Original subtitles

They had the look, they had that power.

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

The face paint, the shoulder pads, and jacked to the sky.

Man, they trained their asses off. They hit the ring like badasses.

We were two badasses trying to be wrestlers.

They were wrestlers trying to be badasses.

They were like the guys in Mad Max.

They were meaner than the guys in Mad Max.

In the history of professional wrestling,

no duo has dominated the ring like Hawk and Animal,

The Road Warriors.

When we'd go to Japan, they were like Godzilla.

You look at them and went, "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, led to their downfall.

He partied hard, played hard. He lived hard.

That switch would flip after the match, and bam!

I woke up this morning, this is where I felt sick!

It becomes a way out as well as an escape.

You'll feel like you wanna be dead when we're done with you!

The road can eat you alive.

At the age of 46, Road Warrior, Hawk,

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 6th sense,

operating as two halves of one whole.

There's no one without the other.

And no team proves that more than Mike "Hawk" Hegstrand

and Joe "Animal" Laurinaitis.

In an era dominated by iconic personalities...

Just what exactly goes through the Road Warriors' mind!

...whose matches were the star attraction,

The Road Warriors break the mold as comic book heroes come to life

and post-apocalyptic warriors beyond the realms of earth.

The most important thing to us has always been beating people up!

Their larger than life personas propelled them to main event status,

winning titles wherever they went.

The price for success is high,

and in this episode, we reveal the heavy cost paid by both men

and how their wrestling brotherhood met a heartbreaking end.

Tag team is the most interesting part of wrestling.

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

I'm Road Warrior, Animal, one half of the greatest tag team

in the history of pro wrestling, The Road Warriors.

There's more of a story told with the tag team than the single.

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

You need guys that know each other.

My name is Barry Darsow.

I was The Repo Man and Demolition Smash.

I thought we had incredible matches with The Road Warriors.

What made Road Warriors successful was they really clicked.

Everybody believed they could beat anybody and they looked incredible.

I saw the "it". These two have the "it" factor.

Paul Ellering, manager of The Road Warriors for 20 years.

The Road Warriors, it's a group that comes along once every generation.

And they're always copied, never duplicated.

Hawk and Animal are just two no-nonsense badasses.

Hawk was the off-the-wall flier guy

and Animal was like the buck stops here.

Most teams had one big guy and one little guy.

Here, you got two fricking monsters.

They could do things that, prior to them, big guys didn't do.

I'm Nikita Koloff, not from Russia,

although that's what I portrayed for years in wrestling.

It was the chemistry of tag team,

picking the guy up on the shoulder, coming off the top rope.

The Doomsday, you know, he flew off of the top turn buckle

and that was the ultimate finish in wrestling for decades.

They knew what each other was thinking.

But sometimes, Animal knew more than Hawk

as far as what was going on.

Joe was much more patient than Mike was.

You hear stories

of how Mike would snap in an instant or fly off the handle.

Oh, yeah. We got along instantly. I was like 18 year's old.

And I knew of Mike Hegstrand, known as a loose cannon, tough guy.

In 1977, Mike Hegstrand

and Joe Laurinaitis are two kids on the streets

of Northeast Minneapolis, a tough, working-class neighborhood.

You know, I was at Jesse "The Body" Ventura's gym.

I'm 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.

He goes, "Laurinaitis, you should be lifting more weights than me."

That was meeting Mike Hegstrand.

This is a great school photo of Mike and he was voted class bully.

-Yeah, you can see it there. -I think that was staged, but...

Mike's reputation in school was a scrapper.

His idea of a good time was to go beat up someone.

Just stay away from him, he'll be a great friend. But don't cross him.

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 gonna do."

And our mom had passed away.

Come on, bro. You can do it.

But he obviously found his way, but it was a bit of a road.

Was hyperactive, didn't sit still.

If he was sitting still, his leg was bouncing.

He had a lot of energy to lift weights and punch people.

Yeah.

The way we put it, I'm from the other side of the tracks

and Hawk was pretty much the toughest guy his side,

and I was the toughest guy on my side.

My name is Scott Norton.

Pro Wrestler from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I grew up with Mike Hegstrand, Hawk.

He was gonna, kind of like, mark his territory in his school.

