10 Wrestling Legends Whose WWE Returns Hurt Their Legacy
4. Animal
The Legion of Doom are an incredibly important tag team. They were partly responsible for the tag team boom of the 1980s by popularising the concept of the powerful, brawler tag team, and as the Road Warriors, they were a top draw throughout the decade.
Their success brought countless copycat acts, and Hawk and Animal eventually jumped to WWE in 1990. As the Legion of Doom, they defeated Demolition (often pegged as one of said copycat groups) to become WWE World Tag Team Champions, though they eventually broke up, and Hawk was buried beneath career-wrecking alcoholism storyline.
LoD are rightly revered for their tag accomplishments, but Animal’s late career work is best left forgotten. Hawk passed away in 2003, and with a new LoD DVD to promote, WWE decided to bring Animal back for a nostalgia run in 2005. All well and good, until the decided to team him with Heidenreich.
A clumsy and awkward wrestler, Heidenreich had the LoD’s requisite size, but none of the intimidation factor. He took to aping Animal’s face paint and spiked shoulder pads, and while the duo were able to capture the Tag Team Championships, their run was nothing memorable. Heidenreich was fired a few months after dropping the straps, prompting a solo run from Animal as “The Road Warrior”, but he was several years removed from his prime, and never a particularly exciting wrestler in the first place.
Animal left the company in June 2006 as an immobile old man rather than the legend of old.