Michael Hegstrand encyclopedia topics

Career

Hegstrand attended High School in Minneapolis, at Henry High School where he graduated in 1976. After high school, he had various odd jobs to make ends meet. Due to his size and love of power lifting, Hegstrand was an imposing figure and thus a very effective bouncer. He would work as a bouncer at Grandma B's in the Twin Cities where he caught the eye of Eddie Sharkey, a well known wrestling trainer. Sharkey thought that Hegstrand, along with Joe Laurinaitis, Rick Rude, and Barry Darsow could make it big in professional wrestling. In fact, he believed in them so much that he trained all four of them personally.

Road Warriors

For a more detailed profile on Hawk’s time as a Road Warrior see: Road Warriors

When Paul Ellering was looking to put together a stable of heels in Georgia Championship Wrestling called The Legion of Doom it was decided to pair Laurinaitis with Hegstrand and change their names to Animal and Hawk respectively; thus, the Road Warriors were born. To look more intimidating the two shaved their heads into Mohawks and started wearing studded dog collars, spiked shoulder pads, and face paint. The look and name was taken from The Road Warrior, helping to paint the two as no-mercy monsters. Their interview style was vicious, yet charismatic and a bit humorous.

The team was an instant hit, revolutionizing the tag-team scene with their power moves, no mercy attitudes, and innovative face paint that would spawn many future imitators in wrestling. In Georgia they won the NWA National Tag Team Championship four times before moving on to bigger promotions such as the American Wrestling Association in the US and All Japan Pro Wrestling in Japan, winning tag-team titles wherever they went.

NWA

Their hard hitting style, no nonsense attitude, and winning ways made the Road Warriors fan favorites wherever they went; even when they were booked as heels, the fans refused to boo them. They were so in demand that they started to split their time between the AWA and the National Wrestling Alliance until finally leaving the AWA for big money contracts with the NWA and a huge push for the monster duo. The move paid off instantly as they won the inaugural Jim Crocket Sr. Memorial Cup Tag-Team Tournament and feuded with the top stars of the NWA such as The Four Horsemen and the Russian Team (which included the Road Warriors’ old training buddy Barry Darsow). During their initial run in the NWA they helped popularize the WarGames match, the Scaffold match, and their trademark Chicago Street Fight.

In 1988 the Road Warriors engaged in a violent feud with The Powers of Pain (The Barbarian and The Warlord), the first team that could truly match the Road Warriors in power (and who were one of the most well known Road Warrior clones). The Powers of Pain even went so far as to injure Animal’s eye (kayfabe) during a weightlifting competition. When Animal returned, he initially wore a hockey goalie mask to protect his eye. The angle abruptly ended when the Powers of Pain left the NWA after finding out they were booked against the Road Warriors in a series of Scaffold Matches and they did not want to get hurt by falling off the scaffold.

Near the end of 1988, the Road Warriors captured the NWA World Tag Team Championship from The Midnight Express whom they mauled in short order to win the titles. After being the “Uncrowned champions” for a long time, the Road Warriors’ run with the tag-team titles was short lived. Crooked referee Teddy Long used a fast count to cheat the Road Warriors out of their titles. In their last year with the NWA, the Warriors feuded mainly with The Varsity Club, The Samoan Swat Team, and The Skyscrapers before leaving the NWA in the summer of 1990.

WWF

The Road Warriors immediately signed with the World Wrestling Federation and were pushed into a feud with the most famous of all “Road Warrior Clones”, Demolition (which once again included their old training partner Barry Darsow). Ax, due to his ailing health, was replaced by Crush; however, the magic of the original Demolition was gone and the feud did not live up to the high hopes that the fans had.

Just over a year after signing with the WWF, the Legion of Doom won the WWF World Tag Team Titles and held them for about 8 months. When they lost the titles they briefly left the WWF only to return with long time manager Paul Ellering by their side, as well as a wooden dummy called “Rocco”. Both members of the L.O.D. thought the gimmick was stupid, as did most of the fans and it led to Hawk quitting the WWF, leaving Animal on his own for the first time in 9 years. When Animal suffered a severe back injury a short while later, everyone thought it was the end of the legendary team.

