Question

Scott,

Question from the recent Flashback concerning the LOD. Dave said that "the LOD have been such a disappointment and have basically brought down both teams in the process".

Were Animal and Hawk really that big of a disappointment during their first WWF run?

Thanks.

​Yup! You gotta understand, although they’ve since been retroactively turned into "WWE Legends" by Vince and the machine, at the time this was a major flop for them. The Warriors had a history of coming into a new territory up until that point, popping business, and then settling down the middle again before leaving. Every other debut saw them come in as these dangerous monsters who destroyed jobbers in 10 seconds on TV and no-sold everything, then gave crazed promos where Paul Ellering would translate and tie it together. So what did Vince do?

1. Immediately change their name to protect Ultimate Warrior and soften their image, plus give Hawk a catchphrase.

2. Completely expose them by having them do lengthy squashes on TV where they’d even have to sell sometimes, and then put them in six-man matches around the horn where they’d have to sell, again to protect Ultimate Warrior.

3. ​Take away their manager so that Hawk would have do normal promos that didn’t involve stories about rats gnawing on his arm while he was homeless in Chicago. Admittedly Ellering got a big fat payday from WCW to go away and he was more interested in dogsledding anyway, but this hurt a lot.

4. Have them come in as babyfaces immediately, assuming that fans would all know who they were. They didn’t.

The entire reason that the Warriors were signed is because business was WAY down early in 1990 and Vince wanted to have TOP MEN.

It was the same reasoning why Kerry Von Erich was signed, because he wanted guys to come in and boost business to take the load of Warrior, who was clearly struggling. And despite immediately sticking the LOD into main events around the country, they simply didn’t draw at ALL. And yes, it was considered a giant disappointment at the time. They weren’t signed to some standard midcard tryout contract, they were given a large amount of money and a lot more freedom than most teams got at that point. Yeah, eventually stuff like merchandising caught up to the levels where they became big stars, but they were supposed to come in and be Hogan/Warrior level megastars, and they just weren’t.