Road Warriors: Danger, Death, & the Rush of Wrestling

Hard to believe I've had this for over two years and haven't reviewed it.  Of course, I never reviewed the DVD set either, so I'll have to fix that at some point as well.  Animal wrote this book and did a great job of it.

I was introduced to the Road Warriors a little after the rest of WCW's fans were,  perhaps in late 1983.  This is due to my cousin Tuck being a big fan of the program, and we watched it Saturday evenings when I was in West Virginia for college.  Yeah, there wasn't that much to do in Keyser at that point, especially if you didn't have a car.  I sure wanted to make a road trip to the Omni and see a card there, they always looked really great.

Man, we didn't know how good we had it then with WCW at that point.    I watched for about five months, until I moved back to CO.  Oddly enough, the Road Warriors followed me as well, since the AWA was the "home" territory.  I was rather surprised to see them invading the AWA when I found the local "All Star Wrestling" program.  I was just figuring things out about territories and had no idea Black Saturday had just happened over in Georgia.

The book takes Animal from his origins in Minnesota all the way to Hawk's untimely passing.  It moves along smoothly and Animal doesn't mince words. He talks about steroids, drug use, injuries and doesn't try to sugar coat anything.  That is commendable.  His style of describing matches is very colorful and still rings of kayfabe.  Some habits are hard to break, and I don't blame him at all for that.

The way the team was formed is fascinating, and how they came up with the haircuts and face paint is cool.  He also minces no words about Hawk's drug use, and their eventual split about it.  Reading about their reconciliation is pretty touching as well.  I can hardly read about Hawk's passing.

I highly recommend this book to any wrestling fan.