He got into a brawl with a guy from south high school. Knocked him out.

And with a guy from north high, knocked him out.

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.

Basically broke his face.

Their hard-hitting lifestyle growing up in Northeast Minneapolis

would serve as a training ground for their careers.

Their circle of friends soon expands

to include a massively talented roster of future superstars.

Pretty interesting that Minneapolis was just a mecca of guys

who ended up in the crazy world of professional wrestling.

Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig, The Road Warriors,

and John Nord, and Barry Darsow.

Ah, Nikita Koloff. Rick Rude.

Scott Norton, too. We all knew of each other.

We got closer as Hawk would ask me to fill in working at this bar,

Gramma B's, down in Minneapolis.

It's at one of Minneapolis' toughest bars

that Joe and Mike get a chance to cut their teeth.

Paid the bills and it was a perfect outlet for him.

And why was that?

He could beat up people and get paid for it.

I mean, it was just like wrestling, so...

I can't mention any names, but the guy who owned the bar,

he dealt in coke and when someone owed him money,

he'd say, "You need a conversation with this guy."

I remember one time, Hawk had one leg, I had one leg,

and were hung him over the Franklin Avenue Bridge

and said, "You need to pay up."

At Gramma B's, there was a strip bar in the afternoon.

And they'd have wet T-shirt contests.

It brought some of the worst of the worst guys.

Every night, something happened.

Lo and behold, the bartender was Ed Sharkey.

I'd heard of Ed Sharkey before because he wrestled in the AWA,

and he comes to us and goes,

"I'm gonna do wrestling school. You wanna do it?"

We looked at each other, said, "I don't know if I want to."

I'm thinking to myself, "What can it hurt?"

My name is Eddie Sharkey. I've been in wrestling for most of my life.

Starting on a carnival,

I've been a professional wrestler, referee, promoter, trainer.

I've done about everything.

Eddie ended up having a church in Northeast Minneapolis

and he had a boxing ring downstairs.

Eddie was a character. He'd sit and go, "Yeah, guys, good tackle,"

you know, "good drop kick." But Eddie never got out of his chair.

If I would leave the room, I said, "No, don't try a suplex.

You're gonna hurt yourself."

I'd walk out for whatever reason

and one's got the other in the air.

Ed never showed us how to throw what they call a "working punch".

So, we would literally back up and go, bam!

And punch each other. Nose would be broken and bleeding.

Eddie never smartened us up on what was going on until,

he says, "Well, here's what you do."

Eddie soon realizes that this promising crop of talent

might have a future in the squared circle.

Ole Anderson was a good wrestler. Another Minnesota guy.

He became a promoter. Worked for Ted Turner.

And he came up to Gramma B's.

One night, a guy was misbehaving and I had to escort him out.

I had a hand on his collar and one on his belt loop,

and threw him through the front door, and we had this trip wire outside.

And we used to gauge each other

by how many flips a guy could do around this wire.

When the guy gets done flipping, he lands on Ole Anderson's shoes.

And I said, "How you doing?" Then I turn around, 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.

Mike started first for Al Tomko, up in Canada.

You men that are married to a good-looking wife,

when your wife takes a look at this man, she's gonna go crazy!

I went down for Ole Anderson as The Road Warrior, by myself.

I looked like The Village People.

When Joe broke into the business, he had got his girlfriend pregnant.

And Joe did the right thing, meaning, he got married,

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

I was sending all my money that I was making back home.

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

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

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

So, we both came back to Minnesota.

I could make more one night bouncing

than I was making 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."

He goes, "Son of a bitch." Ole called me,

"I want to bring you 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 Hegstrand are recruited to wrestle in Georgia,

except this time as a tag team.

They have no idea they're about to revolutionize wrestling.

Hawk, thanks for being with us. What got you started in wrestling?

I started watching and thought if they could, I could do it better,

and first time we appeared on TV, you know, we were both real green.

And The Road Warriors moving up.

The start of The Road Warriors on TV was like surreal for Hawk and I

because here's all these megastars in Georgia Championship Wrestling.

There's Sergeant Slaughter, Tito Santana, and Dusty Rhodes,

and I'm going, holy crap, there's some superstars here.

