The following are highlights from a recent interview with Road Warrior Animal:
On the origins of the Road Warrior look: “We were sitting there with Bill Watts and Ole Anderson. At the time, Bill Watts had just gave Dewey, the Missing Link the paint. Down there in Louisiana, they said we want you guys to put a couple lines on your face. Then Hawk came up with the brilliant idea, hey, why doesn’t Animal get a Mohawk and I’ll do the reverse Mohawk, so we can look like we can plug our heads into each other. I said, ‘man, are you friggin’ nuts?’ But, we ended up doing it and it worked. Later on, I did the spikes in my garage, next thing you know, we had the spiked shoulder pads.”
On The Road Warriors refusing to drop the Tag-Team Titles to The Fabulous Ones: “You guys know our gimmick, we are street fighters. They wanted to do a finish called the ‘switch-a-roo.’ I kept looking to Paul, we were in the locker room and I said, ‘man, that ain’t right. It just doesn’t feel right.’ They give us the finish in the locker room, we say, ‘ok, we’re gonna do it, we go to the ring.’ First thing Hawk says to Keirn and Lane, he says, ‘We ain’t doin’ the finish. Listen to us and nobody will get hurt.’ We came back to the locker room and Greg Gagne is yelling. Verne come down to the locker room and says, ‘Jeez, nobody has changed a finish on me in 25 years.’ I said, ‘Well Verne, first time for everything, we just did.”
On the team jumping-ship to WWE and his initial dealings with Vince McMahon: “At the time Vince had the Ultimate Warrior. At first he tried to tell us, nobody knows who you are up here. I said, ‘Vince, come on, they know who we are.’ He said, ‘well, I gotta change your name, I can’t call you the Road Warriors, I got the Ultimate Warrior.’ Hawk and I were thinking, ‘that’s kind of dumb that he is acting like this.’ So, we said, ‘how about the Legion of Doom?’ And we used that, at the time, there was no rhyme or reason to anything he did. I was just literal chaos. People that you think should be wrestling each other were not wrestling each other and it was just the opposite, the other way around. I even cornered Vince McMahon one time, I told him I feel like you’re backing us in a corner here and you’re really starting to piss me off.”
You can listen to the complete interview below:
