Original subtitles

They had the look. They had the power.

They had put it all together. It was a total package.

The face paints, shoulder pads, and jack to the sky. Man, they turned their

asses up.

I mean, they hit the ring like badass.

We were two badasses trying to be wrestlers. They were wrestlers trying to

badasses. They were just like the guys in Mad Max. I mean, they were meaner

the guys in Mad Max.

In the history of professional wrestling, no duo has dominated the ring

Hawk and Adam.

The Road Warriors.

When we go to Japan, they were like Godzilla.

You look at them and you win.

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

downfall.

Partied hard, played hard, lived hard.

That switch would flip after the bash and bam!

I woke up this morning!

This is where I felt sick. It becomes a way off as well as an escape.

You'll feel like you want to 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.

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 sixth sense, operating as two

halves of one whole.

There's no one without the other.

And no team proves that more than Mike Hawk Eggstrand and Joe Animal Lorne

Knight. In an era dominated by iconic personalities.

Just what exactly goes through the road warriors' minds.

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 birth. The most important

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 is the most interesting part of the wrestling

business. Tag team wrestling is an art. It's a four -person athletic dance.

A road warrior animal.

What happened to 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 the single. You

can't just put two guys together and make them a tag.

You have to have two guys that really know each other.

My name is Barry Darso. I was the repo man in Demolition Smash.

And I always thought we had incredible matches with the Road Warriors. What

the Road Warriors successful was there were 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 Ellivine, manager of the Road Warriors for 20 -some 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

flyer guy, and Animal was like...

The buck stopped here.

Most teams had one big guy and one little guy. Here you got two freaking

monsters. They could do things in the ring that prior to them big guys didn't

do. I'm going to keep it full on.

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 to the shoulder and

off the top rope.

The doomsday, you know.

He flew off of the top turnbuckle, and that was the ultimate finish in

for decades.

They knew what each other was thinking all the time, but sometimes Animal knew

more than Hawk as far as what was going on.

Joe was much more patient than Mike was. 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 years old, and I knew of Mike Hegstrand, known as a loose cannon,

In 1977, Mike Hegstrand and Joe Laurinaitis are two kids growing up on

streets of northeast Minneapolis, a tough, working -class neighborhood.

You know, I was at Jesse the Body of a Tourist's Gym. I'm sitting there, and

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, Lord,

you ain't right. You should be lifting more weights than me.

That was my meeting with Mike Eggstrand.

It was a grade school photo of Mike, and he was voted class bully.

Yeah, you can see it there.

I think that was staged.

Mike's reputation in school was a strapper. His idea of a good time was to

beat up someone.

Just stay away from him. He'll be a great friend to you, but don't cross

I'm Rich Hegstrand, Mike's older brother.

And I'm Dan Hegstrand. I was four years younger than Mike. Mike was a lost soul

as far as what am I going to do and everything. And our mom had passed away.

You can do it.

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. If he was sitting still, his leg was bouncing

up and down, and he had a lot of energy to lift weights and punch people.

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. I'm a professional wrestler from Minneapolis,

Minnesota. I grew up with Mike Angstrand, known as Hawk. He was going

of, like, mark his territory in his school. So he got a little brawl with a

from South High School.

Knocked his ass off. Got one with a guy from North High School. Knocked him off.

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 in Minneapolis was just a mecca of guys who ended up in

the crazy, wacky world of professional wrestling. Mr. Perfect Curt Henning, the

Road Warriors, and John Nord, and Barry Darso.

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, Grandma B's, down in Minneapolis.

It's at one of Minneapolis' toughest bars that Joe and Mike get a chance to

their teeth.

Paid the bills, and it was a perfect outlet for him, I guess you might say.

why was that?

Just because he could beat up people and get paid for it, you know. I mean, it

was just like wrestling, so.

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, they'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 the one leg of the guy,

and we were hanging him over the Franklin Avenue Bridge here in

We said, listen, man, you need to freaking pay up.

At Grandma 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

worst of the worst guys.

Every night, something happened.

Lo and behold, the bartender was Ed Sharkey.

I mean, I knew a herd of Ed Sharkey before. She wrestled for Bernie Gagne in

AWA. And he comes up to us and he goes, hey, we're going to do a wrestling

school. You guys want to do it? And we all did each other and said, ah, man, I

don't know if I want to do that.

And I'm thinking to myself, well, what could it hurt?

