Back
Joe Laurinaitis, a Star as Tag Team’s ‘Animal,’ Dies at 60
Oct 2, 2020
Joe Laurinaitis, half of a tag team known as the Road Warriors who brought a brash, muscular showmanship to professional wrestling in the 1980s and were among the sport’s biggest stars in that era, died on Sept. 22 in Missouri. He was 60. World Wrestling Entertainment announced his death . No cause was given. TMZ Sports reported that he died while vacationing at a resort in Osage Beach. Mr. Laurinaitis was known as Road Warrior Animal, and with his partner, Michael Hegstrand — a.k a. Road Warrior Hawk — made a splashy entry into the sport. Tag-team wrestling had faded from prominence in the 1970s as individual wrestlers took the spotlight, but the Road Warriors, with chiseled physiques, garish face paint and costumes, and a name drawn from a 1981 Mel Gibson movie, helped the two-man version come roaring back. “Perhaps the most successful tag team gimmick in history, Hawk and Animal came into being in 1983 as post-apocalyptic biker toughs,” Greg Oliver and Steven Johnson wrote in “The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Tag Teams” (2005). “They rewrote the book on power and size, thrashing all comers.”
The book ranked them second only to the Fabulous Kangaroos, an act that worked an Australian theme, among the greatest tag teams in wrestling history. The Road Warriors got a crowd’s attention before they even made it to the ring, thanks to their signature entrance music, Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” a song that opens with thudding percussion that is soon joined by a screaming guitar. “When you heard that drum beat,” Mr. Laurinaitis told the podcast “ Chair Shots to the Cranium ” in 2018, “and you heard that guitar riff, you’d know that someone was going to get their head kicked in.”
0Shares
0Comments
0Favorites
0Likes
Say something to impress...
Loading...
Comments
Hot

No content at this moment.

Relevant people
The New York Times
37313 Followers
Best news coverage from the best media.
Related