They had the look, they had that power.
They had put it all together.
It was a total package.
The face paint, the shoulder pads, and...
jacked to the sky.
Man, they trained their asses off.
I mean, they hit the ring like badasses.
We were two badasses trying to be wrestlers.
They were wrestlers trying to be badasses.
They were just like the guys in Mad Max.
I mean, they were meaner than the guys in Mad Max.
In the history of professional wrestling,
no duo has dominated the ring like Hawk and Animal:
The Road Warriors.
When we'd go to Japan, they were like Godzilla.
You look at them and you went, "Holy shit.
I hope they don't kill me."
They were legitimate tough guys.
They clawed their way to the top,
becoming one of wrestling's biggest attractions.
But an unrelenting lifestyle for one,
ultimately led to their downfall.
He partied hard, played hard. He lived hard.
Whoa!
That switch would flip after the match, and bam!
I woke up this morning...
this is where I felt sick!
It becomes a way out, as well as an escape.
You'll feel like you wanna be dead when we're done with you!
The road can eat you alive.
At the age of 46, Road Warrior, Hawk,
unexpectedly passed away of a suspected heart attack.
I literally cried like a baby.
I mean, that was my friend.
I've been through hell and back with this guy.
[growling] What a rush!
♪
[Narrator] The art of tag team wrestling
engages fans in a dynamic, far more complex way
than one-on-one matches.
The greatest tag team duos in history share a 6th sense,
operating as two halves of one whole.
There's no one without the other.
And no team proves that more than Mike "Hawk" Hegstrand
and Joe "Animal" Laurinaitus.
In an era dominated by iconic personalities...
Just what exactly goes through the Road Warriors' mind!
...Whose singles matches were the star attraction,
The Road Warriors would break the mold as comic book heroes
come to life and post-apocalyptic warriors
beyond the realms of earth.
The most important thing to us
has always been beating people up!
Their larger than life personas propelled them to
main event status around the world,
winning titles wherever they went.
But the price for success is often high,
and in this episode, we reveal the heavy cost
paid by both men, and how their wrestling brotherhood
met its heartbreaking end.
I think tag team wrestling's the most interesting part of
the wrestling business. Tag team wrestling is an art.
It's a 4-person athletic dance.
I'm Road Warrior, Animal, one half of the greatest
tag team ever in the history of professional wrestling,
The Road Warriors.
There's more of a story told with the tag team
than there is with the single.
You can't just put two guys together and make 'em a tag.
You have to have two guys that really know each other.
- [sighs] - [growls]
My name is Barry Darsow.
I was The Repo Man, and Demolition Smash.
And, I always thought we had incredible matches
with The Road Warriors.
What made The Road Warriors successful was that
they're two guys that really clicked.
Everybody believed that they could beat anybody,
and they looked incredible.
I saw the "It".
These two have the "It" factor.
Paul Ellering, Manager of The Road Warriors
for 20-something years.
The Road Warriors, it's a group that comes along
once in every generation.
And they're always copied, never duplicated.
Hawk and Animal are just two,
no-nonsense badasses.
Hawk was the off-the-wall flier guy,
and Animal was like...
the buck stops here.
Most teams had one big guy and one little guy.
Here, you got two fricking monsters.
They could do things in the ring that,
prior to them, big guys didn't do.
I'm Nikita Koloff. Not from Russia,
although that's what I portrayed for many years
in the wrestling business.
It was the chemistry of tag team,
picking the guy up on the shoulder,
coming off the top rope.
[Paul] The Doomsday, you know,
he flew off of the top turnbuckle and that was
the ultimate finish in wrestling for decades.
They knew what each other one was thinking all the time.
But sometimes, Animal knew more than Hawk as far as...
what was going on.
[Nikita] Joe was much more patient than Mike was. [laughs]
Again, you hear some of the stories, right,
of how Mike would snap in an instant or
fly off the handle.
Oh, yeah, man. We got along instantly.
I was like 18 year's old.
And, I knew of Mike Hegstrand,
known as a loose cannon, tough guy.
In 1977, Mike Hegstrand and Joe Laurinaitus are two kids
growing up on the streets of Northeast Minneapolis,
a tough, working-class neighborhood.
You know, I was...
at Jesse "The Body" Ventura's gym.
And I'm sitting there, and I'm doing inclines,
and I got like 315 pounds on the bar and, all of a sudden,
in the middle of my set, I get this, "whack!"
on my chest. This big, fat palm print.
And he goes, [growling] "Laurinaitus, you ain't right.
You should be lifting more weights than me".
That was my meeting with Mike Hegstrand.
♪
This is a great school photo of Mike,
and he was voted class bully. [laughs]
[Producer] Yeah, you can see it there.
