Roddy was finally headed west, but not to Alberta. He got in his Vega, ears ringing with the crowds’ approval, and aimed for the place he was sure would finally make him famous.
—
“Who the hell are you?”
Roddy answered that Red Bastien had sent him, from Texas.
The booker at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles wasn’t exactly sitting on his hands waiting for Roddy Piper—straight outta New Brunswick. Garibaldi looked at him skeptically.
Stereotypes sometimes originate from a kernel of truth. If anyone in Los Angeles were to imagine a young Canadian showing up to wrestle, he’d look a whole lot like Roddy that day: a grinning guy in jeans and a plaid shirt with a sheathed buck knife strapped to his belt, pulling up in a well-worn Chevy with a big dog hanging its head out the window. “The locker room is down there,” Garibaldi said.
Photos of wrestling and boxing greats decorated one wall along the way. Roddy thought out loud that he’d like to see himself on that wall. Garibaldi asked if he had a photo he could put up. Roddy balked. He’d earned every step he’d taken so far; he’d earn his way onto the wall, too. One day. “We used to say the mat in LA was poured in 1807,” he remembered. “The Olympic Auditorium at one time was like the Madison Square Garden of the West Coast. There may have been a time when it rivalled the Garden. Back in the late fifties, sixties, that’s when it carried Gorgeous George and every fight you ever wanted to see. All the ladies would have mink fur coats on, all the guys would be dressed in suits. It was a big deal.”
A hulking stone block, the Olympic Auditorium opened in 1925 in anticipation of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. It was the largest indoor venue in the country. By the time Roddy showed up, the polish was still very much on its Romanesque relief columns and wreath above the main entrance, on S. Grand Avenue. It hosted concerts and other entertainments, but it was the fights that kept “the O” so vital to Los Angeles social life. “TV would shoot every Wednesday and the house show was every Friday. I still remember the phone number: RI. 9-5171, Get your tickets now.” Those tickets were a whopping five dollars. A dollar fifty for kids. The Olympic not only had televised wrestling, it had a continent-wide audience for its Spanish-language broadcast, and a metropolis-sized audience clamouring for Friday-night tickets. Roddy had worked in some big cities, but LA was on a scale beyond his imagining. He hoped his success might follow suit. “When I got to the O, that was the first time that someone gave me a break, to try to be a main eventer.”
That break took a while.
Garibaldi was the booker, but the Olympic’s wrestling and boxing business was run by a boss unlike any Roddy had ever met. Aileen Eaton was perfectly suited to the epicentre of the showbiz world. Born and raised in Vancouver, the five-foot-two redhead had married LA boxing promoter Cal Eaton and soon gotten involved in the family business. He died in 1966 and Aileen took the reins of the biggest fight promotion west of the Mississippi. If a diminutive woman from Canada wrangling the biggest names in boxing and wrestling in the 1960s and ‘70s surprises you, consider her mind for the business.
In 1962 “The Redhead” pinned a button on the lapel of a little-known Olympic gold medalist before a press stunt to announce his first pro boxing match at the Olympic. It read “I Am the Greatest.” The boxer was too modest to accept it but she, realizing the press attention he was about to receive, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He finally took her advice, and before long Cassius Clay would adopt the slogan on Eaton’s little button as his tagline. Eaton knew what she was doing. About twenty years earlier, she’d helped create Gorgeous George, wrestler George Wagner’s flamboyant remake into one of the industry’s most memorable and successful personalities. You didn’t work for Aileen Eaton and not learn how to sell. And if you wanted to sell in Los Angeles, you worked for Aileen Eaton.
Eaton had two sons with her first husband, the late Hollywood surgeon Dr. Maurice LeBell. One of them, Mike LeBell, worked for his mother as a wrestling promoter. Her other son was a little more hands-on. Gene LeBell was a judo and wrestling champion, and when he wasn’t fighting, announcing or training wrestlers in his dojo, he worked as a Hollywood stunt man. Both men would have an impact on Roddy; one he would call a dear friend for the rest of his life.
Roddy got started on the third Friday in January, fighting Tony Rocco and taking part in a Battle Royal that included Bob Orton Sr. He was making a habit of getting beaten up by his contemporaries’ fathers, which punctuates just how early in life Roddy started his pro career. “Piper was supposed to work a longer period for us after doing [Roy] Shire up in San Francisco,” Garibaldi told an interviewer before his death in 2012. “But after I got a load of Piper in January of ‘76 as a face against Tony Rocco, trying to play his bagpipes but having a difficult time, I asked him and Shire to allow me to put Piper on the following Tuesday card in San Diego as a face. He got over like gangbusters.”
As much as he’d started to get around the continent and make a name for himself, Roddy was still raw. They decided to keep him in LA and were ready to invest in him. He could perform and rile up a crowd, but fighting some of these men was taking a toll. Win or lose, Roddy was still a lanky twenty-two-year-old getting pummelled—sometimes in a very real way—by much stronger fighters. Investments need to be insured. It was time someone taught Roddy how to defend himself like the pros did—when the audience was watching, and when they weren’t.
—
“During this time,” Roddy remembered, “I ran into a fella named ‘Judo’ Gene LeBell. Gene LeBell was the toughest man in the world, and not according to him. He trained Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, I can’t tell you how many. He started to teach me how to defend myself, in a professional manner, in a big-time way.” By this, Roddy didn’t mean playing nice until someone gave him a hard time. “You’re not really defending—you’re offending and breaking bones.”
