Kim Laurinaitis, widow of Road Warrior Animal, and her daughter Lindsay appeared on the Busted Open podcast this week to respond to the A&E Biography episode on the Road Warriors, saying Kim was never consulted and only found out the episode was airing when she saw it advertised during the Von Erichs biography.
“I didn’t even know that there was going to be an episode,” Kim told hosts Dave LaGreca and Tommy Dreamer. “I found out when the Von Erichs episode came and I saw their picture advertised on it and I started questioning it. Then I was contacted last year in February about a biography coming out. WWE had contacted me, my agent had contacted them back. We were in negotiations about it and discussing it. I wanted to make sure that all of the family was going to be involved. And then their legal team took it and told us nothing. It went crickets.”
She said she followed up with WWE multiple times throughout 2025 and was told nothing was being done, that it would be cut or bumped to the next series. She believed nothing had been filmed until the episode surfaced. “It’s like a sucker punch.”
The biological details of Animal’s death hit Kim the hardest. Animal died on their wedding anniversary in 2018 after collapsing during what she described as a perfect day of celebrating. She attempted CPR after he fell on top of her and spent years processing what followed.
“[He’s] sitting there laughing, and then falls right on top of you out of nowhere, and then you’re left trying to do CPR, and you question, did you do enough, did you do this. I never understood PTSD until that day, and how much it can take control of mental health and things like that.”
She said the way the documentary was edited brought all of that rushing back. She was also angered by how it appeared to portray his second wife as his wife, which generated a wave of questions directed at her from fans.
On the people featured in the documentary, Kim was direct about who she felt should not have been included.
“I feel like he was totally disrespected, especially with some of the people that was used in that episode. He would not have wanted to be on there. Period. And I feel like a couple of the people is like the pot calling the kettle black.”
She pointed specifically to individuals who had distanced themselves from Animal in his later years.
“Half of them wouldn’t even get up and come over there and speak to Joe, and I’m the one who watched him hurt over this. Some of them were his very good friends for a long time and then at the last ten years he asked, ‘What did I do?’ You’re questioning yourself, am I not relevant now? And it messes with your mind. I hated to see him hurt like that, and then you see that on there.”
Kim named Bruce Prichard as one of the people she objected to appearing in the episode, saying their relationship had already deteriorated publicly.
“I’ll be quite honest, Bruce Prichard, I battled with him online lately, and he rips my husband on his podcast a lot of times, or little clips, and I’m thinking, why are you even on here talking about him? We know you don’t really care for it. I would have rather had people that had positive things to say and really meant them.”
She also pushed back on the heavy focus on Hawk’s addiction struggles, calling it an incomplete and unfair portrait.
“Why can’t we be kind? Why can’t we talk about just good things? Why can’t we talk about Japan, and the other federations, the Georgia Championship Wrestling, the things that brought them up to be who they were? Hawk had so many other sides that were beautiful about him, and such a giving soul. They want to hear all this bad crap. We all have things that we struggle with and we fight with.”
Lindsay, who is Animal’s stepdaughter, addressed the online criticism questioning her place in the family.
“From the time that I came into his life, it was made very, very clear, there will be every step would be left at the door. We are a family. Wherever he went, he talked about his kids and his grandkids all the time. That was his drive for everything that he did in his life. That was who he was.”
Kim’s tribute to Animal closed the interview.
“Super smart man. I thought he should have been a coach or some kind of scout. That was his gift, was to teach others. My whole goal in life is just to keep honoring what he would want and what would make him happy.”
The full interview is available on the Busted Open podcast on Sirius XM and Pro Wrestling Nation 24/7, Channel 156.