I think that was, that was staged, but... [laughs]
Mike's reputation in school was a scrapper.
His idea of a good time was to go beat up someone...
Just stay away from him, he'll be a great friend to ya...
But, don't cross him.
I'm Rich Hegstrand, Mike's older brother.
And I'm Dan Hegstrand. I was...
4 years younger than Mike.
Mike was a lost soul as far as,
"What am I gonna do," and everything.
And, our mom had passed away. Ah...
♪
Come on, bro. You can do it.
Ah... But, he obviously found his way,
but it was a bit of a road to get there.
He was hyperactive. He didn't sit still, you know.
If he was sitting still, his leg was bouncing up and down, and...
you know, he was-- he had a lot of energy to...
lift weights and punch people.
Yeah.
The way we put it is, I'm from the other side of the tracks
and Hawk was pretty much the toughest guy
on his side of the tracks, and I was pretty much
the toughest guy on my side of the tracks.
My name is Scott Norton.
Professional Wrestler from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I grew up with Mike Hegstrand,
known as Hawk. He was gonna,
kind of like, mark his territory in each school,
so he got into a little brawl with a guy from
south high school and knocked his ass out.
Got into one with the guy from north high school,
knocked him out. Went to west, same thing.
And he would condition himself.
He would punch himself in the face,
and I mean, it wasn't just a...
I don't even want to hit my hand that hard.
Fractures between each one of his teeth.
You know, basically broke his face.
Their hard-hitting lifestyle growing up in
northeast Minneapolis would serve as a
training ground for their careers in the ring.
And their circle of friends soon expands to include
a massively talented roster of future superstars.
Pretty interesting that Minneapolis was just a
mecca of guys who ended up in the crazy,
whacky world of professional wrestling.
Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig, The Road Warriors,
and John Nord, and... Barry Darsow.
Ah, Nikita Koloff. Rick Rude.
Scott Norton, too, right around the same time.
We all knew of each other.
We got closer as Hawk would ask me to fill in working at
this bar, Granmma B's, down in Minneapolis.
It's at one of Minneapolis' toughest bars that
Joe and Mike get a chance to cut their teeth.
Paid the bills and it was
a perfect outlet for him, I guess you might say.
Just 'cause he could beat up people and
get paid for it, you know. [laughs]
I mean, it was just like wrestling, so...
[Joe] I can't mention any names, but the guy that used to
own the bar we used to bounce at,
he dealt in coke and when someone owed him
a lot of money, he'd say, "Hey, man,
you need to go have a conversation with this guy."
I remember one time, you know,
Hawk had one leg, I had one leg of the guy,
and then we were hanging him over the Franklin Avenue Bridge
here in Minneapolis and said, "Listen, man.
You need to frigging pay up."
At Granmma B's, there was a strip bar in the afternoon.
And then they'd always have wet t-shirt contests and
everything so, I mean, it brought some of
the worst of the worst guys.
Every night, something happened.
Lo and behold, the bartender was Ed Sharkey.
I had heard of Ed Sharkey before because he wrestled
for Verne Gagne in the AWA, and he comes up to us and
he goes, "Hey, I'm gonna do a wrestling school.
You guys wanna do it?"
And, we all looked at each other, said,
"Ah, man, I don't know if I want to do that."
And I'm thinking to myself, "Well, what can it hurt?"
My name is Eddie Sharkey.
I've been in the wrestling business for,
well, most of my life.
Starting on a carnival, I've been a
professional wrestler, referee, promoter, trainer.
I've done just about everything.
Eddie ended up having a church in northeast Minneapolis
and, he had a boxing ring downstairs.
Eddie was a character.
He'd sit down there and he'd go,
"Yeah, guys, good tackle," you know,
"good drop kick," or good whatever.
But Eddie really-- never got out of his chair.
Well, you know, if I would leave the room or something,
I said, "No, don't try a suplex," or...
I mean, you know, "You're gonna hurt yourself."
And, I'd walk out of the room for whatever reason and
the one's got the other up in the air,
and oh, my goodness.
Ed never showed us how to throw what they call today
a "working punch".
So, we would literally back up and go, bam!
You know, and punch each other.
Nose would be broken and bleeding like crazy.
[Barry] Eddie never really smartened us up on exactly
what was going on until after a while,
he says, you know, "Well, here's what you do."
Eddie soon realizes that this promising crop of talent
might have a future in the squared circle.
Ole Anderson was a very, very good wrestler.
Another Minnesota guy. And he became a promoter.
He worked for Ted Turner so, he was the main guy.
And, he came up to Gramma B's.
[Joe] One night, some guy was misbehaving and
I had to escort him out.