And then, here we are, now we're a part of this.

Upon their arrival in the territory,

matchmaker Anderson approaches his new tag team with a bold idea.

They actually handed us the belts when we got at the TV station.

They say, "Here's your belt."

We're like, "Where did we win them?"

They said, "In a tag team tournament in Chicago."

From Chicago!

Ole says, "This is gonna 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 me, says, "You look like an Animal.

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 join with Paul Ellering.

He acts as both their on and off-screen manager,

leading them to the big leagues.

I just took them from that. They jumped in my van, that was it.

Paul was great at fine tuning us.

He said go with your raw strength. Go with what you do best.

We used to sit there at Denny's and Paul would draw on a napkin.

"Animal, you're here. Hawk, you're here.

Throw this guy after you make the tag.

Hawk, you drop down. Incorporate that."

We had motorcycle boots, and we wore it down to the ring.

After about a month, Ole goes, "Hey, we got an idea for you guys.

Remember the guy in Road Warrior

with the red mohawk and feather in his ear?

We want you to try and do something with the face paint."

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

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 Hegstrand goes, "Hey, I got another idea.

What if Animal has a mohawk to look like the guy in the movie?

I'll shave a double mohawk so when Animal and I bend over,

we plug our heads in, it looks like one unit."

How did the spiked shoulder pads work its way in?

That came from Animal. That was his idea.

And it was genius on his part.

I had a friend that worked for Honeywell. He milled the spikes.

I said, "I need some six-inch spikes,

I want four-inch spikes, and two-inch spikes,

and I sat in my garage and drilled holes in those shoulder pads."

Licking my thumb, like, fricking Picasso, right.

Then I put some chains on, that was the birth of the shoulder pads.

They put them on and it was just frosting on the cake.

The people just ate it up. These poor guys they're against.

I mean, they ran people over.

Hawk used to apologize to them,

"I'm sorry for what's gonna happen, but your ass is getting kicked."

They were bad boys,

but when they were bad, they were very good.

As long as we stayed away from the guy's nuts

and we didn't break their nose, it was cool.

But, if you look back, some of those clotheslines,

guys were doing natural flips we were hitting them so hard.

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 prime-time spot on Atlanta's TBS,

the first Superstation

to be 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 Rougeau's up in Canada.

Go to Puerto Rico for Carlos Colon, and then go to the NWA.

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

Paul's instrumental in not letting the promoters manipulate us.

We were one of the few tag teams that were main events every night.

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

It was good because they bring us in, and the place would fill up.

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,

it's called The Road Warrior Pop.

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

First trip to Japan, we got there, we get off the flight.

We do an interview.

In this room was literally 150 photographers

and reporters from all over the country of Japan.

They said there was more reporters than when Michael Jackson came.

We will fight tonight like we never fought before!

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?

The Japanese responded to us because we were ahead of our time.

We were so nothing like the Japanese wrestlers.

We don't care who it is. We're gonna stomp everybody.

We wrestled some top guys, man, you know, Killer Khan.

When I pressed Killer Khan, Japanese people said, "Wakaranai."

Like, "I can't believe it!"

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

I press slammed him over my head. Then I gorilla slammed him down.

It was national news.

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

Partied hard, ran hard. There was nothing he was afraid of.

No situation bothered him.

Mike got involved with these people, the Japanese mafia over there.

They'd pick him up and go out to dinner,

and wouldn't see him for two days.

He'd meet Japanese mafia and tell me about,

if you made a mistake, they just took a digit off.

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

Joe was more the guy that would go out to dinner and, go to the room,

and get some sleep and have a workout the next day.

Where Hawk, he was wild, he wanted to go out to the bar.

He had no shut off valve, 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 become one of the top wrestling attractions.

To be that good in that many territories, it's unprecedented.

My vision was to make money, you know, for all of us.

This is an opportunity that comes along once in a lifetime.

Everybody out there watching, we'd like to kick your teeth in too.

My first reaction to seeing Mike was, wow.

This is amazing.

It just took you by surprise how far he had come

in such a short period of time, really.

As their popularity grows,

the promotions booking them realize

they're not getting a run of the mill tag team,

they're getting rising stars with a guaranteed sellout crowd.

