a ring to fight since my injury, and if there was ever any question about my status, it was erased from the board with a sledgehammer.

But that would be about the only notable highlight from our “big” WCW return. Right after our debut match on
Nitro
, we entered into a half-assed feud with the WCW World Tag Team champions, Sting and Lex Luger, but we weren’t booked to take the titles. By February of 1996, Sting and Luger were top contracted company guys and there was no way Bischoff was going to uproot their championship run with a couple of freelancers like us.

I also got the weird feeling that Sting and Luger were less than thrilled when we came back. Let’s face it. Hawk and I were always used to being the big boys everywhere we went to work, so when those two saw that the Road Warriors were back, I’m sure they felt like our spot had faded years ago. Although I felt the unspoken tension, I focused on being a good businessman and finally tracking down Eric Bischoff so we could get our contracts squared away.

One night around mid-March, I saw Eric with Sonny Onoo at a bar in Atlanta and made my approach with Hawk to have a chat.

In short, Eric became our new best friend for the night. “Hey, bartender,” he yelled across the bar, “these are my new best friends, the Road Warriors. Get them whatever they want.” During that night, Bischoff promised us the moon and the stars. “I’m going to make you guys the highest paid team in WCW, and I’m going to make you the champs.”

Unfortunately, a deal couldn’t be reached.

The long and short of how the rest of our time in WCW went was, in a word, frustrating. Throughout the late winter and into spring, we aimlessly wrestled against all of our old rivals, such as the Nasty Boys and the Steiners, and actually did have a few great matches with new guys like Booker T and Stevie Ray, or Harlem Heat, as they were called.

Man, we could’ve had a long and really memorable feud with Harlem Heat if Bischoff would’ve green-lit the idea. Booker and Stevie were talented and tough black inner-city kids (and real brothers) from Texas. To me, pitting them against inner-city Chicago badasses like Hawk and Animal was a natural moneymaker. Oh well.

In the end, Bischoff kept dodging our contract requests, so we decided to call it a day in WCW and book some dates in Japan for the summer and fall. It was probably just as well that we left when we did, because as obsessed as Bischoff was with beating the WWF when we were there, things were about to get even crazier.

While Hawk and I wrestled our last WCW PPV match at Slamboree Lethal Lottery on May 19 in Baton Rouge, about 800 miles north in NYC at Madison Square Garden, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash had coincidentally finished their last match for the WWF. Over the course of the next couple months, Hall and Nash were seen invading WCW live during PPVs as well as
Nitro
.

Calling themselves the Outsiders, Hall and Nash actually pulled off a phenomenal angle where it seemed as if they were sent from the WWF to destroy WCW from the inside out. When they claimed to have a third partner already in WCW waiting to lead them to victory and revealed him to be Hulk Hogan, it was the birth of the New World Order, NWO, and the biggest boom in the professional wrestling industry since Vince and Hogan had created Hulkamania thirteen years before.

When Bischoff convinced Hogan to turn heel and become “Hollywood” Hogan, the NWO became the hottest angle in wrestling. The antihero/counterculture appeal of the NWO wasn’t at all unlike what Hawk and I had experienced in our early days when our raw image and style had made us unexpected fan favorites.

The ensuing NWO versus WCW story line that pitted the growing renegade faction of Hogan and his cronies against the babyface grouping of Sting, Luger, Randy Savage, and the Steiners proved to be the tipping point for Eric Bischoff. As a result of the hugely successful NWO story line,
WCW Monday Nitro
finally beat
Monday Night Raw
in the ratings for the first time that summer and would hold the definitive lead as the most watched cable program on TV for eighty-four more consecutive weeks.

Although we were finished with WCW while all of the developments of the NWO were taking place, we did join them for some joint WCW/NJPW shows in Japan. I remember one show in particular on July 16 at the Nakajima Sports Center in Sapporo, Hokkaido, for its incredible fireworks show—and I’m not talking about bottle rockets and Roman candles. No, sir, the bombastic display I’m talking about was a little altercation between my own partner and “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

The story goes that while at a Japanese hibachi dinner (you know, the kind where they cook in front of you) a couple years earlier in Tampa, Hawk and his fiancée, Dale, and Savage were all seated at the same table.

