Remembering Rowdy Roddy Piper

The recent passing of professional wrestling star Rowdy Roddy Piper (no quotation marks; that's his name) came as a shock to the wrestling world. While many stars of his generation have well-documented health problems and nagging injuries, Piper was by all accounts in good shape, all things considered. Regardless of that, Rowdy Roddy Piper was a real virtuoso in the world of wrestling.

Piper's obvious skill is his mouth, but I don't want to undersell his in-ring ability. Admittedly, he wasn't rewriting the book on moves like Tiger Mask, but Piper was a 'classic'-style wrestler with a heel moveset and amazing psychology. Piper knew when to do everything, and why, and he was happy to take a beating as well as dish one out. While few of his matches would appear on an all-time list, his promos and feuds are among the best ever.

What I remember about Piper the most are moments. A few are in the ring, like his chain match with Greg Valentine that cost him  hearing in one ear, but most are of the yammering variety. One that really stands out from his pre-WWF days is an incident in the Portland/Vancouver territory done in 1980 for All-Star Wrestling (I think, anyway). Piper and Rick "Not 'The Model' Yet" Martel were feuding with the Sheepherders, a pair of brutal New Zealanders who WWF fans will remember as the comical Bushwhackers. Piper delivers a heated monologue, the takes a full, unopened bottle of beer and breaks it on his own forehead (this wasn't a gimmick bottle, either). Piper keeps on talking trash with blood pouring down his face, and what he said doesn't even matter. It was gold.

The man born Roderick Toombs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, had more than his share of over-the-top moments as well. His visit to Bob Orton's doctor, and basically anything else he did on Tuesday Night Titans, still cracks me up. When Bad News Brown insisted on fighting a black opponent, Piper actually painted half of his body black, giving a crazy promo that started with him standing 90 degrees from the camera so as not to giveaway the paintjob right away... I've heard this called insensitive, but it was the kind of thing Piper could pull off. The visual is still worth it, even if the angle wasn't great. His Intercontinental Championship in 1992... the list goes on. Even in his recent appearances, he kept up with the younger stars on the mic, even while some other 'legends' of his time turned into Mike Adamle (too recent? how about Art Donovan or, if you're going for a more metaphorical reference, Ted Arcidi).

I won't get into Piper's success as the first pro wrestler to deliver a watchable movie performance in They Live, a movie that feels as relevant today as it did way back when. I will not go into Piper's Pit, or the many, many angles and classic moments that happened in those segments, because there are too many. But I'll list a few of the imitators, because I love doing that:

• The Barber Shop
• The Flower Shop
• Carlito's Cabana,
• The Highlight Reel
• The Peep Show (I love Christian)
• MizTV
• Cafe de Rene
• The Cutting Edge, with Not Matt Hardy's Friend Anymore
• The Snake Pit
• The VIP Lounge (MVP was great)
• A Flair for the Gold, with Ric Flair - this might predate Piper's Pit, but Lensman predates Superman, and nobody gives a fuck about Lensman. A Flair for the Gold was short-lived and not all that good, despite the ever-talented Ric.
• The Heartbreak  Hotel, with Shawn Michaels
• The Body Shop, with Jesse Ventura
• The Brother Love Show

There are more, but I honestly don't know if the Internet is just making up 'Mulligan's BBQ' and 'Funk's Grill'.

Anyway...

Rowdy Roddy Piper was a legend, one of the best heels and all-around entertainers in professional wrestling history, and a huge part of the WWF's boom period. Every true fan of the business will miss him, and even if you hate him you'll remember Roddy Piper.

Oh, and he boxed Mr. T at Wrestlemania.

When Worlds Collude

In 1994, World Championship Wrestling was a big name in pro-wrestling, if still looking up at the then-WWF. In fact, by late 1994 Ted Turner's baby was picking up steam, and a few big names from Connecticut as well, as the stage was set for what became the vaunted Monday Night Wars. It was the calm before the storm, as the wrestling business was struggling to find an identity in a changing marketscape.

And so it was that both the WWF and WCW were trying numerous things to stay ahead of the curve and the competition, having finally given up the ghost of the 'Rock 'n Wrestling' era about 3 years too late. Rising star Eric Bischoff (as opposed to 'I created the NWO and won't let go of it' Eric Bischoff) decided to go the cross-promotional route, and established a working relationship with upstart Mexican promotion AAA (possibly the dumbest acronym ever associated with wrestling). This resulted in the co-promotion and broadcasting of AAA's pay-per-view event, When Worlds Collide, on November 6, 1994. Not the legendary event it could have been, perhaps, but it was a big deal, and emblematic of the potential of Eric Bischoff. It wouldn't be long before WCW pulled ahead in the ratings, and for the first time in their history WWF was forced to acknowledge their competition, even going so far as to establish 'talent exchange' programs that brought in performers from ECW and Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountian Wrestling. AAA enjoyed a brief surge in success, but a variety of factors in its native Mexico forced them to give up a good number of talented performers… many of whom headed back over the border to work for Bischoff and Paul Heyman, comprising a large portion of WCW's great cruiserweight division, and bringing authentic lucha libre action to the varied and chaotic ECW product.

20 years later, the landscape of professional wrestling is much different. WCW is long gone, having collapsed under its own weight in 2000, its legacy owned, and distorted, by WWE, it's imprint on the business fading fast. While WCW was the #2 company in 1994, and a strong #2 at that, that honor now belongs to Antonio Inoki's New Japan Pro Wrestling. On January 4, 2015 at the Tokyo Dome, NJPW will present Wrestle Kingdom, Japan's Wrestlemania, and for the first time a Japanese PPV will be brought to fans in States, thanks to the globetrotting exploits of second generation performer and promoter Jeff Jarrett. Double J's Global Force Wrestling is presenting the broadcast, and to sweeten the deal they've brought in the greatest living wrestling announcer, and in the minds of many, many fans the greatest ever, good old JR, Jim Ross.

So what does this mean? What does this say about the state of the industry now versus back in 1994?

Well… not a whole lot, really. But it's been so long since we had a foreign PPV event brought to the US like this, the differences are really what makes the comparison worthwhile. When Worlds Collide was something of a shot in the dark for WCW, while being a no-brainer for AAA. Jeff Jarrett has already tried going up against WWE; the saga of TNA/Impact Wrestling continues, stumblingly, without him. GFW is a new idea, or perhaps an old idea reworked for today's market. Cross-promotional supercards were a a rare but guaranteed draw back in the territory days; rivalries and backbiting in the seedy world of promoters made the logistics impossible most of the time, but the fans would turn up if they could get the damn shows together. As the business expanded into the 80's, a corporate structure replaced the territory system and WWF began swallowing up the competition, and the NWA was forced to band together to keep alive, leading to the formation of WCW. Currently, the big-business model of promotion has left things stale, and it's impossible to expect anybody to rival WWE, or even come close, by mimicing that business model.

So Jarrett and the GWF have gone back to the territories, so to speak. Today the whole world is fair game, and Jarrett is establishing relationships with promotions in every wrestling hotspot in the world. NJPW is the big one, of course, but if this all goes well we cold be seeing something unfold that combines the NWA-style confederation of promoters with a singular brand delivering their content.

Who wouldn't want to see, just for the sake of argument, the top guys in South Africa, Australia, Germany, Ireland, and Japan face off in an international tournament? Globespanning tag teams? Or maybe just the best matches from all the worldwide partners? A chance for U.S. wrestling fans, who have been stuck with only one style of wrestling for a decade and a half, to see how it's done the world over?

Sounds good to me. Now if only the PPV wasn't at 2 a.m. Ahahaha!