My name is Eddie Sharkey. I've been in the wrestling business for, well, most

my life.

Starting on a carnival, I've been a professional wrestler, referee,

trainer. I've done just about everything.

Eddie ended up having a church in northeast Minneapolis, and he had a

ring.

Eddie was the character. He'd sit down there and he'd go, yeah, guys, good

tackle, you know, good drop kick or whatever.

But Eddie really never got out of his chair.

Well, you know, if I would leave the room or something, I'd say, now, don't

a suplex. I mean, you know, you're going to hurt yourself.

And I'd walk out of the room for whatever reason, and the one's got the

in the air, and it's, 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.

He knows if he broke it, he'd bleed like crazy.

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.

Oli 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 Grandma B's.

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 the guy could do around this

wire. And when the guy gets done flipping, he lands right on Ole

shoes. And all I did was say, hey, how you doing? And I turned around and 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

your wife takes a look at this man, she's going to go crazy.

I went down for Ole Anderson as the road warrior singularly by myself.

I look 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

because he wanted to, you know, raise his child.

You know, I was spending all my money on making back home.

I was wrestling nine times a week, making $150 total.

You know, I lost 50 pounds of body weight. I said, I can't live off this.

Mike's experience wasn't that great up in Vancouver.

So we both came back to Minnesota. I actually could make more money on one

-night bouncing than I was making looking 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?

Joe and Mike, you're a tag team. Be in Atlanta next week.

You know, son of a bitch. Then all he 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 Hagstrander recruited to wrestle in

except this time as a tag team.

They have no idea they're about to 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

both real green.

And the Road Warriors moving up. The start of the Road Warriors on TV was

surreal for Hawk and I because it was like, man, here's all these mega stars

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

tag team with a bold new idea.

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 want them? They say, I say, well, you want them in a tag team

tournament in Chicago.

From Chicago.

Well, he says, this is going to be the new tag team, and they're Minnesota boys

like you.

Take care of them.

The names, they both came up with themselves.

I think Ole pointed at him. He 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 joined forces with Paul Ellering. He acts as both their on - and off

-screen manager, leading them to the big leagues.

So I just took them from that day one. They jumped in my van, and that was it.

Paul was great at...

Fine -tuning us. You know, he said, go with 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, Oli goes, hey, we got an idea for you guys.

Remember the heel guy in the Road Warrior movie that had the red mohawk

feather in his ear? Well, we want you to try and do something with the face

paint. And that became an evolution because the early face paint was, you

like a black eye or something.

But we were trying different things at that time to try to get a painting of

expressing the way we feel.

And Mike Hextrand 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

and we plug our heads in, it looks like one unit. How did the spiked shoulder

pads kind of work its way into the fold?

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 six -inch spikes. I want some four -inch

spikes, some two -inch spikes.

And I sat in my garage with my drill, and I drilled holes in those shoulder

pads, licking my thumb like frickin' Picasso, right? Then I put some chains

them, and that was the birth of the Road Warrior shoulder pads.

They put them on, and it was just frosting on the cape.

And, you know, the people just ate it up.

These poor guys they're working against, I mean, they ran people over.

I just apologized to them in the back, sorry for what's going to happen to you,

pal, but your ass is getting kicked.

They were bad boys, but when they were bad, they were very good.

Man, as long as we stayed away from the guys nuts so we didn't break their nose

or anything, it was cool.

But if you look back, man, some of those clotheslines we hit guys with, guys

were doing... Natural flip, we were hitting him so hard.

This 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 primetime spot on Atlanta's TBS, the first superstation to

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.

Paul would book us in the AWA, or he would book us for the Rougeauxs up in

Canada, go to Puerto Rico for Carlos Colon, and then go to the NWA. And, you

know, we were going all over the world, not tied to any one company.

Paul's very instrumental in not letting the promoters manipulate us. We were one

of the few tag teams that were main event every night in the arena.

We never stayed any one place, and it kept us fresh.

And it was always good because they'd bring us in, and the place would fill

Everybody in the business recognized that road warrior pop.

Just loud.

I've lost all my hearing.

Even today, if someone gets a good cheer going down the match, it's called the

road warrior pop.

At what point in your career did you realize that you guys were getting huge?

You know, first trip to Japan, we got there, we get off the flight, we got to

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 fight 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?

You know, the Japanese responded to us because we were so far ahead of our

We were so nothing like the Japanese wrestlers. We don't care who it is.

going to 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, what kind of an eye?

