Barry Darsow, better known as Demolition’s Smash and The Repo Man, was a recent guest on Wrestling With History to talk about his feud with The Road Warriors back in the early 90s. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
On The Road Warriors arriving in WWE:
“It was really a different situation going against the Road Warriors because we were two similar teams and the way Vince McMahon put the whole thing together, it didn’t really work that well. I thought that they were going to keep us apart for a while and really make it something special, but it wasn’t. It was almost like Vince was trying to get rid of Demolition and bring the Road Warriors in, and it was hard to get the Road Warriors over because at that time we were over…but we had really good matches and everything went really well, but it could have been so much better.”
Says talent were apprehensive to work with Road Warriors:
“There’d be a chalkboard before the TV (tapings) and it would have whoever everybody wrestled (that night). Whoever the Road Warriors name was next to you could just see their heads hanging down like ‘oh my God, here we go.’ But, (they are) great guys.”
Thoughts on Paul Ellering:
“Paul (Ellering) was so smart. He’s been in the business for so much longer than we were when we got started, and he knew that he had a tag team that was different than everybody and was the top tag team anywhere. He was smart enough to tell these guys, ‘we’re not just going to sign a contract for just this one company; we are going to go around’ and what ended up happening is they were the top guys in every territory that way. They never wore them out. The promoters never beat them to get other people over, so they just kept winning in every territory they were at. You always wanted to work with those guys because then you’re in main event matches all over.”
Getting Animal and Hawk over:
“When the Road Warriors were coming in, it was tough for them to come in when we were already the baby faces. They were like heels (to WWE fans) coming in because they were from the southern organization and we were from the WWF at the time. That’s where the matches were a little difficult…we were a little bit more over as baby faces than they were, and then Vince tried to put masks on us and we ended up with Brian Adams as a third partner; we had all these different scenarios to try and turn us heel, and still the people didn’t really want to root for the Road Warriors yet. It took quite a while to get them over as baby faces and that was around the time that we left.”
Whether Demolition was a copy of the Road Warriors:
“When I first went up there…they had pictures of the Demolition with the spikes and the masks and stuff… The Road Warriors were down (in the NWA) from the movie Road Warrior, so (the WWF) had to have their guys that were kind of like that…I don’t know that for sure. I know we worked completely different than they did, we did have a different look, our interviews were different, so we were different from them.”
Full interview below.