The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (11 page)

They did. Apparently, Jack and Jerry had seen the writing on the wall over the course of the past year or so and wanted out of GCW. With his growing power and money, Vince had begun luring some of the top guys away from the other territories with unrivaled promises of fame and fortune. Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, Big John Studd, “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, and Rowdy Roddy Piper, among other big names, decided to make the WWE their exclusive home. The Briscos probably thought it was only a matter of time before they were put out of business if they didn’t join them.

When the deal came through on April 9, 1984, it effectively meant the end of the forty-year-old Georgia Championship Wrestling promotion as everyone had known it. No one could believe it. Not only was the company sold to the rival WWF, but it was because of the Briscos.

The Briscos were total fan favorites who had wrestled their entire careers in the Southern NWA territories, especially Florida and Georgia. Jack had even been the NWA World Heavyweight champion twice. Instead of cheers from the fans, the Briscos were now receiving threatening phone calls and letters both at home and at their body shop in Tampa. Hawk and I were even asked to hurt them on their way out.

The Briscos had to finish out some remaining dates before they left, and as it turned out, their last scheduled match was against us in Cleveland. Some of the guys in the back offered us $5,000 to exact their revenge and to do some real damage to Jack and Jerry. They actually wanted us to break their legs.

We refused. We didn’t need to get paid to legitimately hurt someone; we already got paid to kayfabe it. But there was more to it than that: the Briscos were my friends. I’ll never forget how Jack had let me get some offense in when I was a jobber in ’82. He was always good to me, and that’s all that mattered.

Out of respect, before our match I even told Jerry what had happened. “Be careful, bro. A lot of guys around here are saying some crazy shit, but don’t worry about us. We don’t have any problems with you.”

Then we wrestled them in what proved to be Jack and Jerry’s very last match together. Jack retired to Florida; Jerry went to the WWF as an agent.

When June rolled around, panic was in the air from some of the boys. Fearing the worst, some Georgia Championship Wrestling guys scrambled to other territories. Paul had anticipated this, so he got in touch with AWA owner Verne Gagne to gauge his interest in having the Road Warriors jump aboard.

After having lost Hulk Hogan, his biggest star, and a bunch of other wrestlers to the WWF, Verne needed to make some big moves quickly or he could’ve ended up in a situation like Ole’s. Verne told us he was ready whenever we were and that we’d immediately be thrown into a championship program for the AWA World Tag Team titles. He also said there was a big TV deal with ESPN on the horizon and we’d be a major factor in the network’s decision.

We liked what we heard. Verne had a reputation for being a smart businessman and paying his main event guys good money. The AWA was also based right in our backyard in Minneapolis, which made it an even easier decision. We gave Verne a verbal agreement over the phone and then went to speak with Ole about our departure.

By this time, Ole was having a hard time keeping himself together. Thinking guys from the WWF might break in and take his records, he was paranoid to leave his office at the TV studio. I hated seeing him like that.

When we told him we were going to the AWA, Ole more than understood. He said how proud he was of us and talked about how far we’d come. We agreed to drop the National belts on our way out of the company, shook his hand, and even gave him a farewell present. Since Ole was so concerned about the security of his office, Hawk called our old bouncing buddy Scott Norton to come down. Norton was bigger than ever and more than happy to stand guard at the office. Although it never came down to it, Norton was prepared to murder anyone dumb enough to get in Ole’s way.

For the rest of June and into July, it was pretty much business as usual without any real sign that the WWF was coming. The rumor was that Vince was going to produce his own show from our
World Championship Wrestling
studio, but the place remained unchanged right up until the day we left. Hawk and I just focused on the few matches ahead of us that we had to finish up before abandoning ship.

We defended the titles almost every night and still made the Saturday morning TV tapings. All along, we wondered what kind of changes, if any, were going to take place. On Black Saturday, July 14, at 6:05 p.m., we found out like everybody else.

