Road Warriors
The Road Warriors, also known as the Legion of Doom, were a professional wrestling tag team originally composed of Road Warrior Hawk and Road Warrior Animal. They performed under the name "The Road Warriors" in the American Wrestling Association, the National Wrestling Alliance, and World Championship Wrestling, and the name "Legion of Doom" in the World Wrestling Federation. Under either name, their gimmick was the same – two imposing wrestlers in face paint. For brief periods, other wrestlers were added as stand-in partners for both men. In Japan in the 1990s, "Power Warrior" Kensuke Sasaki often teamed with Hawk and Animal, separately and together, while in WWE were joined by Droz in the 1990s and Heidenreich in the 2000s. The team also had three managers: Sunny in the 1990s, Christy Hemme in the 2000s, and Paul Ellering, the manager associated with the original team.
Hawk and Animal were known for their impressive physiques, as their physical size was larger than most wrestlers of the era. Their face paint and spiked armor were inspired by the Mad Max film The Road Warrior; they were one of the first wrestlers to bring a theme from a movie into the wrestling world. They also introduced a tandem maneuver known as the Doomsday Device. Both men used the move as a team finisher throughout their careers, even when teaming with other partners.
The duo headlined multiple events including Survivor Series in 1991 and In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede, and are regarded by many as the greatest tag team in professional wrestling history.
History
Georgia Championship Wrestling (19831984)
Joe Laurinaitis had briefly competed as the Road Warrior before Ole Anderson paired him up with Mike Hegstrand to form the Road Warriors in 1983. They were initially brought into "Precious" Paul Ellering's stable as a replacement for his team of Matt Borne and Arn Anderson after Borne was fired from the company. After a few months of rapid success, the Road Warriors dumped Ellering as manager, claiming that they did not need a manager. This was short-lived, as in early 1984, they and "Precious" Paul Ellering formed a stable called The Legion of Doom in the National Wrestling Alliance 's Georgia Championship Wrestling territory. The group consisted of the Road Warriors, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, King Kong Bundy & The Spoiler. The stable was short-lived and the name "Legion of Doom" soon referred only to the Road Warriors and Ellering with either name used interchangeably throughout their career. Animal reveals in the Road Warriors: The Life and Death of the Most Dominant Tag-Team in Wrestling History DVD set that the name "Legion of Doom" was taken from the Super Friends cartoon.The Road Warriors' high-impact powerhouse style and unique attire quickly got them noticed by fans and dreaded by opponents, so much so that some wrestlers would grab their bag and leave the arena when they saw they were scheduled to face the Road Warriors. In Georgia, the team quickly rose to the top despite being very young and having not undergone the traditional "paying dues" period simply because they were so believable in their role. They gained a reputation for being very stiff and not selling simply because they could, and most of their matches ended quickly as a result. They won the NWA National Tag Team Championship upon their debut, a title they would win two more times while in Georgia.
American Wrestling Association (19841986)
In 1984, the Road Warriors moved on to Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association along with their manager Paul Ellering. On August 25, 1984, they defeated The Crusher and Baron von Raschke for the AWA World Tag Team Championship. The Road Warriors were brought in by Gagne to work as heels, but their squash matches soon won over fans. They became the AWA's top draw throughout 1984 and 1985, feuding primarily with The Fabulous Ones and later The Fabulous Freebirds. The Warriors then began splitting their time between the AWA and Jim Crockett Promotions where they started feuding with NWA World tag team champions The Russians, all while still holding the AWA belts. Hawk and Animal eventually lost the AWA title to Jimmy Garvin and "Mr. Electricity" Steve Regal on September 29, 1985, due to the interference of the Freebirds. The Road Warriors' last appearance in the AWA was on April 20, 1986, at WrestleRock where they defeated the team of Garvin and Michael Hayes in a steel cage match.During their AWA stint the team started using Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" as their entrance theme.
Japanese promotions (19851990)
In March 1985, the Road Warriors began touring Japan, mainly with All Japan Pro Wrestling where they made an immediate impact squashing the monster team of Killer Khan and Animal Hamaguchi in under 4 minutes. This and subsequent dominant victories garnered the Road Warriors a lot of Japanese wrestling media headlines and front-page stories. Their tours with AJPW in 1985 and 1986 made the Road Warriors such legends in Japan that they toured the country whenever they were “between contracts” of the big three.The Road Warriors won the NWA International Tag Team Championship on March 12, 1987, from Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu and would hold them for 15 months before losing them to PWF World Tag Team champions Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu to unify the titles as the AJPW World Tag Team titles, making the Road Warriors the last defending champions of the NWA International Tag Team titles. Their last match in Japan during this period was on July 22, 1990, for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, losing to Masahiro Chono and Keiji Mutoh by disqualification.
Jim Crockett Promotions/World Championship Wrestling (19861990)
On April 19, 1986, The Road Warriors won the inaugural Jim Crockett, Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament by beating Ron Garvin and Magnum T. A. in the finals. Building upon their rapid push, Hawk and Animal were featured attractions of The Great American Bash 1986 tour where they were matched against Ivan and Nikita Koloff as well as the Midnight Express. At Starrcade '86, the Road Warriors were featured in a Scaffold Match, defeating the Midnight Express.The Warriors joined forces with Dusty Rhodes and Nikita Koloff in a bloody feud with The Four Horsemen. During the 1987 Great American Bash, the rival sides faced off in the first ever WarGames match. The Road Warriors were on the winning side of War Games both matches that summer taking their feud with the Horsemen to Starrcade '87, where they lost by disqualification to Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson. The Road Warriors also picked up the NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship twice alongside Dusty Rhodes. The Warriors engaged in a violent feud with The Powers of Pain where the Road Warriors finally met their equal physically, but the angle ended when the Powers of Pain left JCP after finding out they were booked against the Road Warriors in a series of Scaffold Matches that they were supposed to lose.
In 1988, Hawk and Animal turned heel, attacking substitute partner Sting during a defense of the Six-Man championship. They finally won the NWA World Tag Team Championship on October 29, 1988, in New Orleans, Louisiana, at a house show against the Midnight Express, In November of that year the Road Warriors played a role in ending Dusty Rhodes' tenure as head booker for the promotion. During the November 26 episode of World Championship Wrestling, which was under strict instructions from TBS television executives prohibiting blading, the Road Warriors attacked Rhodes, removed a spike from their shoulder pads, and attempted to gouge his eye out. Rhodes was fired for that episode shortly after Starrcade '88. Before Rhodes was fired, Animal beat him at the Clash of the Champions, so the Road Warriors were allowed to pick a new partner to hold the NWA World Six-Man Tag Team titles; they picked AJPW superstar Genichiro Tenryu, but the titles were quickly abandoned.
The Road Warriors quickly turned face yet again due to overwhelming fan support no matter how brutal or violent they were. Their World Tag Team title reign came to an end when they faced The Varsity Club on April 2, 1989. The title change was a controversial one as referee Teddy Long performed an excessively fast count. Long would be fired from his job due to the count but the titles were not returned to the Road Warriors. Hawk and Animal would spend the rest of their tenure in World Championship Wrestling feuding with teams like The Samoan Swat Team and The Skyscrapers. Their last big wins in WCW came when they defeated three other teams to win the Ironman Tag Team Tournament at Starrcade 1989 “Future Shock” and over The Skyscrapers in a Chicago Street Fight at WrestleWar '90: Wild Thing.
The Road Warriors made their last WCW pay-per-view appearance on May 19, 1990, at Capital Combat where they teamed with Norman “The Lunatic” against Kevin Sullivan, Cactus Jack and Bam Bam Bigelow in a match that was cut from the commercial tape of the event. They left WCW in June 1990 due to heat with then-WCW head Jim Herd according to Animal on their WWE produced DVD.
World Wrestling Federation (19901992)
When Hawk and Animal signed with the World Wrestling Federation in June 1990, Vince McMahon retired the Road Warriors moniker, since at the time there were other wrestlers with "warrior" in their names, such as The Ultimate Warrior and Kerry Von Erich "The Modern Day Warrior". They both made their TV debuts on the July 15, 1990, episode of Wrestling Challenge. In the WWF the team would be known only as the "Legion of Doom". As Legion of Doom, their detractors such as Bobby Heenan would mock them by referring to them as "Legion of Dummies".Hawk and Animal immediately entered into a feud with Demolition, the team McMahon had supposedly created in their likeness three years earlier, which led into a televised six-man tag-team match where Hawk and Animal teamed up with WWF World Heavyweight Champion Ultimate Warrior against all three members of Demolition. Bill Eadie was having health issues and an agreement was made to phase him out and eventually replace him with Crush, while Barry Darsow continued in his role of Smash. Ax was moved into a role as manager for the team with the hope of taking a front office position, which eventually fell through. The Legion of Doom / Demolition feud did not have the expected intensity because of the change and LOD soon set their sights on the tag team titles. At SummerSlam 1991 in Madison Square Garden, the Legion of Doom defeated The Nasty Boys in a no DQ street fight to win the World Tag Team Championship, becoming the only team to win world tag titles in all three of the top promotions of the 1980s. Hawk and Animal would eventually lose the titles to Money Inc. on February 7, 1992, after which they briefly left the promotion.
LOD would return a short time later with their original manager Paul Ellering at WrestleMania VIII. The team later incorporated a ventriloquist dummy called "Rocco" which served as their “inspiration”, but this gimmick was short-lived. Hegstrand left the company in disgust with the Rocco gimmick immediately after SummerSlam 1992 at the Wembley Stadium where LOD rode to the ring on motorbikes in front of over 80,000 fans. He then went AWOL in London after the event with John Nord and missed the flight back to the U.S., while Laurinaitis stuck around and finished the team's contractual obligations with former Demolition member Crush replacing Hawk on house shows in Europe in mid September 1992, after Hawk left the WWF. Crush and Animal teamed to defeat The Beverly Brothers five times and Kato and Skinner once. Paul Ellering also joined Crush and Animal in some six man tag team matches. When the newly formed team returned to North America, Animal and Crush both started wrestling singles matches and the team was no more. Shortly after Animal then left the WWF, because an injury to his back forced him into a lengthy hiatus.