Well, I had one hand behind his collar and one hand on
his belt loop, and I threw him through the front door.
And, we had this trip wire outside.
And, we used to gauge each other by how many flips
a guy could do around this wire.
And when the guy gets down flipping,
he lands right one Ole Anderson's shoes.
And alls I did was say, "Hey, how you doing?"
Then I turn around, went back in the bar.
Next thing you know, Ole brings me down to Atlanta.
While Ole recruits Joe to work in his Georgia territory,
his future tag team partner has already been
scouted by another promotion.
Mike started first for Al Tomko, up in Canada.
Now, you men up there that are married to some
good-looking wife, you know, when your wife takes
a look at this man, she's gonna go crazy!
I went down for Ole Anderson as The Road Warrior,
singularly, by myself.
I looked like a giant version of The Village People.
Now, keep in mind, when Joe broke into the business
he had got his girlfriend pregnant.
And, Joe did the right thing,
and by that, meaning, he got married...
and, 'cause he wanted to, you know, raise his child.
You know, I was sending all my money that
I was making back home.
I was wrestling 9 times a week,
making $150 total.
You know, I lost 50 pounds of body weight.
I said, "I can't live off this."
And Mike's experience wasn't that great up in Vancouver.
So, we both came back to Minnesota.
I actually could make more money in one night bouncing
than I was making working there in two weeks.
Ole Anderson came back into the bar and Ed Sharkey
showed him a picture that Mike had taken up in Vancouver.
Ole thought it was a picture of me.
Eddie Sharkey goes, "No, that's not Joe. That's Mike."
And Ole goes, "There's two of these guys?"
[Eddie] "Joe and Mike, you're a tag team.
Be in Atlanta next week."
He goes, "Son of a bitch," and then Ole called me up
and said, "Hey, I want to bring you guys in
as The Road Warriors."
From rough and tumble beginnings in the
Minneapolis bar scene, Joe and Mike are about to be
catapulted into super stardom and eventually
towards their own undoing.
♪
In 1983, Joe Laurinaitis and Mike Hegstrand are recruited
to wrestle in Georgia, except this time as a tag team.
They have no idea they're about revolutionize
the world of wrestling.
Hawk, thanks for spending a few moments with us.
What got you started in wrestling?
I just started watching it one time and I thought
if they could, I could do it better and first time we
appeared together on TV, you know,
we were both real green.
[Announcer] And The Road Warriors moving up.
[Joe] The start of The Road Warriors on TV was like
surreal for Hawk and I because it was like,
man, here's all these megastars in
Georgia Championship Wrestling.
There's Sergeant Slaughter and there's Tito Santana,
and there's Dusty Rhodes, and I'm going,
holy crap, there's some major superstars here.
And then, here we are, now we're a part of this.
Upon their arrival in the territory,
matchmaker Ole Anderson approaches his new tag team
with a bold, new idea.
[Joe] They actually handed us the belts when we
got at the TV station. They say, "Here's your belt.
Here's your belt." And we're going,
"Where do we say we won 'em?" They said,
"Ah, say you won 'em in a tag team tournament in Chicago."
[Announcer] From Chicago!
[Paul] Ole says, "This is gonna be the new tag team and
they're Minnesota boys like you. Take care of 'em."
The names, they both came up with themselves.
I think Ole pointed at me, says, "You look like an Animal.
And then, he said to Hawk, "You look like--"
I forget what he said, but Hawk says, "I think I'm a Hawk."
So, it became Animal and Hawk.
After their very first match together,
newly crowned champions Hawk and Animal
soon join forces with Paul Ellering.
He acts as both their on and off-screen manager,
leading them to the big leagues.
So, I just took 'em from that day one.
They jumped in my van, and that was it.
[Mike] Paul was, was great at, at fine tuning us.
You know, he...
he said go with what your, your raw strength.
Go with what you do best.
We used to sit there at Denny's,
and Paul would take the time to draw on a napkin.
"Animal, you're here. Hawk, you're here.
Throw this guy into this rope after you make the tag.
Hawk, you drop down. Let's incorporate that in."
We had the motorcycle boots and everything, you know,
and that's what we wore down to the ring.
After about a month, Ole goes,
"Hey, we got an idea for you guys.
Remember the heel guy in the Road Warrior movie that had
the red mohawk and the feather in his ear?
Well, we want you to try and do something with the face paint."
[Paul] And that became an evolution because the early
face paint was, you know, like a black eye or something.
[Joe] But we were trying different things at that time to
try to get a painting of expressing the way we feel,
and Mike Hegstrand goes, "Hey, I got another idea.
What if Animal shaves his hair into a mohawk to look like
the guy in the movie? I'll shave my head in a
double mohawk so when Animal bends over and
I bend over, we plug our heads in,
it looks like one unit."
[Paul] You know, that came from Animal.
That was his idea.
And, it was genius, on his part.
I had a friend of mine that worked for Honeywell.
He milled me some spikes. I said, "Listen, man.
I need some 6-inch spikes, I want some 4-inch spikes,
some 2-inch spikes, and I sat in my garage with my drill
and I drilled holes in those shoulder pads."
Licking my thumb, like, fricking...
Picasso, right.
Then I put some chains on them,
and that was the birth of The Road Warrior shoulder pads.
They put 'em on and it was just frosting on the cake.
[Scott] And, you know, the people just ate it up.
These poor guys they're working against.
I mean, they ran people over.
Hawk used to apologize to them in the back:
"I'm sorry for what's gonna happen to you, pal,
but your ass is getting kicked." [laughs]
[Paul] They were bad boys, but when they were bad,
they were very good.
[Joe] Man, as long as we stayed away from the guy's nuts and
we didn't break their nose or anything, it was cool.
But, if you look back, man, some of those clothes lines
we hit guys with, guys were doing natural flips
we were hittin' 'em so hard.
As cable was spreading across the country,
it was creating a revolution...
in the wrestling business.
Unlike other promotions in the early 1980s,
Georgia's World Championship Wrestling enjoys a
prime-time spot on Atlanta's TBS,
the first TV station to be broadcast across the entire USA.
I told the guys, I think it was '84.
I said, "We can work the whole world.
We'll just make it our territory."
[Joe] Paul would book us in the AWA or he would book us
for the Rougeau's, up in Canada.
Go to Puerto Rico for Carlos Colon,
and then go to the NWA.
And then, you know, we were going all over the world,
not tied to any one company.
[Mike] Paul's very instrumental in,
in not letting the promoters manipulate us.
We were one of the few tag teams that were main events
every night in the arena.
We never stayed any one place and it kept us fresh.
And it was always good because they bring us in,
and the place would fill up.
Everybody in the business recognized
that Road Warrior pop. Just loud.
I've lost all my hearing. [laughs]
Even today, if someone gets a good cheer going down
to the match, it's called The Road Warrior Pop.
You know, first trip to Japan, we got there,
we get off the flight... We gotta do an interview.
In this room was literally 150 photographers and
reporters from all over the country of Japan.
They said there was more reporters there than when
Michael Jackson came over to Japan.
We will fight tonight like we will never have fought before!
Well, Japan wanted us and, the Japanese people
always like to be scared.
You know, we're entertainers as well as wrestlers.
Hey, you guys hungry?
[Joe] You know, the Japanese responded to us because
we were so far ahead of our time.
We were so nothing like the Japanese wrestlers.
We don't care who it is.
We're gonna stop everybody in the country.
I mean, we wrestled some top guys, man,
you know, Killer Khan...
When I pressed Killer Khan, Japanese people were like,
"[speaking Japanese]". Like, "I can't believe it!"
Killer Khan was 6"3, 6"4, 365 pounds.
I press landed him over my head. [growls]
Then I gorilla slammed him down.
It was national news.
[Japanese news coverage]
It was no secret that, you know, Mike liked to party.
Partied hard, ran hard.
There was nothing he was afraid of.
No situation bothered him.
Mike got involved with these people,
the Japanese mafia over there.
They would pick him up and he would go out to
dinner with them, and next thing you know,
you wouldn't see him for two days.
He'd meet Japanese mafia over there and,
he'd tell me about, if you made a mistake over there,
they just took a digit off of your fingers.
And he'd come home with just stacks of $100 bills,
which he declared. [laughs]
I think Joe was more the guy that would rather,
you know, go out to dinner and, go to the room,
and get some sleep so you can get up and
have a great workout the next day.
Where Hawk, he was wild,
he wanted to go out to the bar, he wanted to do this.
[JOE] He had no shut off valve to it, man.
It was just like...
go, 100 miles an hour, all the time.
That's when it started hitting a nerve with me.
♪
By 1986, The Road Warriors have become one of the
top wrestling attractions in the world.
To be that good in that many different territories,
it's unprecedented. My vision was, of course,
to make money, you know, for all of us.
This is an opportunity that only comes along once in a lifetime.
Everybody out there watching...
we'd like to kick your teeth in too.
My first reaction to seeing Mike in everything was, wow.
This is... this is amazing.
And I, it just took you by surprise how,
how far he had come in such a short period of time, really.
As their popularity grows, the promotions booking
The Road Warriors realize they're not just getting a
run of the mill tag team, they're getting rising stars
with a guaranteed sellout crowd.
The greatest thing about The Road Warriors is that...
we never had to change who we were,
whether we were babyface or heel.
I mean, we were stone cold heels until we wrestled the Koloffs.
Probably some of the best matches that I remember are
the Russian Chain matches that we had against them.
And now we're getting USA cheers and cheers from the fans.
We were over so bad as heels,
it made us great babyfaces.
Your winners of the match, The Road Warriors!
In early 1986, Carolina-based Jim Crocket Promotions
approaches The Road Warriors with an offer
to headline their flagship event.
Dusty Rhodes calls us and he says,
"Hey, we got this idea."
♪
A scaffold match.
Had never been done on a national scale.
Man, I was 310 pounds, 315 pounds,
and Hawk was 270.
Then you had both The Midnight Express up there.
They were over 200 pounds, each.
About 3 days before the scaffold match,
Hawk broke a small bone in the bottom part of his leg,
over in Tokyo.
We were the old school, the show must go on.
And he wrestled up there with a broken leg in a boot.
You know, he didn't want to let the people down 'cause
it was sold out and... it was a big, big deal.
Well, what you see in a lot of sports,
and wrestling's no different, is,
there's injuries and there's pain,
and you just self-medicate after a while.
You don't even go to a doctor.
And then it becomes a vicious cycle.
And, that's probably where Hawk was at that time.
It started getting bad latter part of NWA, WCW run
before we went to WWF. The drinking's a no brainer.
I mean, that's...
you know, Hawk was straight up vodka on the rocks guy.
The muscle relaxers were a big part.
I'll say 85% of the guys that died early,
in the wrestling business, the common denominator was
the muscle relaxers.
I think...
Joe was very disappointed in Hawk and,
he didn't let that out so people knew it.
But, knowing Joe, I could see that.
I think it's just like any marriage,
you know, which it kind of was,
that I don't think they always, you know,
saw eye to eye on everything.
So, I think there was, you know, some friction there at times.
It wasn't until he, we really got into...
WWF years where it really started to get bad.
The Road Warriors have conquered the wrestling world
with one big exception...
and the pressures of performing in the WWF
will soon set the stage for their downfall.
The WWF was always on our screen.
It looked like they were the place to go in this
wrestling war, if you wanted to be on the winning side...
And we did.
You're gonna feel the pain by the hands of
The Legion of Doom!
Vince had just hired the Modern Day Warrior,
Kerry Von Erich. He already had the Ultimate Warrior.
And he says, "Hey, I know you guys have been
The Road Warriors. Can you think of a
different name that we could use to call you guys?"
I said, "How about the Legion of Doom?"
"Oh, that's great! I love The Legion of Doom!
Let's call you guys The Legion of Doom!"
It was actually He-Man.
The most powerful man in the universe!
And Hawk would watch that all the time.
He always watched He-Man.
This was Hawk...
[imitating voice] "Back at the Legion of Doom!"
And then, he, he'd just start to make up stories,
and this is while we're driving in the car.
And he'd just start to make up that we were
The Legion of Doom.
[cheering]
[Joe] The WWF, on the road at the time, was a grind.
And you were busy 14 days on, 4 days off,
all year long.
So, it's like your whole life is no sleep.
But when you get in the ring,
then all of a sudden, you get an injury.
Well, now there's no sleep, you have to train.
That injury doesn't go away and you have to perform.
So now, all of a sudden, you take a pain pill.
Pretty soon, you're drinking, you're taking pain pills,
you're taking this, you're taking that.
That's kind of the cycle that a lot of guys got into.
But now, Hawk's downward spiral is about to intersect
with The Road Warrior's historic climb to the top,
and in front of a record-setting crowd.
♪
To the non-wrestling fan, I wrestled for many years
in the WWF.
The Godfather's probably what I'm most well known for.
♪
Alright, so...
We're in this club, and then all of a sudden,
for some reason, Vince decides to take everybody's finish.
In The Road Warrior's case, it hurt people.
Have you seen their finish?
I wouldn't take it in the ring!
And Vince took that finish in the club.
The CEO of this big, ------- company is taking
people's finishes in a ------- titty bar?
Just, I was like...
♪
Just as The Road Warriors are reaching new heights at
Vince McMahon's WWF, Hawk's substance abuse
was becoming harder and harder to hide.
That's when we were starting to get into the age of doing
the Pay Per Views now.
And now we're doing the big, huge events,
and everything else so, there was a lot of respect
and a lot of pride in what you did for your work 'cause
you wanted to be the guy that was gonna be top dog
on that Pay Per View.
Those WWF years was when it started getting
real kind of nasty.
He would fail a drug test and then there would be
3 months off.
And of course, me being a tag team partner,
I had to take a few months off with him.
But Mike, again, he wasn't shy about, about, you know,
hiding anything. You know, whether it was...
you know, his drinking or his, his...
his drug use, or his steroid use,
he was pretty outspoken about, about all of it.
As Hawk drifts closer to the edge,
over 80,000 fans await their match
at London's Wembley Stadium,
and things are about to come to a head.
Wembley Stadium was a classic event 'cause
they had 90,000 people there.
We were supposed to wrestle for the tag team championship
in Wembley Stadium.
And, getting ready to go out to the show and
we're doing a run through.
Vince McMahon's trying to tell us what we're gonna do.
And I could just see where Vince is fuming 'cause
every time Vince tried to say something,
Hawk's going, "Now Vince, I got this idea."
Found out later there was this thing called placidyls,
which is another kind of little like a hallucinogenic drug
that Hawk had took it and it lasts, like, for 6 hours.
And here we are, gotta drive motorcycles down to the ring.
We went from semi-main event match against
The Natural Disasters, to wrestling Money Incorporated,
I think, their first or second match.
As Animal watches his partner step into the ring,
it's clear that Hawk is in no shape to perform.
Getting in the ring and they wanted us to do the finish,
the Dooms Day off the top rope and everything,
and I said, "We can't do it.
He's gonna fall off the top rope."
And he goes, "No, no, we gotta."
I said, "Look at him. He can't do it."
They were watching him and, you know,
Hawk was kind of like inebriated, you know,
quite a bit and... so, we changed the finish.
Hawk's like right in the middle.
I kind of had to push him out of the way and...
When Hawk was on, he was the best, man.
Nobody was better.
But, when he kind of was like that, it kind of really...
I wasn't very happy with him.
I knew there was a suspension coming on,
that I was fricking hot.
[Barry] You know, and it's like, we're gonna spend
millions of dollars on TV and do all this stuff
for these guys at Wembley, the biggest show ever,
and if he came and messed up...
Right there, you're not the top guys anymore.
Irritated by Hawk's recklessness,
Animal chooses to go his separate way, alone.
We went to, from that London taping to
Hershey, Pennsylvania to do TV.
And when we got to Hershey, Pennsylvania,
Paul Ellering and I are ready to do TV,
waiting for Hawk to do interviews.
Well, Hawk hadn't shown up yet.
[Paul] Nobody knew where Hawk went.
Well, he's just not on the plane.
Nobody knew where Hawk was.
Got a phone call, and Hawk called Vince's secretary
and said, "Hey, I quit." We're sitting there, like,
okay, now what am I gonna do?
Animal decides he's not gonna chase after
his partner this time...
after performing the role of fixer for so many years.
I think it just got the time to draw the line in the sand and,
listen, man, shit, I've had enough. That's it.
I'm fricking done with this.
[Barry] You know, Joe was probably in a panic,
wondering how in the world are we gonna solve this?
You know, wrestling is your whole life.
It's all you have.
Your family's at home, and you're with the guys,
and you finally get that push and,
you can't have something be negative to bring you back down
and that's, that's what was happening.
Mike kind of, you know, the short fuse and losing
his temper and, whether it was with the promoter,
could have a real impact on Joe's career and
even Ellering's career, right?
So, I'm thinking to myself, well,
I'm gonna be a business man, and I'm gonna serve out
the dates that I have left with WWF,
to protect our name, in case we ever want to come back.
I said, man, I want to do these dates, Mike,
so we leave on good terms.
Right, to be businessmen. I put my foot down and,
Hawk was so out of his mind he called up a couple guys and
ended up working out his own deal in Japan.
Like, screw the team.
He just went on his own. Then we were done.
Well, he tried to get it over there and had Kensuke Sasaki
dressing up as The Power Warrior,
all spiked shoulder pads, the face paint, and...
[Japanese commentary]
I said, man, that's... that's our gimmick.
♪
Hawk inadvertently leaves the future of the world's
biggest tag team in limbo by replacing Animal and
continuing The Road Warriors' brand in Japan.
Standing in front of you lies the future in
tag team wrestling, my new partner, Power Warrior!
What are you doing, bro?
I'm not doing that here in the US.
I'm not having anybody replace you.
I'm by myself!
I ended up doing a two on one match and,
I herniated a couple discs.
[Paul] Animal got injured and, you know,
there were like two years there where I didn't do
anything with wrestling anymore.
And, I didn't think I'd ever go back.
While Animal lies in wait recovering from his injury,
Hawk presses on.
But without the guidance of his partner,
he spirals out of control.