Hawk competed as a singles wrestler in Europe and Japan and although he won nearly every singles match he competed in, he was usually seen (by North American and Japanese fans at least) as a tag team wrestler. Thus, he always fought either mid-card opponents or made teams with better-known singles stars. When he joined New Japan Pro Wrestling he was immediately paired with Kensuke Sasaki, then simply known as a good mid-carder, as the Hell Raisers (Sasaki adopting the face paint and gimmick Power Warrior). The two dominated NJPW's tag team ranks for a while through their two wins of the IWGP World Tag Team Championship, but no North American promoter thought about bringing them as a team, due to Sasaki's affiliation with NJPW. As a singles wrestler, Hawk found success in Europe, winning the CWA World Heavyweight Championship.

In 1993 Hawk made sporadic appearances in World Championship Wrestling as a mystery partner of Dustin Rhodes and later as a replacement partner when Davey Boy Smith left the federation but nothing permanent ever came of it. In 1995, he reappeared in WCW. He helped Sting in a feud against Meng and Kurasawa, but a proposed singles feud with Kurasawa fell through due to an arm injury (in kayfabe Kurasawa broke Hawk's arm using a cross armbreaker, to let Hawk rest). Hawk returned the following year, but this time, he also brought Animal back with him as his back had finally recovered enough for him to return to active competition. During that time, Sting and Lex Luger had won the WCW World Tag Team Championship and the Warriors challenged them, to no success. The rise of the nWo precluded further challenges, and they headed back to the WWF.

After leaving WCW they returned to the WWF where the Legion of Doom took part in the feud between ”Stone Cold” Steve Austin and the Hart Foundation, siding with Austin. The Legion of Doom also became 2 time tag-team champions on October 7, 1997 when they defeated The Godwinns. In November 1997 the Legion of Doom faced the newly formed New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn) and shockingly lost the titles to the upstart team. After several unsuccessful challenges the L.O.D. were repackaged as Legion of Doom 2000 with manager Sunny, although she did not stay with the team for long.

Attitude Controversy

In 1998 the Legion of Doom became involved in an angle playing off Hegstrand’s real life drug and alcohol problems. The character Hawk started to show up drunk or “unable to perform” on TV. As Hawk proved more and more erratic and unreliable, a 3rd L.O.D. member, Puke, was introduced to team with Animal while Hawk dealt with his personal issues. The storyline ended with accusations that Puke had been the "enabler" of Hawk's problems, exploiting them to take Hawk’s place in the team. During this segment, Hawk infamously was shown to have fallen off the big-screen Titan Tron. Neither Hegstrand nor Laurinaitis approved of the WWF exploiting Hegstrand’s personal problems, essentially making light of them by turning it into a storyline and left the WWF.

After the WWF

While the Road Warriors never officially broke up, Animal started making an increasing number of solo appearances after they left the WWF as Hegstrand struggled with drug and alcohol addiction and generally did not appear at many wrestling shows during this time. In 2001 Hegstrand was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that stopped him from wrestling for a short while. He was able to overcome its effects and returned to a regular working schedule later on.

Laurinaitis and Hegstrand became born-again Christians in 2003 and appeared at a number of Christian wrestling events run by Ted DiBiase and Nikita Koloff hoping to reignite their tag-team career. They also appeared in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in late 2002 and early 2003 as part of a group that opposed Vince Russo’s faction Sports Entertainment Xtreme but only wrestled one actual match for the federation.

Animal and Hawk made a surprise appearance on RAW on May 12 2003 when they took on Kane & Rob Van Dam for the World Tag Team Championship. Although Hawk and Animal came up short in their attempt to become three-time champions, it was clear that Hawk had defeated the demons that had once kept him from competing, and the Road Warriors had hopes of returning to WWE.

Later in 2003, Hawk made an appearance with the All World Wrestling League, a take-off of the 'original' Big Time Wrestling that was owned by the Original Sheik who died earlier that year; it was run by the sons of the Sheik...Eddie and Tom Farhat. They decided to book Hawk for an event; that event was the last time Hawk wrestled, as he died a few months later.

Death

Hegstrand died on October 19, 2003 in the early morning in his home in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. His friends said that he and his wife Dale had recently bought a condominium near their current home and were packing their boxes the night before. Hegstrand said that he felt tired and went to take a nap. When his wife checked on him at about 1 A.M., he had died of an apparent heart attack. At the time of his death, Hawk and Animal were working on a book about their careers.

Animal returned to WWE in mid-2005 and decided to dedicate his entire run to his late tag team partner, especially dedicating his tag team title victory with Heidenreich at the Great American Bash to him.