Road Warrior Hawk was a fan of one of horror’s most iconic characters and used that connection to create his famous ‘What A Rush!’ catchphrase.
The topic came up on a recent episode of the Table Talk podcast with Karrion Kross as the special guest. Kross spoke about some of the TV and film inspirations for his wrestling persona, then co-host Mo Lightning joked that fans were lucky he wasn’t watching “‘Spongebob’ and Friends that day.” Kross said “or Spongebob and A Nightmare On Elm Street,” and D-Von revealed that the latter ultimately inspired one of wrestling’s most famous catchphrases.
“Something was already taken from A Nightmare On Elm Street, it was by the legendary Hawk. ‘Ohhh… what a rush!’ That was when [Freddy Krueger] had the needles on his hand and the girl was the drug addict, he took the needles and [killed her with them] and then rolled his eyes back [and said the phrase],” D-Von explained.
“The next thing you know, about a month later [after the film came out] you see Hawk on TV doing it, and everybody knew it was [inspired by] Freddy. That part of that scene in the movie got over so good that everybody was talking about it, so the minute Hawk did it,” D-Von noted, “we knew exactly what it was in reference to.”
Kross said he also put the connection together as soon as D-Von said it, noting that the film was A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 – Dream Warriors, released in theatres in 1987.
If you use this transcript, credit WrestleZone and link back to this post.
Kross also explained the inspiration behind his new ring gear on the show; read his comments at this link.
Check out the scene from ‘Dream Warriors’ that inspired Road Warrior Hawk’s catchphrase below:
