7 Wrestlers Who Quit WWE Over Angles

7. The Road Warriors

The spiky-shouldered double-act of The Road Warriors were such a popular pairing in the late '80s NWA that WWE created their very own version in response, in the shape of the equally dominant Axe and Smash of Demolition.

So what did the company do when they finally caught up with the face-painted pair on the Fury Road? For once, the obvious: matched the two colossal tag teams against one another. Unfortunately, fate intervened, forcing Bill 'Axe' Eadie to step out due to health issues, replaced with the much crapper Crush. The feud failed to ignite, and the newly-christened Legion of Doom were left something of a busted flush.

How could the NWA powerhouses' intensity be rekindled then? This is where things become more familiarly idiotic: a ventriloquist's dummy. Original segments involving 'Rocco', who had an arseful of manager Paul Ellering's arm, were such a disaster that they never aired. Nevertheless, McMahon persisted with the idea that Hawk and Animal were taking inspiration from a puppet.

It turned out to have the opposite effect. Michael 'Hawk' Hegstrand was so appalled by the angle, that he vanished from the company shortly after his hazy off-his-Rocco cameo at SummerSlam '92. In perhaps the finest piece of wrestling apocrypha out there, he was said to have subsequently joined a sect of the Hell's Angels with John 'The Berzerker' Nord in London.