Like 3 different times he'd been rushed into
an emergency room of drug overdoses.
He told me he had a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler
and rolled the pickup truck 6 times with no seatbelt on,
and walked away from it.
You know, I don't know how many...
ah, near death experiences Hawk had.
I know he had a few.
When he got Hep C, it's like he got
slapped in the face like, wow.
He's not the first wrestler that contracted that.
You know, guys in this wrestling business, man,
used to do some crazy things, you know, speed balling,
mixing different drugs together,
different things like that where, you know,
guys would share a needle and just go,
"Oh, god dang, buddy. You guys are nuts."
He was on the interferon,
which is the medicine you get from Hep C.
He fricking cured himself of the Hep C.
But the worst part about it is the doctor gave him the
green light to go do whatever he wanted to do so,
he thought that meant, okay, I guess I can
keep drinking and partying.
Hawk's wild side shows no sign of slowing down,
but in 1997, a new opportunity arises from the WWF and
is too tempting for either man to resist.
Vince McMahon has been great to us...
and the WWF has been great to us.
And they're a classy organization and we only
want to associate ourself with a classy organization.
I, I knew eventually that it would come back to it
was gonna be The Road Warriors.
We were so unique in the way we did everything,
and we were so unique as a tag team and...
it's like nothing else like it in the wrestling business.
[Mike] Animal and I have become so close.
We're probably the only tag team that's been around
14 years straight. We're pretty much a unit.
Their new contract comes with a strict insurance policy,
guaranteeing they will make their matches.
But WWF introduces a third member to the team,
29-year-old ex-Denver Bronco, Daren Drozdoff.
They introduce Droz, and...
he was gonna be like the youngest member
of The Road Warriors.
Actually, I remember when I first saw them.
You know, they had been icons forever.
Hey, this is Droz.
You know, I'm one of the players they brought in for
The Road Warriors to work with and,
you know, had a great run with 'em.
While the WWF has enforced a contingency plan,
it also sees The Road Warriors' real life problems
as something it can capitalize on.
Vince McMahon came to us and said, "Hey,
we want to do this angle with you guys where Hawk's,
we're gonna portray him as drunk and have him,
happens on TV."
[Commentary] I don't know if he's inebriated.
The referee's not gonna start this match, is he?
Yeah, he'd come out like staggering around while,
you know, they were saying I was trying to separate them.
[Commentary] Well, Droz... just assaulting Hawk.
"We don't need him, you know, he's messed up again." So...
[Announcer] Drozdoff!
Delivering Hawk's own move to Hawk!
Yeah, it was, it was heartbreaking.
But that's wrestling.
They take the dominant part of your personality and
they just make it bigger.
You know, it was kind of tough.
It's like, you know, they're doing this.
But, he had been through it and
he didn't have a problem with it.
They wanted Hawk to climb the Titantron and
they wanted me to...
you know, they wanted me to portray like,
"Hey, Hawk, don't jump," type of thing.
Hawk, I wish I could say I know how you feel, but I can't!
But I care about your life!
Droz did a deal where they made up, made pretend he was
gonna go up to the Titantron and help Hawk
and Hawk had all his demons and everything else and
he was drunk up there.
When they really went to go grab him,
he really went and pushed 'em.
Get his shirt-- Ah, no! Ah!
Got away.
You know, to be honest with ya,
I didn't really have it in me to want to do the angle.
It was too close to what was going on in real life.
And that bothered me.
The angle is not only unpopular with Hawk and Animal,
but with the fans as well.
And once again, The Road Warriors make the choice
to hit the road on their own terms.
We were wrestling in Australia and,
you had the beach, you got drinks,
you could buy Xanax over the counter,
and so, it's just not a good mix.
Rumor had it that 3 or 4 of the guys,
and Hawk was one of 'em, had gotten ahold of some
party essentials, let's just say,
and they were pretty much up for two days.
So, when you're doing the coke and you're doing
the muscle relaxer, you're going,
yo, yo, yo, like a yo-yo.
Your heart can't take that all the time.
And, as I'm looking around the arena by the
entrance area there, I see this, I see this big crowd of people.
And I'm thinking to myself, well,
somebody just came back from the last match,
they're just laying down.
And I push everybody aside and it's fricking Hawk,
and they're putting the oxygen mask on him.
I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing?"
I said, "He's gotta go out wrestling."
They said, "Man, he can't wrestle."
He goes, "This guy's about ready to stroke out,"
and they took him to the hospital.
Hawk had cardiomyopathy,
his heart was about ready to blow up.
And he calls me up and he says,
"Animal, you gotta come get me."
I said, "What's going on, man?"
He goes, "I am not dying in this fricking country."
