High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Joseph Aaron "Joe" Laurinaitis (born January 26, 1960) is an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring names, Road Warrior Animal and Road Warrior. Along with Road Warrior Hawk, Laurinaitis was one-half of the tag team known as the Road Warriors. Joe Laurinaitis grew up in Minnesota, having to work for a living from a very early age. Because of his size and love of power lifting, Joe was an imposing figure and thus a very effective bouncer. He worked as a bouncer at Grandma B's in the Twin Cities where he caught the eye of Eddie Sharkey, a well known wrestling trainer. Sharkey thought that Joe along with Mike Hegstrand, Richard Rood, and Barry Darsow could make it big in professional wrestling. He believed in them so much that he trained all four of them personally.