Pro wrestling’s ‘Animal’ of the Road Warriors tag team dies

Joseph “Animal” Laurinaitis, a Minneapolis bouncer who became one half of wrestling’s Road Warriors tag team, a tandem of spike-wearing Mad Maxtypes who terrorized opponents with a combination of old-fashioned brawling and highly coordinated aerial maneuvers, died Sept. 22 at a resort in Osage Beach, Mo. He was 60.

His death was confirmed by his family on his Twitter account. No cause was announced.

The Road Warriors were the most famous tag team of their era. With studded neck collars, spiked shoulder pads, mohawk hair styles and painted faces, Laurinaitis and Michael “Hawk” Hegstrand stormed into sold-out arenas, often for the event’s final match at a time when tag-teams rarely served as the main draw.

Their matches ended with an opponent sitting helplessly on Laurinaitis’s shoulders while Hegstrand jumped off the top rope and tackled the opponent to the mat - a move they called the “Doomsday Device.” They were billed as villains, but fans often rooted for them and wore their own Road Warrior costumes and face paint. The fans’ intense reaction to the duo became known as the “Road Warrior pop.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh what a rush,” Hegstrand growled as a prelude to their theme song, the soundtrack to their theatrical entrances which once had them riding to a match on motorcycles.

In the WWF, rebranded as s the Legion of Doom, their wrestling schedule became more grueling, injuries started to pile up. Laurinaitis said Hegstrand, already known for his hard-partying ways, regularly self-medicated with drugs and alcohol.

“Hawk was a straight-up vodka on the rocks guy,” Laurinaitis said in a 2020 episode of “Dark Side of the Ring” on Vice. “The muscle relaxers were a big part … I’d say of 85% [of those] who died early in the wrestling business.”

In 1992, at Wembley Stadium in London during an annual WWF event called Summerslam, McMahon moved their match earlier in the card when Hegstrand was acting erratically and later could not jump off the top rope for their finishing move.

The two split up for the first time in more than a decade, working independently for a few years and rehabbing from injuries, before reconciling and rejoining WWF in 1997. One of their wrestling storylines included Hawk’s substance abuse problems and tensions stemming from them in the ring. Laurinaitis said the angle cut too true to life and led them to quit the company.

Laurinaitis and Hegstrand became born-again Christians, which helped Hegstrand deal with his addictions. Michael “Hawk” Hegstrand died of a heart attack in 2003 at age 46.