The greatest thing The Road Warriors is...

we never had to change. Whether we were babyface or heel.

I mean, we were stone cold heels until we wrestled the Koloffs.

Probably some of the best matches I remember

are the Russian Chain matches we had.

And now we're getting USA cheers and cheers from the fans.

We were always so bad as heels, it made us great babyfaces.

Your winners of the match, The Road Warriors!

In early 1986,

Carolina's Jim Crocket Promotions approaches The Road Warriors

with an offer to headline their flagship event.

Dusty Rhodes calls us and says, "Hey, we got this idea."

A scaffold match. Never been done on a national scale.

Man, I was 310 pounds, 315 pounds, and Hawk was 270.

Then you had The Midnight Express. They were over 200 pounds, each.

Three days before the scaffold match,

Hawk broke a small bone in the bottom of his leg over in Tokyo.

We were the old school, show must go on.

And he wrestled up there with a broken leg in a boot.

He didn't want to let the people down because it was sold out

and it was a big, big deal.

What you see in a lot of sports and wrestling's no different

is there's injuries and there's pain, and you 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.

When and what signs did you start noticing

when Hawk's lifestyle out of the ring was out of hand?

It started getting bad latter part of NWA,

WCW run before we went to WWF.

The drinking is a no brainer.

Hawk was a straight up vodka on the rocks guy.

Muscle relaxers were big.

I'd say 85 percent of the guys that died early in wrestling

the common denominator was muscle relaxers.

I think Joe was very disappointed in Hawk

and he didn't let that out so people knew it.

But, knowing Joe, I could see that.

I think it's just like any marriage, which it kind of was,

I don't think they always saw eye to eye on everything.

I think there was friction there at times.

It wasn't until we really got into WWF years

where it really started to get bad.

The Road Warriors conquered the wrestling world with one exception

and the pressures of performing in the WWF

will soon set the stage for their downfall.

The WWF was always on our screen.

It looked like they were the place to go in this wrestling war,

if you wanted to be on the winning side. And we did.

You're gonna feel the pain by the hands of the Legion of Doom!

Vince had hired Modern Day Warrior, Kerry Von Erich.

He already had the Ultimate Warrior.

He says, "You've been The Road Warriors.

Can you think of a different name that we could use?"

I said, "How about the Legion of Doom?"

"I love The Legion of Doom! Let's call you guys that!"

It was actually He-Man.

The most powerful man in the universe!

Hawk would watch that all the time. He always watched He-Man.

This was Hawk. "Back at the Legion of Doom!"

He'd just start to make up stories and this is while we're driving.

He'd start to make up that we were The Legion of Doom.

The WWF, on the road at the time, was a grind.

And you were busy 14 days on, four days off, all year long.

Your whole life is no sleep.

But when you get in the ring, then 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 you take a pain pill.

Pretty soon, you're drinking, taking pain pills, taking this, 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 Warrior's historic climb to the top

and in front of a record-setting crowd.

To the non-wrestling fan, I wrestled for years in the WWF.

The Godfather's probably what I'm most well known for.

All right, so we're in this club, and then all of a sudden,

Vince decides to take everybody's finish.

In The Road Warrior's case, it hurt people.

Have you seen their finish?

I wouldn't take it in the ring! And Vince took that in the club.

The CEO of this big, fucking company

is taking people's finishes in a fucking titty bar?

Just, I was like...

Just as The Road Warriors are reaching new heights

at Vince McMahon's WWF,

Hawk's substance abuse was becoming harder to hide.

That's when we were starting to do the Pay Per Views now.

Now we're doing big, huge events and everything else,

so there was a lot of respect and pride in what you did for your work

because you wanted to be top dog on Pay Per View.

Those WWF years was when it started getting real nasty.

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

Me being a tag team partner, I had to take time off with him.

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, they had 90,000 people there.

We were supposed to wrestle for the championship in Wembley.

And getting ready to go out and we're doing a run through.

McMahon's trying to tell us what we're gonna do.

And Vince is fuming because every time he tried to say something,

Hawk's going, "Now Vince, I got this idea."

Found out later, this was this thing called placidyls,

which is another hallucinogenic drug that Hawk had took

and it lasts six hours.