Like, I can't believe it.

Killer Khan was 6 '3", 6 '4", 365 pounds.

I front -slammed him over my head.

Then I gorilla -slammed him down.

It was national news.

It was no secret that, you know, Mike liked the party.

Partied hard, ran hard.

There was nothing he wasn't 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 there and one of them the next, you know, he

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 finger.

And he'd come home with just stacks of $100 bills, which he declared.

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.

He had no shutoff 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, watch it!

We'd like to kick your teeth in, too.

My first reaction to seeing Mike and everything was, wow, this is amazing.

And it just took you by surprise at how far he had come in such a short period

of time, really.

As their popularity grows, the promotions booking the Road Warriors

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

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 Crockett

Promotions approaches the Road Warriors with an offer to headline their flagship

event. Dusty Rose called us and said, hey, we got this idea.

A scaffold match.

Had never been done on a national scale.

Man, I was 310 pounds, 315 pounds, and Hawkins was 70.

Then you had both the men at Express up there, they were over 200 pounds each.

Three days before a scaffold match, Hawk broke a small bone in the bottom part

of his leg over in Tokyo.

We were in 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 because it was sold out and

was a big, big deal.

Well, what you see in a lot of sports and wrestling is no different is there's

injuries and there's pain.

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.

So when and what signs did you start noticing when Hawk's lifestyle out of

ring was kind of getting a little out of hand? It started getting bad.

The 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 a straight

vodka on the rocks guy.

The muscle relaxers were a big part. I would say 85 % of the guys that died

early in the wrestling business, the common denominator was the muscle

I think Joe was very disappointed in Hawk, and he didn't let that out so

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 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.

WWF was always on our screen. It looked like they were the place to go in this

wrestling war, if you want to be on the winning side, and we did.

You're going to feel the pain by the hands of the Legion of Doom.

Vince had just hired the modern -day warrior, Kerry Von Erich.

You 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.

Back at the Legion of Doom.

And then he'd just start to make up stories. And this is while we're driving

the car.

And he'd just start to make up that we were the Legion of Doom.

The WWF on the road 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 a 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,

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 Warriors'

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

is probably what I'm most well -known for.

All right.

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 Warriors 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?

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 in 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

because you wanted to be that guy that was going to be top dog in that pay -per

-view. Those WWF years is when it started getting real kind of nasty. He

fail a drug test, and then there would be three months off.

And, of course, me being a tag team partner, I'd take three months off with

But Mike, again, he wasn't shy about hiding anything, whether it was his

drinking or his drug use or his steroid use. He was pretty outspoken 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 because they had 90 ,000 people there. We were supposed to

for the tag team championships 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 going to do. And I could just see

where Vince is fuming.

Because every time Vince tried to say something, I was going, Vince, I got

idea. Found out later there was things.

called Plastidils, which is another kind of little, like, a hallucinogenic drug

that Hawkeye took, and it lasted, like, six hours.

Here we are, got to drive motorcycles down to the ring. We went from semi

event match against the Natural Disasters to wrestling Money

think, the first or second match.

As Animal watches his partner step into the ring, it's clear that Hawkeye is in

no shape to perform.

Get in the ring and they wanted us to do the finish, the doomsday off the top

rope. And I said, we can't do it. He's going to fall off the top rope. And he

goes, no, no, we got it. I said, look at him. He can't do it. They're watching

him. And, you know, Hawk was kind of like inebriated, you know, quite a bit.

so we changed the finish.

talks like right in the middle i kind of 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 and i was freaking hot you know and it's like we're gonna spend

millions of dollars on tv and do all this stuff for these guys now wembley

biggest show ever 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 from that London taping to Hershey, Pennsylvania to do TV.

And when we got to Hershey, Pennsylvania, Paul Ehring and I are

waiting for Hawk to do interviews. Well, Hawk hadn't shown up yet.

Nobody knew where Hawk went.

What do you mean?

He's just not on the plane. Nobody knew where Hawk was. Got a phone call, and

Hawk called.

Vince, the secretary, says, hey, I quit.

We're sitting there like, okay, now what am I going to do?

Animal decides he's not going to chase after his partner this time after

performing the role of fixer for so many years.

I think they just got the time to draw the line in the sand and listen, man,

shit, I've had enough. That's it.

Frick, I'm done with this.

You know, Joe's... probably in a panic, wondering how in the world are we going

to solve this?

