Road Warrior Animal Reacts To The Road Warriors "Dark Side Of The Ring"

Road Warrior Animal and host Joe Roderick recently discussed the Road Warriors episode from Dark Side of the Ring on the latest episode of the What A Rush Podcast. In it, Animal revealed they got some parts of it wrong.

"I think it was done more than fair. They got some parts of it wrong. I never said I've had enough, I'm done with the team. Hawk is the one who F'd off and left. Left us hanging like Paul Ellering said on the clip, we were in Hershey, PA waiting for Hawk at TV and Hawk never showed up," Animal explained.

"They didn't get in the part about Hawk calling Vince's secretary and saying I quit. They didn't get the part of me finishing up, being a business man. They didn't get the fact that Hawk just said, screw everything and took off to Japan and made his own deal. They didn't get any of that in so actually Vice was very nice in the fact they didn't do any of that stuff which they could have done very easily because that was all discussed."

The Road Warriors, who also worked as the Legion of Doom, were comprised of Road Warrior Animal (real name Joseph Laurinaitis) and Road Warrior Hawk (real name Michael Hegstrand). The team was formed in Georgia Championship Wrestling in the early 1980s by Ole Anderson. They worked for Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association from 1984-1986 and toured Japan with All Japan Pro Wrestling from 1985-1990. They had a run in Jim Crockett Promotions, which became WCW from 1986-1990.

In June 1990, Vince McMahon brought them to the WWF as Legion of Doom. After SummerSlam 1992, Hawk left the WWF and formed The Hell Raisers tag team with Kensuke Sasaki in New Japan Pro Wrestling. Sasaki worked as Power Warrior and Hawk worked as Hawk Warrior. A back injury shelved Road Warrior Animal for a significant length of time.

In 1996, Animal was healthy enough to return and he and Hawk went to WCW to work in their thriving tag team division. The team was only in WCW for about six months due to a contract dispute that involved Eric Bischoff.

In 1997, the Legion of Doom made a surprise return to the WWF. The group was repackaged as Legion of Doom 2000 at WrestleMania XIV in 1998. They left the WWF in early 1999. After leaving a second time, they returned to Japan with Animal returning to WCW in early 2001 before Vince McMahon purchased them. They also made a brief appearance together in TNA.

The Road Warriors worked under a per shot agreement on an episode of Monday Night Raw in 2003 and ended up going back to the independent circuit when they could not land full-time deals with WWE. Road Warrior Hawk died on October 19, 2003. In 2011, The Road Warriors and their long-time manager Paul Ellering were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

The Road Warriors "Dark Side of the Ring" drew 264,000 viewers. It was the second-best viewership in the history of the show.

H/t Chris Siggia for transcribing the quotes.