We drive motorcycles to the ring.

We went from semi-main event match against The Natural Disasters,

to wrestling Money Incorporated their first or second match.

As Animal watches his partner step into the ring,

it's clear that Hawk is in no shape to perform.

Getting in, they wanted us to do the finish,

the Dooms Day off the top rope,

and I said, "We can't. He'll fall off."

And he goes, "We gotta." I said, "He can't."

They were watching him and Hawk was inebriated

quite a bit and, so we changed the finish.

Hawk's right in the middle. I had to push him out of the way...

When Hawk was on, he was the best. Nobody was better.

But when he was like that, it kind of really...

I wasn't very happy with him.

I knew there was a suspension coming, I was hot.

It's like, we're gonna spend millions of dollars on TV

and do all this stuff for these guys at Wembley,

the biggest show ever, and he 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, Paul Ellering and I are ready,

waiting for Hawk to do interviews. Hawk hadn't shown.

Nobody knew where Hawk went.

He's not on the plane. Nobody knew where Hawk was.

Got a phone call, and Hawk called Vince's secretary and said, "I quit."

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

Animal decides he's not gonna chase his partner,

after performing the role of fixer for so many years.

I think it just got the time to draw the line in the sand

and, listen, man, I've had enough.

I'm fricking done with this.

Joe was probably in a panic, wondering how will we solve this?

Wrestling is your whole life. It's all you have.

Your family's at home, 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, you know, a short fuse, losing his temper

whether it was with a promoter, could have a impact on Joe's career

and even Ellering's career.

I'm thinking, I'm gonna be a business man,

and I'm gonna serve out the dates that I have left with WWF,

protect our name, in case we want to come back.

I want to do these dates so we leave on good terms.

To be business men.

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 went on his own. We were done.

He tried it, had Kensuke Sasaki dressing as The Power Warrior,

spiked shoulder pads, face paint.

I said, that's our gimmick.

Hawk inadvertently leaves the future of the biggest tag team in limbo

by replacing Animal and continuing The Road Warriors' brand in Japan.

Standing in front of you lies the future in tag team,

my new partner, Power Warrior!

What are you doing? I'm not doing that 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 there were like two years there

where I didn't do anything with wrestling

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.

Three different times he'd been rushed into an E.R. of drug overdose.

He said he had a collision with an 18-wheeler

and rolled the pickup six times with no seatbelt, and walked away from it.

I don't know how many near death experiences Hawk had.

I know he had a few.

When he got Hep C, like he got slapped in the face like.

He's not the first wrestler that contracted that.

Guys in this wrestling business, man, used to do some crazy things,

speed balling, mixing drugs, things like that,

where guys would share a needle, "Oh, god dang. You guys are nuts."

He was on the interferon, the medicine you get for Hep C.

He fricking cured himself of the Hep C.

The worst part is the doctor gave him a green light to go do whatever,

so he thought that meant, okay, 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 is too tempting for either man to resist.

Vince McMahon has been great to us and the WWF has been great to us.

They're a class organization and we want to associate with class.

I knew it would come back to us being The Road Warriors.

We were so unique in the way we did everything

and so unique as a tag team.

Nothing else like it in wrestling.

Animal and I have become so close.

Probably the only tag team that's been around 14 years.

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, Daren Drozdoff.

They introduce Droz

and he was gonna be the youngest of The Road Warriors.

I remember when I first saw them. They had been icons forever.

Hey, this is Droz.

I'm one of the players they brought in for The Road Warriors

to work with and had a great run 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 said, "Hey, we want to do this angle where Hawk's,

we're gonna portray him as drunk and have it happen on TV."

-Is he inebriated? -The ref's not gonna start?

He'd come out like staggering around

while they were saying I was trying to separate them.

Droz just assaulting Hawk.

"We don't need him, he's messed up again."

Droz! Delivering Hawk's own move to Hawk!

Yeah, it was heartbreaking. But that's wrestling.

They take the dominant part of your personality

and make it bigger.

It was kind of tough. It's like, they're doing this.

But he had been through it and didn't have a problem with it.

They wanted Hawk to climb the Titantron,

they wanted me to portray like, "Hey, Hawk, don't jump."

