Read update
- The Road Warriors are legitimate icons of tag team wrestling for their iconic look, entrance, and how well used they were at different points to look like completely indomitable forces. Indeed, some of their defining moments included proving impervious to pain, overcoming other super-successful acts by being sheer physical beasts. There were a number of times, however, when Animal and Hawk were less strategically positioned—placed into circumstances like the scaffold match that did little to put over their considerable strengths as pro wrestlers. These disparities go to show that even the most successful acts can only thrive so far as their booking allows them to.
The 1980s produced a number of highly influential tag teams, and in addition to high-flyers like The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express and meat-and-potatoes heels like The Minnesota Wrecking Crew were one of the most exciting duos of the era in The Road Warriors. Inspired by a classic post-apocalyptic action film, The Road Warriors were Hawk and Animal, two giant bruisers with spiked shoulder pads and wild face paint who wrecked everyone in their sight.
From the early 1980s until the early 2000s, Hawk and Animal wrestled for WCW, WWE (where they were known as The Legion of Doom), and beyond. Despite their legendary status, their career had their ups and downs, so let’s take a look at some of their best moments as well as their worst.
UPDATE: 2023/10/26 14:30 EST BY MICHAEL CHIN
The Road Warriors are legitimate icons of tag team wrestling for their iconic look, entrance, and how well used they were at different points to look like completely indomitable forces. Indeed, some of their defining moments included proving impervious to pain, overcoming other super-successful acts by being sheer physical beasts. There were a number of times, however, when Animal and Hawk were less strategically positioned—placed into circumstances like the scaffold match that did little to put over their considerable strengths as pro wrestlers. These disparities go to show that even the most successful acts can only thrive so far as their booking allows them to.
12 Best: No Selling Jerry Lawler’s Piledriver
A big part of the Road Warrior mystique was that Animal and Hawk came across as tough—able to mow straight through mere mortals’ attempts at punishing them only to keep going, delivering their high-octane offense to more often than not wind up victorious.
A particularly noteworthy instance of this dynamic saw Jerry Lawler, around the peak of his popularity and legendary status in Memphis, hit this world-famous piledriver on Hawk, only for The Road Warrior to completely no-sell it. History is fuzzy on whether this was the first instance of Hawk working this particular spot, but it certainly was one of the highest profile, most momentous early iterations of it. The moment got over well enough that it became a staple with Hawk in particular taking piledrivers from a range of opponents, up to including a performance opposite Kane in 2003, and not letting one of the most universally devastating moves in wrestling slow him down.
11 Worst: The Scaffold Match Is Hard To Watch
Starrcade 1986 saw The Road Warriors take a starring role as they faced off with The Midnight Express in a Scaffold Match. While the spectacle of the combatants fighting so high above the crowd was a draw, the execution of this—like most Scaffold Matches left a lot to be desired.
While fans typically loved to watch Animal and Hawk pummel their opponents with reckless abandon, the Scaffold Match offered anything but that kind of action as both teams looked tenuous and overly careful as the performers were justifiably concerned about injuring themselves or their opponents badly if they took a spill off the narrow structure. Matters grew worse when Jim Cornette took the ugliest bump off, falling from a great height. His kayfabe body bodyguard, Big Bubba Rogers, was supposed to catch him, but was out of position, leading to a legit gruesome knee injury for the manager.
10 Best: The 1987 War Games
The Four Horsemen's mid-to-late 1980s shenanigans all came to a head for the first time in 1987 with the inaugural WarGames match, and Ric Flair and company had quite the team opposing them. Along with Dusty Rhodes and wrestling legend Nikita Koloff, The Road Warriors entered the fray, bringing their manager Paul Ellering (a former wrestler himself) into the cage as the fifth member of the team. The good guys came out on top in this first outing, and the Road Warriors took part in 15 WarGames matches over the course of their career together.
9 Worst: Hawk & Animal Rediscover Rocco The Dummy
Despite a rename to the admittedly less cool Legion of Doom, Hawk and Animal seemed poised for greatness in WWE upon arriving in 1990. While they enjoyed a 165-day reign with the World Tag Team Championship, they also suffered the indignity of Rocco. Presented as Hawk and Animal’s toy from childhood, Rocco was a ventriloquist dummy that Ellering carried around to further inspire them to win wrestling matches for some reason. In other words, it totally ruined their presentation as formidable bruisers.
8 Best: Turning On Sting
Despite their look and fierce in-ring dominance, The Road Warriors were often presented as babyfaces. After all, they were way too cool to boo. That all changed in 1988, when Sting filled in for Dusty Rhodes in a defense of their NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship.
Annoyed that Rhodes was unable to defend the belts with them, Hawk and Animal ended up turning on their replacement tag team partner. In addition to sending The Road Warriors on a heelish path, it was a great entry in the long history of Sting betrayals.
7 Worst: LOD 2000
The Road Warriors jumped around from promotion to promotion in the 1990s, but in 1997 they returned to WWE — just in time for the Attitude Era. With the new millennium a few years away, Hawk and Animal — once again known as the Legion of Doom — changed with the times, becoming LOD 2000. Managed by Sunny (at least for a time), this new and ultimately disappointing version of Legion of Doom had shiny entrance gear that seemed more Rollerball than Mad Max.
6 Best: Stabbing Dusty Rhodes In The Face
Now heels in WCW, The Road Warriors weren’t satisfied just picking on Dusty’s friend, Sting — they of course had to go after “The American Dream” himself. As a result, a segment aired in 1988 featuring Hawk and Animal not only attacking Dusty Rhodes but stabbing him in the face with one of their own shoulder pad spikes, making their former tag team partner a bloody mess. Besides being brutal in the classic NWA tradition, it proved controversial, resulting in Rhodes — who was also the booker — getting fired from WCW due to a newly imposed “no blood” policy.
5 Worst: Hawk Jumps Off The TitanTron
The weird indignities of The Legion of Doom’s Attitude Era run certainly make Rocco the dummy pale in comparison. By 1998, WWE was running a story where Hawk’s real-life alcoholism was proving a liability to the LOD’s tag team success — and it was all enabled by their new young protege, Puke (later known as Droz). The nadir of this angle had a suicidal Hawk climbing to the top of the TitanTron on Raw and falling off the set, which proved to be one of the more regrettable moments of the Attitude Era as well as Hawk and Animal’s career together.
4 Best: Teaming With Ahmed Johnson
Hawk and Animal’s WWE run during the Attitude Era wasn’t all bad, however. In early 1997, the LOD made their return to WWE and had a big match set up for WrestleMania 13. At ‘Mania, they teamed with Ahmed Johnson to take on Johnson’s enemies, The Nation of Domination, in a Chicago Street Fight.
The match itself was a fun, wild brawl worthy of the Legion of Doom’s participation, but it also featured a particularly awesome moment during the entrance as Ahmed Johnson came out with LOD wearing his own set of spiked shoulder pads to match Hawk and Animal. Needless to say, it made for a very cool image.
3 Worst: Animal’s Underwhelming WCW Return
While much of The Road Warriors’ best work happened in WCW, it wasn’t always great. In 2001, Hawk and Animal seemed to go their separate ways, with Hawk dealing with personal and health problems while Animal returned to WCW at the Sin pay-per-view. The main event was a four-way match for the WCW World Title, with Animal among the three as a mystery competitor. The match is most famous for Sid Vicious breaking his leg live on PPV, with Animal’s appearance happening shortly after and happening to a depressingly muted response.
2 Best: Canadian Stampede
Pro wrestling has enjoyed some classic crowds in its time, but no grouping of fans have been quite as vocal and wild as the Calgary crowd at the forgotten gem WWE pay-per-view In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede. In the main event of that show, The Hart Foundation — heels in the US but heroes in Canada — took on a randomly thrown together American team that included Steve Austin, Goldust, Ken Shamrock, and the Legion of Doom. It’s yet another wild brawl, but one made even more exciting by the white-hot crowd.
1 Worst: Road Warrior Animal's Partnership With Heidenreich
Tragically, Hawk suffered a fatal heart attack in October 2003 at the age of 46. This left Animal to continue solo, but he ended up finding a new partner upon returning to WWE in 2005. As a result, a new version of the Legion of Doom was born, with Animal joined by Heidenreich. While LOD 2005 enjoyed a three-month run with the WWE Tag Team Championship, the tag team was deemed a disappointment and a shadow of its former self, as Animal was past his prime and Heidenreich was considered a weak in-ring competitor.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTErKeoqqSowaa%2BjZympmeSmsC1ecyopJ6mpKh6s7vAnWSwmaKntrC%2B0maamqqVmr%2B0edaoqaysXw%3D%3D