The intro to
World Championship Wrestling
started with its usual opening graphics and music, while announcer Freddie Miller, who had replaced Gordon Solie, stood at the podium. After saying hello, Freddie welcomed the World Wrestling Federation to TBS before introducing none other than Vince McMahon.

Having Vince in Atlanta was definitely a surreal moment but not as shocking as his announcement that people would no longer be seeing the stars of Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS. “We’ll be bringing you the very best in professional wrestling entertainment in the world today.”

But the fans of
World Championship Wrestling
thought that’s what they already had. The backlash from the public was overwhelming. Angry viewers started sending complaints and bombarding TBS with phone calls, demanding to know where their beloved show was. In those days, the WWF didn’t go over too well in the Southern states. Its product came off to the people like an over-the-top circus compared to the grittier, more realistic presentation of the NWA.

Fundamentally, though, the biggest issue to Southerners with the big change was the simplest: the WWF was from the North.

You’ve got to understand something. Southern people are extremely proud of their heritage and still recognize many of the traditional boundaries from the Civil War era, especially those concerning land. Anything north of Virginia is considered Union country and not tolerated very well, if at all. Having
World Championship Wrestling
taken over by Vince and his Yankees meant war. The emotionally charged fans retaliated by simply not watching the WWE program, sending ratings and advertising revenue into the toilet.

After a few months, the gravity of the situation got through to Ted Turner, who wasn’t too happy with how Vince had circumvented his authority. In an effort to calm the situation, Ted approached Ole about coming back on the air at TBS immediately with new and original NWA wrestling programming. Ole was back in business and went right to work developing a new company and show,
Championship Wrestling from Georgia
, which aired Saturday mornings.

Turner wanted Bill Watts in on the action as well and gave him a Sunday morning time slot for his
Mid-South Wrestling
program. Ole and Watts quickly gained huge followings for their respective shows, and when Vince found out he was no longer the exclusive professional wrestling company on TBS, he decided to call it a day. In early 1985, Vince sold the 6:05 p.m. time slot to Jim Crockett Promotions for one million dollars and got out of Dodge.
World Championship Wrestling
returned to TV under the control of Jim Crockett and MCW territory based in North Carolina. Seizing the opportunity to finally go national with TBS, Crockett picked up and moved the operation down to Atlanta.

For a while, everything returned to normal, but the message had been loud and clear: Vince McMahon was going to do whatever it took to become the only game in town. Promoters everywhere started taking precautions, even banding together. Jim Crockett, Ole, and a few other NWA promoters joined AWA owner Verne Gagne and Jerry Jarrett, whose Memphis-based CWA was an AWA-affiliated territory, forming a new company to compete nationally with Vince. The result was Pro Wrestling USA, a new banner under which the NWA and AWA could copromote super cards featuring each company’s top wrestlers all across the country. The key element behind the merger was the national ESPN deal that Verne and Crockett had been negotiating, with Hawk and me, among others, as bargaining chips on the table.

While all of this buyout and merger craziness was going on, Paul, Hawk, and I couldn’t have cared less. We were on our way out with golden parachutes in the AWA. About a week before Black Saturday on the Fourth of July, we had dropped the National titles in Columbus, Georgia, to Ronnie Garvin and Jerry Oates. We’d always liked Garvin and Oates and were happy for them, especially Ronnie. He was always cracking me up backstage, and when it was showtime he’d become this wolverine and go toe-to-toe with me with the stiffest of punches and chops you could imagine.

With a fresh opportunity before us, Hawk and I were really focused on the impact we wanted to make for our new company. Verne was excited for our arrival, too, and decided to up the ante. He called to say he wanted us to “hit the ground running” by jumping right into some shows he’d already booked in Green Bay, Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Paul.

That’s right. St. Paul,
Minnesota
. We were floored with the news. Hawk and I would finally have our long-anticipated homecoming. Ever since we’d started out together, we’d talked about what it would be like wrestling in front of a home crowd in Minnesota. Now we’d find out.

