This week’s induction has a special place in my heart. Despite teaming for but one month, and despite appearing on countless listicles of tag teams you totally don’t remember (sometimes multiple lists by the same publication), K-Kwik & Road Dogg were unforgettable in the O’Donnell household.
And not just for their questionable fashion sense, either.
No, what really sealed the deal was their theme music. Every night, K-Kwik and Road Dogg would rap their way to the ring, insisting they were getting rowdy. How rowdy, exactly? Rowdy enough to “move some things”. Not break some things, not wreck some things, just move some things.
Rowdy or not, these fellows sounded quite handy.
“Rowdy” might have been thoroughly silly, but it was certainly memorable. For years, my brother and I would break into this rap every time someone used the word rowdy or asked us to “move some things”. Given our dad was a public school teacher, and our house was hopelessly cluttered, this happened more times than we could possibly count.
Dad would come home complaining about his punk students being rowdy, and on cue, bro and I would start up:
“We get rowdy! ‘Bout to move some thangs!/
K-Kwik & Road Dogg ‘bout to move some thangs!/
We get rowdy! ‘Bout to move some thangs!/
We gonna move some thangs!”
Considering we didn’t have a single match of Kwik & Dogg’s on tape, and considering every wrestling content mill deems them hopelessly obscure, I think that was pretty good.
This homegrown meme plagued our house for a decade until we grew up (kind of) and moved out…
…which meant—you guessed it!
“We get rowdy! ‘Bout to move some thangs!/
K-Kwik & Road Dogg ‘bout to move some thangs!/
We get rowdy! ‘Bout to move some thangs!/
We gonna move some thangs!”
Looking at that photo again, you’d probably assume Road Dogg was having a mid-life crisis and started dressing like R-Truth (or Tupac). But you’d be wrong… on multiple counts, actually.
First, Road Dogg was only 31 here. Second, it was actually Roadie who wore this look first. Canonically, R-Truth copied him.
The duo got their start one Sunday night at WWF New York. Road Dogg, aimless after the break-up of D-X, was hosting Heat. Little did he know, he was about to reinvent himself.
And no, I don’t mean his truly bizarre story about pooping in the middle of a Manhattan sidewalk, blaming it on a chihuahua, and then making love to the dog.
Backstage, Road Dogg received a surprise visitor. It wasn’t the NYPD—it was a fresh-faced newcomer named K-Kwik.
The aspiring wrestler thought Road Dogg could help him make it in the big leagues.
It turned out, they had more in common than that. See, Road Dogg was to perform a musical number that night, and after years of country, he’d decided to do some rapping. By sheer coincidence, K-Kwik was a rapper himself and asked to tag along on stage. Only if he didn’t screw it up, said Road Dogg.
Considering he had only ten minutes to learn the song, I’d say Kwik did pretty well. Equally impressive were his extensive lyrical re-writes. I can only assume, before K-Kwik showed up, that Road Dogg was all ready to rap about one real G with a real-ass sound.
Still, I’ve got to wonder: If K-Kwik had never met Road Dogg before, how did his voice get on the backing track?
To return the favor and solidify this new Rap ’n’ Wrestling connection, K-Kwik made a truly baffling appearance the following night on Raw. A full decade before he became an airhead comedy character, the future R-Truth inexplicably cost Road Dogg an important match.
Facing William Regal, Roadie had just hit European champ with his patented knee drop when, apropos of nothing, K-Kwik came on the mic. “The D-O-double-G and K-Kwik gettin’ rowdy!” shouted the rookie, rushing down to the ring to make the save. Wait, the “save”!?
No, you didn’t miss anything. Thanks to a backstage miscue, K-Kwik came down to rescue Road Dogg from a match he was currently winning.
As a confused Road Dogg sought answers from referee Teddy Long, K-Kwik slid into the ring and clocked Regal with the microphone, costing his pal the match and the title. No need to thank him—that’s just what friends do!
“It ain’t time for you to be out here scrappin’”, explained K-Kwik. “It’s time for you to raise the roof and get rowdy and start rappin’!”
This rookie had decided that Road Dogg had to rap with him right then and there, two and a half minutes into a title match…
…and miraculously, Road Dogg didn’t mind at all! Nor was he freaked out that this guy he’d met just one night earlier was already dressing like him.
By Smackdown, K-Kwik & Road Dogg were a bona fide tag team, hitting the ring in matching oversized shirts that just said, “Boff”.
That word, Baff boffled me (or something like that) for quite some time before I learned it was just the name of the clothing line.
A typical entrance saw K-Kwik dance circles around Road Dogg while his partner stepped lively.
Kwik did most of the rapping, while Road Dogg shouted enthusiastically, often in sync with the music.
In the ring, the young rookie was spectacular, flying around the ring and out of it…
…really driving home the generation gap between him and his battle-worn veteran partner (two and a half years his senior).
Now, besides the word ass, their act was pretty innocuous, but that didn’t stop Right to Censor from objecting. Getting rowdy? objected Val Venis. What ever happened to getting morality?
If the teams had feuded just a week or two longer, the RTC would have found something legitimate to get upset about. See, towards the end of their five-week run, Road Dogg started got noticeably sloppy, both in the ring and on the mic.
Shortly after their first PPV title match, K-Kwik & Road Dogg told all their haters to take a chill pill. But it seems Road Dogg got so chill, they had to edit him out of their entrance. Road Dogg was suspended, then fired, thrusting K-Kwik into the spotlight.
By “spotlight”, of course, I mean B-show hell, as K-Kwik got stuck on Heat and Jakked for the next eight months.
It seems with Road Dogg gone, the WWF couldn’t find a thing for K-Kwik to do. This K-Kwik:
Within a year of his WWF release, he’d join TNA to become the first Black NWA world champion…
…and eventually team with Road Dogg and K-Dogg as the Three Man Venn Diagram…
…later renamed 3 Live Kru.