Hawk, I wish I could say I know how you feel, but I can't!

But I care about your life!

Droz made up,

pretended he was gonna go up to the Titantron and help Hawk,

and Hawk had his demons and he was drunk.

When he went to grab him, he pushed them.

Get his shirt... Got away.

To be honest with you, I didn't really want to do the angle.

It 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 well.

And once again, The Road Warriors

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

We were wrestling in Australia, and you had the beach, got drinks,

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

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

had gotten ahold of some party essentials,

and they were pretty much up for two days.

When you're doing the coke and the muscle relaxer,

you're going like a yo-yo. Your heart can't take that.

And as I'm looking around the arena by the entrance,

I see this big crowd of people.

I'm thinking to myself, somebody came back,

they're laying down.

I push everybody aside and it's Hawk, they're putting an oxygen mask on.

I said, "Whoa. What are you doing? He's gotta wrestle."

They said, "He can't.

This guy's ready to stroke out," and 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 gotta come get me."

I said, "What's going on?"

He goes, "I am not dying in this fricking country."

Hawk and I were brothers, when we were on the road.

It was a hard situation because there was such love of the guy,

but the hate of what was going on.

So, I picked Hawk up,

checked him out of the hospital against doctor's orders,

and from Sydney, flew to LA

and from LA, he was going to Tampa.

I said, "You're on your own."

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.

Animal is faced with no choice but to strike out on his own

when Hawk's drug affliction threatens to ruin their careers.

I had gotten home off the road. I got done working out,

and there's six 300-pound guys called The Christian Power Team.

They did this event. I was pretty impressed by it.

Eventually, Joe shared that with me.

I say, "Why don't you come to this conference in Phoenix?

Come out." He goes, "Could Hawk come?"

They came to Phoenix. I remember Mike was the first one to the altar

and wanted to give his life to the lord.

And that weekend, we actually even baptized him.

In the 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 married a gal named Dale.

And he was very happy with her. He was a different person with her.

My motivation's different than when I first started.

My motivation now is my family, my fiancé.

To make sure if something happened, she'll not be hurt.

He used to say, "God has 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 had just moved the last piece of heavy furniture

for his wife, Dale.

And he said, "I'm gonna go upstairs and lay down. I don't feel well."

And I was out in my backyard, and I get a phone call.

Friend of mine, Bob, he goes, "Hey, have you talked to Mike?"

I said, "Yeah, man, talked to him last night."

"Huh, have you talked to him yet today?"

And I said, "No." And he goes, "Joe, Mike died."

It was an early Sunday morning, October 19th,

when wrestling was saddened to hear Michael Hegstrand had passed away

at the young age of 46.

It wasn't that he OD'd or whatever. It was his heart just stopped.

One of the hardest things I had to go through.

Well, I was just at home and Animal calls me and tells me.

You know, "Hawk is gone."

Joanie, my wife, I said, "We gotta get the..."

"We gotta get the black van and drive to the funeral."

The old black van I took him to the airport our first day.

I still had that black van.

Went to the K-Mart 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.

Fifty miles an hour. Got passed by 10,000 cars.

Do you remember the things you said at the eulogy?

Yeah. I remember.

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, from The Outlaw Josey 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, he wasn't Hawk.

Yeah. I think that is a key point is, he was still Mike.

We never looked at him as Hawk.

He really gave a shit about his friends.

He just had your back and he probably knew I needed it.

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.

A lot things in common. The gym, worked hard.

A great tag team.

Performed unbelievably in the ring. But, you know, totally different.

They were brothers, you know, brothers, they love each other,

but they'll fight once in a while.

There were times we were at each other's throat,

we were together so much.

But 99.9 percent of the time there was a common respect there.

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

From being stars in Japan, to being family members,

to being brothers, to everything else.

Now what do I do now he's gone? And that's the hardest thing.

We'll be remembered as the greatest tag team in wrestling

and I'd like to go down as a tough dude with a tough partner.

Hawk should be remembered as one half of the greatest tag team.

He had one of the best punches in wrestling,

one of the best interviews, for sure.

Well!

Hawk was definitely a character.

A part of the wrestling business died when Hawk died.

Subtitles by: Chris Ransley Iyuno-SDI Group