To prepare for the big occasion, we took a look in the mirror and decided to make some adjustments. Since day one, Hawk and I were always modifying our paint jobs. The look I was using with the devil horn lines was cool, but it needed something more. I started connecting the devil horn lines on each side of my forehead to the lines on the far sides of my face and under my eyes. With everything drawn together, it created an outline I started filling in with black, red, green, and yellow. The result was a solid, evil-looking mask, a perfect translation of how I felt in character: badass.

Hawk started experimenting with two different looks. The first was what he called the joker, which was a giant upside-down red triangle under his left eye and then a giant spiral of black completely covering his right eye. Sometimes he played around with the colors and the spiral part would be blue or something, but the joker look became the design Hawk would be most recognized for over the years.

His second go-to paint job was a full-faced concept that looked kind of like a flying hawk right on his face. Between his eyes on the bridge of his nose, Hawk drew a point and then flared two big lines diagonally up toward each side of his forehead. Then he took those lines and went almost straight down each cheek, stopping short of the jawline. When Hawk connected those lines back up to the center of his nose and dropped down for a final point down to the tip of his nose, it looked like a cool wingspan. Then he filled it in with solid colors, sometimes all black.

We also went out and bought spiked dog collars, wristbands, and gloves. Hawk quickly realized his neck and traps were so thick he could easily snap off his dog collar with a quick shrug and turn of the head. With only a few days left before our debut, we kept thinking of any and all possible additions we could bring to our ever-evolving Road Warriors gimmick. We needed something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

To clear our minds, Paul, Hawk, and I went for a drive to grab a burger. We were listening to the radio when I had a thought. “Hey, we need music, you know? Something that sets the tone when we come down to the ring.”

Hawk agreed. “Yeah, we need a badass song.”

Since we were billed from Chicago, the first thing that popped into my head was a ’70s song by Paper Lace called “The Night Chicago Died.” But if you’ve ever heard that song, you know it wasn’t quite what we were looking for. We needed something as heavy and intense as we were.

All of a sudden, we heard a familiar song that immediately grabbed our attention. It started with an unmistakable kicking bass drum:
Doomp, doomp, doomp, doomp!
Then that hanging power guitar chord came crunching in. Hawk and I looked right at each other and knew it was “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath. It was perfect, almost as if it had been written specifically for us.

“I am
Iron Man
,” Ozzy Osbourne growled as the music played. Shit, if Ozzy was Iron Man, Hawk and I were definitely the tag team equivalent. Loaded with a ton of new attitude, we started counting down the minutes until July 15 and our debut at the Saint Paul Civic Center.

6

UNLEASHED ON THE AWA

Going to the American Wrestling Association was our best decision for so many reasons. Hawk and I missed our families and were a little burned out from the toll it was taking. Being able to establish a home base in Minnesota was very important, especially to me. Now I could get my own place and take care of Joey and show my parents everything was working out with my career choice, even if it was a little left of center.

Verne Gagne had an impeccable reputation for doing business the old-fashioned way: with a verbal agreement and a handshake. When we first met with Verne about coming in, we weren’t sure what he would offer us. Paul made it clear to Verne that we were main event players coming in for main event money. Verne couldn’t have agreed more. When we received our envelopes every couple of weeks, the paychecks lived up to Verne’s word. Believe me, that’s the best trait a promoter can have.

On the media side of things, Verne had been running on KMSP-TV in Minneapolis with his
AWA All-Star Wrestling
program for years. He also had a successful Canadian production called
AWA Major League Wrestling
produced at a station called CKND in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The AWA was syndicated throughout all of greater Canada and had a huge following. But it wasn’t enough for Verne. Like a lot of the other promoters at the time, Verne saw what Vince was accomplishing and wanted in. After Black Saturday slapped everybody in the face and the offer from Crockett came to align the AWA and NWA for
Pro Wrestling USA
on ESPN, Verne jumped in with both feet.