When Hawk got up to use the bathroom, Savage leaned over to Dale and said, “Hey, how’d you like for me to take you under the table and show you what a real man’s like?”

Startled, Dale ignored the Slim Jim spokesman and opted to keep the incident quiet from Hawk for about two years. When she finally did open up, his reaction was something along the lines of “What? He said what? I’ll kill that motherfucker next time I see him.”

Well, that next time was right there in Japan that night. The whole time we were getting ready, Hawk kept saying, “I can’t stand it. I’m going to confront that motherfucker when we’re done.”

Randy was wrestling Ric Flair for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and was actually all geared up and literally about to walk through the curtain when he got a very angry Mike Hegstrand right in his face. “Heard about what you said to my old lady at the restaurant, motherfucker.”

Savage denied it.

“Oh,” Hawk said, “so you’re calling her a liar?” And with that, Hawk leaned over the railing and smashed Savage right in the face with a powerful bitch slap.
Crack!

Macho’s trademark neon sunglasses and little cowboy hat went flying. I saw Tatsumi Fujinami grab and hold up the stunned Savage as I grabbed Hawk to prevent him from following up with anything more. Sting and Keiji Mutoh were there watching the whole thing.

Hawk was still raging. “That’s what you get for messing with my girl, asshole. If you want more, I’ll be in the parking lot after the show.”

Randy was steaming to get his hands on Hawk, but he had to get to the ring. Flair was literally waiting for him. There’s no doubt in my mind that Savage was seeing red that entire match from thinking about Hawk. Evidently he never forgot or forgave Hawk for the incident, either, because a few years down the road, they had a rematch at a Kid Rock concert.

In the meantime, however, when the craziness of Japan was all over, we found ourselves sitting at home on our asses again. What Hawk and I needed was full-time work in the United States for a major company. With WCW no longer an option, it meant there was only one place to turn or, more to the point, one man to turn to. I decided to pick up the phone and see if Vince McMahon was interested in doing business again with the Legion of Doom.

For obvious reasons, I was a little concerned Vince was going to hold the past against us and not be interested in bringing us back to the WWF. I was glad it wasn’t the case. At that point in time, Vince was being soundly defeated one battle at a time in the Monday Night Wars and probably figured he could use all the help he could get. Naturally, he wanted to know how Hawk was doing.

“Mike’s doing great,” I said. “He’s found himself a good girl, and he’s been staying out of trouble.” I hoped I wasn’t saying anything that would come back to haunt me later.

We agreed to a three-year deal that was fairly similar to our old one. I was just happy to have a job again. Vince said he was going to come up with something special to reintroduce the LOD to the WWF fans and told us to show up for
Raw
in NYC on February 24, 1997.

When we arrived at the Manhattan Center and found the dressing room for the Grand ballroom, it was interesting to say the least. Gone was “the house that Hogan built” and guys like Andre the Giant, Mr. Perfect, Big Bossman, Earthquake, and Ultimate Warrior. Long gone.

Now when I looked around, I saw tons of new gimmicks like Goldust, Mankind, and Yokozuna. There was also still Undertaker with Paul Bearer and other guys we knew from Japan like Big Van Vader. When you took all of those guys and threw us into the mix, the whole scene looked like a cross between Halloween and Mardi Gras.

It was really good to see a lot of the old WWF guard still holding down the fort while we were gone. Bret and Owen Hart, Davey Boy, and Neidhart were all still deep in the trenches while some familiar faces from the old WCW had joined them with new WWF names like “The Time Bomb” Brian Pillman, Sycho Sid Vicious, and Ron “Farooq” Simmons.