You know, wrestling is your whole life. That'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 what

was happening.

Mike kind of, you know, the short fuse and losing his temper, and whether it

with the promoter, could have a real impact on Joe's career and even

career, right? So I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm going to be a

and I'm going to serve out the date.

that I had 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 took the gimmick over there and had Kenshi Sasaki dressing up as the

power warrior and all spiked shoulder pads and face paint.

I said, man, 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.

In front of you lies the future and Tag Team Wrestling, my new partner, Power

Warrior. What are you doing, bro? I'm not doing that here in the U .S.

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.

Animal got injured and, you know, there were like two years there were. 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 three different times he'd been rushed into an emergency room of drug

overdoses. He told me a head -on collision with an 18 -wheeler and rolled

pickup truck six times with no seatbelt on and walked away from it.

You know, I don't know how many near -death experiences Hawk had. I know he

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 had contracted that. You know, guys in this

wrestling business, man.

Used to do some crazy things, you know, speedballing, mixing different drugs

together, different things like that, where the old guys would share a needle

and just go, oh, god dang, you guys are nuts.

He was on the interferon, which is the medicine you get for hep C. He freaking

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 it's 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 class organization, and we only want to associate ourselves with

class organization.

I knew eventually that it would come back to what was going to be the Road

Warriors. We were so unique in the way we did everything, and we were so unique

as a tag team, and, like, nothing else like it in the wrestling business.

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,

Darren Drozdov. They introduced Droz, and he was going to be like the youngest

member of the Road Warriors.

Actually, I remember when I first saw them, you know, they've 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 had a great

with them.

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.

We're Hawks.

We're going to portray him as drunk and having habits on TV.

I don't know if he's inebriated. The referee's not going to start this match,

he? Yeah, he'd come out, like, staggering around.

You know, they were saying I was trying to separate them.

We don't need him. You know, he's messed up again, so...

Yeah,

it was heartbreaking.

But that's wrestling. They take the dominant part of your personality and...

They just make it bigger.

You know, it's 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 to 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 going to go up

Titantron and help Hawk.

And Hawk had all his demons and everything else, and he was drunk up

when he really wanted to go grab him, he really went and pushed him.

You know, to be honest with you, I didn't really have it in me to want to

angle that 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

And once again, the Road Warriors...

make the choice to hit the road on their own terms.

We're a wrestling Australia, and you got the beach, you got drinks, you can buy

Xanax over the counter, and so it's just not a good mix.

Rumor had it that three or four of the guys, and Hawk was one of them, had

gotten a hold 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 big crowd of people.

I don't think to myself, well, somebody just came back from the last match and

is laying down. And I push everybody aside, and it's freaking Hawk.

And they're putting the oxygen mask on. I said, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?

I said, well, you've got to go out and wrestle. 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've got to come get me. I said,

what's going on, man?

He goes, I am not dying in this freaking 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 all the way to L .A. And I said, from L .A., 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. Got done working out at the gym.

And there were six 300 -pound guys called the Christian Power Team. They

this event.

So I went to it. 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 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 it. He was a different person then.

with her. Now my motivation is different than what it was when I first started

out. My motivation now is my family, my fiancee, to make sure that if something

were to ever happen to me, she's not going to be hurt. He used to say, cat

nine 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 going to 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.

A friend of mine, Bob Muller, he goes, hey, have you talked to Mike?

I said, yeah, man, I talked to him last night. He goes, huh, have you talked to

him yet today?

I said, no.

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

46. And it wasn't that he OD'd or whatever, you know, it's just that his

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 an animal calls me up and tells

me, you know, Hawk is gone.

Joanie, my wife, I said, we got to 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 Kmart 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.

Do you remember some of the things that he said, the eulogy?

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 the outlaw Josie 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 wasn't Hawk.

Yeah. I think that is a key point.

He was still Mike.

I never looked at him as a hawk.

He really gave a shit about his friends.

He just had your back.

He probably knew I needed it.

The 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. Had a lot of things in common.

mean, Jim 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, there were times we were at each other's throat because we were together

so much.

But 99 .9 % of the time, we had a common respect there.

It's over half my life, man. I was with Hawks.

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.

Well, I think what we really remember is being a state team in professional

wrestling. And I just like to go down as one tough dude and one tough partner.

Hawks 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

sure. Well, Hawk was definitely a character.

To be honest with you, a part of the wrestling business died when Hawk died.