Inside Out: How Corporate America Destroyed Professional Wrestling by Ole Anderson & Scott Teal

Author:Ole Anderson & Scott Teal [Anderson, Ole]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Crowbar Press
Published: 2014-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 29

The Road Warriors

If a guy had a personality, or a little bit of piss and vinegar about him, then there was a good chance that he was going to make a good wrestler. But if he just laid back and sat in the corner, and didn’t say two words, in my opinion, he didn’t have what it took to make it.

As a for-instance, the idea for the Road Warriors gimmick came about in 1982 after I saw the movie, The Road Warrior. As I watched it, an idea clicked in my mind. What a hell of an idea. We’ll dress a couple of guys up to look like the biker characters in the movie and call them the Road Warriors. I was really going out on a limb, but I was looking for something a little bit different. I wasn’t looking for wrestlers. I was looking for a team that looked impressive physically, and a little bit bizarre. I was going to create my own version of Haystack Calhoun, Tex McKenzie, or Andre the Giant.

I called Eddie Sharkey, who trained a lot of wrestlers in Minnesota, and said, "Hey, Eddie. Can you come up with some guys that I could look at? I want somebody that’s really well-built." He said he would put something together, so I flew up to Minneapolis and he introduced me to about fifteen guys. They were all tough kids who worked as bouncers for a beer joint called Gramma B’s. As I went down the line, each one of them would greet me.

"It’s really a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Anderson."

"Hello, Mr. Anderson. I used to watch you ..."

"Oh, gosh! I really think you’re great."

As I stepped up in front of one guy, he said, "So, you’re Ole Anderson? You don’t look like too fuckin’ much to me."

That was Mike Hegstrand, who later became known as Hawk.

When I got to the end of the line, I went back over to Eddie and said, "I know who I want. I want that guy right there." I pointed at Mike. I bought into Mike’s cocky attitude right away. All the rest of them were blowing smoke up my ass.

Mike had a partner — Joe Laurinaitis. Years earlier, Joe Laurinaitis had been in Georgia with me, but he screwed up. I forget what he did. He swore or used the finger on TV, so I called Crockett, or whoever was booking the territory at the time, and fixed it up for him to work in Charlotte. He was there for a year or so, and then went home to Minneapolis. I don’t know if Joe went back to bouncing immediately after he left Charlotte, but he must have eventually because that’s what he was doing when I went to Minneapolis. We gave Joe the name "Animal" and put the two of them together as the Road Warriors. Joe was really low-key, so Mike was the talker for the team. Of course, what I didn’t know at the time was that they were both on the roids big time.

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