Hawk and I were literally, when we were on the road,
we were brothers. It was a hard situation
because there was such a love of the guy,
but the hate of what was going on.
So, I went, picked Hawk up,
checked him out of the hospital -
against doctor's orders - and from Sydney,
flew all the way to LA and from LA,
he was going back to Tampa.
I said, "You're on your own now."
When it seems Hawk and Animal's run as wrestling's
most dominant tag team is about to come to an end,
an unlikely event brings them back together
in a way nobody expects.
♪
Animal is faced with no choice but to strike out on
his own when Hawk's drug affliction threatens to
ruin both of their careers.
I had just gotten home off the road.
I got done working out at the gym,
and there's 6, 300-pound guys called
The Christian Power Team. They did this event.
So, I went to it and I was pretty impressed by it.
Eventually, Joe shared that story with me and I said,
"Man, why don't you come out to this conference in Phoenix?
Come on out." He goes, "Could Hawk come?"
They came to Phoenix and, I just remember Mike was the
first one to the altar and wanted to make a decision to
give his life to the lord.
And, that weekend, we actually even baptized him.
We did a-- In the swimming pool,
we did a water baptism with him.
And, from that point on, Hawk lived in a good way.
I think he found religion, and then,
he married a gal named Dale.
And, he was very happy with her.
He was a different person then, with her.
Now, my motivation's different than what it was
when I first started out.
My motivation now is my family, my fiancé.
To make sure that if something were to ever
happen to me, she's not gonna be hurt.
He used to say, "God has 9 lives,
but God gave me 10, so I can give my life to Jesus."
He was moving out of his house off the beach and,
he had just moved the last piece of heavy furniture
in the house for his wife, Dale.
And he said, "Dale, I'm gonna go upstairs and
lay down for a little bit. I don't feel well."
And I was out in my backyard,
and all of a sudden, I get a phone call.
Friend of mine, Bob, and he goes,
"Hey, have you talked to Mike?"
I said, "Yeah, man, talked to him last night."
He goes, "Huh. Have you talked to him yet today?"
And I said, "No."
And he goes, "Joe, Mike died."
It was an early Sunday morning, October the 19th,
when the world of wrestling was saddened to hear
that Michael Hegstrand had passed away
at the young age of 46.
And it wasn't that he OD'd or whatever.
You know, it was just that his heart just stopped.
It was probably one of the hardest things
I ever had to go through.
Well, it was, you know, I was just at home and,
and Animal calls me up and, and tells me.
You know, "Hawk is gone."
Joanie, my wife, I said...
"We gotta get the..." Hm. Yeah, we--
"We gotta get the black van and drive to the funeral."
The old black van that I took him to the airport in
our first day together. I still had that black van.
Went to the K-Mart and got cans of black spray paint,
cover up all the rust. And, we got in the black van
and drove all the way to Tampa. 55 miles an hour.
Got passed by 10,000 cars.
Yeah. I remember. Ah...
October 19th, 2003.
The dark clouds covered the bright sun.
Today we lost our friend.
Our brother of planes, trains, and automobiles.
Many miles.
If I could steal a line from,
from The Outlaw Josey Wales,
"Hawk, it is good that men like us met in the struggle of life."
Hawk's death brings to an end a partnership that has
not been matched in wrestling ever since.
He was unique both in and out of the ring.
A warrior, a partner, a friend, and a brother.
He, he wasn't Hawk. [sniffles]
Yeah.
I think that is a key point is, he was still Mike.
We never looked at him as Hawk.
He really gave a shit about his friends.
He just had your back, and he probably knew I needed it.
♪
Biggest compliment that I can make to Hawk is that
everybody liked to be around him.
So, it was a huge void.
And, Animal would know a lot more about that than me
because they've been together and
always thought of as a twosome.
A lot of things in common. At the gym, worked hard.
They were a great tag team.
They performed unbelievably in the ring.
But you know, totally different.
They were brothers.
You know, brothers, they love each other,
but they'll have a fight once in a while.
I mean, listen, man, there were times where we were
at each other's throat 'cause we were together so much.
But, 99.9% of the time there was a common respect there.
It's over half my life, man, I was with Hawk.
From being stars in Japan to being family members,
to being brothers, to everything else.
You know, now what do I do now he's gone?
And that's the hardest thing.
I think we will be remembered as the greatest tag team
in professional wrestling and I'd just like to go down
as one tough dude that had one tough partner.
Hawk should be remembered as one of the...
one half of the greatest tag team ever.
He had one of the best punches in wrestling,
one of the best interviews, for sure.
Well!
Hawk was definitely a character.
To be honest with you, a part of the wrestling business
died when Hawk died.