Road Warrior Hawk

Michael James Hegstrand (January 26, 1957 – October 19, 2003) was an American professional wrestler.

He was best known as Road Warrior Hawk, one half of the tag team known as the Road Warriors (or the "Legion of Doom"), with Road Warrior Animal.

While living in Minneapolis, Hegstrand attended Patrick Henry High School where he graduated in 1976.

After high school, he had various odd jobs to make ends meet such as a butcher.

It was while working as a bouncer at Gramma B's in the Twin Cities that he caught the eye of Eddie Sharkey, a well-known wrestling trainer.

Sharkey thought that Hegstrand, along with Joe Laurinaitis, Rick Rood and Barry Darsow could make it big in professional wrestling.

Hegstrand started his career as part of the Traveling All-Stars.

He was billed as "Crusher Von Haig" and wrestled in Vancouver.

Soon growing weary of the road and becoming homesick.

Hegstrand traveled back home with Rood.

Outside of the Road Warriors, Hawk was a sporadic challenger for world heavyweight championships on pay-per-view from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s.

Later in 1983, fate struck again when Laurinaitis's partner for the night found himself in legal trouble.

Needing a quick replacement, Ole Anderson gave Hegstrand a call, and he accepted the booking to team with Laurinaitis.

Neither man knew at the time that they would make wrestling history that day.

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, leather chaps, and face paint.

The look and name was taken from Mad Max 2: the Road Warrior, helping to paint the two as no-mercy monsters.

Their interview style was vicious, yet charismatic and a bit humorous.

Hawk was known for often beginning his promos with his trademark yell of "Wellllllllllllll!..."

and ending with his catch phrase of "Oooooooooh, what a ruuuuuuuuuuuush!"

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.

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 Crockett, 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, then wrestling as Krusher Khrushchev).

During their initial run in the Mid-Atlantic region of 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 in New Orleans.

Despite being heels at the time and using brutal tactics against Stan Lane and "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton, once again they were cheered by the crowd.

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.

The Road Warriors immediately signed with the World Wrestling Federation and were pushed into a feud with Demolition (which once again included their old training partner Barry Darsow).

Due to his health, Ax was replaced by a new member of Demolition, Crush.

He headlined the inaugural 1993 edition of Extreme Championship Wrestling's premier annual event, November to Remember.

(Popular rumor at the time cited a heart condition on Bill Eadie's part, but this has been discredited in recent years. An allergic reaction to shellfish while in Japan after WrestleMania VI was the real cause of Eadie's temporary health problem. He confirmed this in a shoot interview in 2007.) However, fans did not react as strongly to this new Demolition team as they had to the original configuration, and the feud was considered a disappointment.

During the early part of the feud, Legion of Doom often teamed with WWF World Heavyweight Champion The Ultimate Warrior in six-man tag matches against all three members of Demolition.