I imagine a lot of the young guys who’d never met us before could’ve been pretty intimidated by our arrival, but Hawk and I couldn’t have been more humble. All I wanted to do, as always, was have fun and make good money. Sitting there gearing up, I had to chuckle. I was feeling nervous as if we were starting all over again.

A few minutes later, while we were waiting for the call, our old pal Jerry Brisco, one of Vince’s top agents now, told us McMahon wanted to have a quick hello.

“I wanted to wish you guys luck out there tonight,” Vince told us. “This will be a fresh beginning for all of us.”

It was music to our ears.

Vince told us none other than Jake Roberts, who was also working as a WWF agent, would go over our match details, and then he barreled out of the room.

Jake looked at us with a big, creepy grin and said, “Boys, I want you to meet somebody.” Then he led us over to another part of the locker room.

“These are The Headbangers, Mosh and Thrasher. They’re kind of like the new Road Warriors.”

The new Road Warriors?
Was Jake on crack? Oh yeah, I forgot,
he was
. I looked at Mosh and Thrasher, and they seemed like nice enough kids with a little face paint, shaved heads, and combat boots, but these were the kind of guys we’d expect to be jobbing that night, not being compared to.

“The four of you are going to wrestle a quick match to a double count-out. Sound good?”

A double what-out?

As Jake tried to slither away, I caught up to him to verify the finish. “Are you sure that’s the way our return’s supposed to go? That doesn’t really make any sense, Jake.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll make it up. There’s big plans coming for you and Hawk. This is the way Vince wants it.”

And you know what I did? I ignored my better judgment and let it all go. If I’d come this far to get back into the WWF, I figured I might as well see where this little path would take us.

As I’d predicted, when our music hit and we came out, the fans went ape shit. You see, we were an unannounced surprise sent in to face The Headbangers, who made an open challenge to any team in the back. So when we came out, that packed little theater of about 5,000 turned into a vintage Marietta, Georgia, crowd circa 1985. Those New Yorkers were literally hanging over the balconies and going insane as we hit the ring.

Unfortunately, as I’d also predicted, the whole thing took a shit when the match turned into a ridiculous outside brawl and double count-out. The fans booed. They’d expected us to win. They’d expected to see the Doomsday Device. How the company could blow our big return with that finish I’ll never know, but my guard was up now. With an opening like that, I realized two things: (1) Vince still didn’t give a crap about the tag team division, and (2) the Legion of Doom that everybody in the stands and at home wanted wouldn’t always be the Legion of Doom they were going to get.

I think part of it was that, just as in WCW, we came into the WWF right in the middle of some serious transitional points and got lost in the creative shuffle. Vince was killing himself in order to counter the gritty, black-and-white realism of what Bischoff was doing with the NWO and decided to rebrand the WWF product with what he called “Attitude.”

During the Attitude Era, as it became known, Vince took desperate measures and began to push the envelope of whatever family decency the wrestling business had left. Using his own company rebels like D-Generation X (the clique of Shawn Michaels, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, and 225-pound female enforcer Chyna) and fan-favorite antihero “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Vince countered WCW’s dominant programming with his own brand of edgy sports entertainment. Vince even injected himself into the story lines as “Mr. McMahon” to provide the perfect corporate antagonist for DX and Stone Cold.

Actual professional wrestling took a huge backseat to toilet humor, cursing, half-naked chicks, and more middle fingers than there are stars in the galaxy. I don’t want to sound like the old man who’s not in on the joke or anything, but every Monday night at home, front and center, my Joey, James, and Jessica were waiting to see their daddy wrestle on
Raw
. Between Julie watching at home and me watching from a monitor in the back, I knew there were at least two parents cringing every time Shawn and Hunter yelled, “Suck it!” to the crowd while jerking off with Super Soaker water guns.

More often than not, I’d come home and catch Joey or James yelling, “Suck it!” all over the house, and I’d want to put my head through a wall. What do you do when your own company is responsible for putting that kind of crap out there? Julie and I would again have to try to explain the many differences between real life and what was on Daddy’s TV show.