At the age of eighty-three, Gene LeBell spent only two hours a week in the Hayastan dojo he operates with long-time business partner Gokor Chivichyan. He met with Ariel during those two hours, and, to the aggravation of everyone at the dojo keen for a moment of his time, he gave her an hour and forty minutes. He didn’t think twice about the time. “He started off as a preliminary here,” recalled LeBell, meaning in Los Angeles. Roddy would fight in the early matches and help flesh out a card anchored by much bigger names—Lou Thesz, the Guerreros, the Sheik—much as he’d done everywhere else he’d fought. “Lou Thesz or Karl Gotch or somebody told him come on down and work with Gene, ‘cause he’s mentally sick and he’d like that,” LeBell joked. But like most of LeBell’s jokes, this one has some truth to it. “My belief is, you’ll never be good, really good, unless you’re a sadistic bastard.” In the seventies, LeBell ran a dojo around the corner from Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Roddy was drawn to it like an eager freshman to an Ivy League library: all the knowledge he ever wanted to possess could be found within its walls. “He was a very good boxer,” said LeBell, or “Uncle Gene” as Roddy (and eventually we) called him. “And he was a very good wrestler. But he wanted to sharpen his tools. He used to work out with me to learn finishing holds, legitimate shooting holds and really wrestle. To take care of yourself, because your initial investment in wrestling is your body.”
Roddy needed to be able to shut down an overly aggressive opponent and make opponents respect him in the ring if his body was going to hold up for a long career. “He was good, but a couple of wrestlers…” LeBell explained that there are always a few guys who will take over a match and dominate their opponent just to look good (even forty years later LeBell wouldn’t name names). Roddy wasn’t sure how to handle them. “I says, ‘Beat the shit out of them.’” Even if the match was supposed to be won by the opponent, “Let them up and let them know you can wrestle better than they can. It’s happened to me a couple of times. I was told by one of my teachers, if a guy starts to take over the match, hurt him. I worked Roddy the same way.” LeBell credits Karl Gotch with the tra
ining LeBell in turn passed on to Roddy. Tricks like digging your fingertips under the pecs of a larger opponent. It’s an excruciating move that all but immobilizes him. You back him into a corner or up against the ropes and remind him gently that you’ll kill him if he doesn’t take it down a notch. By the time he was in his forties, LeBell was wrestling only on occasion. He and Roddy fought just a few times, once most memorably in San Bernardino. Roddy had put in some serious time at the buffet table before the match, still thinking like a hungry street kid who wouldn’t let an extra calorie escape. Especially turkey and blueberry pie. The preliminary matches ended earlier than he had anticipated and Roddy got into the ring on a full stomach. LeBell cringed and yet smiled as he told the story: “We’re wrestling and I’m bouncing on him and everything, and just having a good time. And all of a sudden he stands up and, right in my face, grabs me and throws up this blueberry pie all over me.” LeBell could hardly breathe. He bolted for the dressing rooms and straight into the shower. The referee counted him out and Roddy had something to boast about: ‘I beat Gene!’ And he did. Bastard. Now that I think about it. If he was here I’d body slam him.”
Don’t let either man’s ribbing fool you. Roddy earned his judo teacher’s respect in the way that mattered most. “He beat the shit out of all the guys.” Not at first. It took some time in the dojo, but Roddy quickly caught up and surpassed what LeBell figures were about 90 percent of his other students. All the different forms of judo LeBell taught were really, in the sensei’s estimation, just a “wrestling whizzer” with a different name. “But it isn’t beating them up or losing or winning. It’s what you know. And he knew…I call it ‘the dark side of the moon.’ What the referee didn’t see didn’t happen.”
—
Roddy quickly made an impact on the crowds in Los Angeles. Still new, he was used in the ring mostly to help prop up some of the local regulars, who needed the energetic new kid to inject interest into their matches. The promoters worked him as hard as they could. He fought early in the card, refereed another match, fought in another in a mask. He brought to a favorite opponent’s mind an old Mexican expression—like a horse’s underwear—meaning he was up and down constantly.
In March 1976 he won the NWA Americas title from one of the most popular wrestlers in California, Chavo Guerrero. He took the red felt backing off the belt and replaced it with plaid. It was just one more way to needle Guerrero’s fans. “Roddy, he was sharp, man,” recalls Guerrero. “He could do a promo about anything, anytime, anywhere. He could change his voice, his pitches. He would ad lib a lot. He was the greatest promo man I ever heard, and I mean that.”
Chavo was a commentator during the LA broadcasts, so his opinion was an informed one. And not just on how to talk. Chavo’s father, Gory, was patriarch to a clan of great Mexican-American wrestlers, and he himself had debuted back in the 1930s. As Gory’s oldest son, Chavo began wrestling in LA only a few months before Roddy arrived. His younger brothers Mando and Hector saw plenty of Roddy in the Olympic Auditorium ring as well. (A final brother joined the family many years later, Eddie, who would claim the WWE heavyweight title in 2004. Chavo’s son, Chavo Jr., would also join the family business.) “I’m a wrestler,” says Chavo. “Roddy was a brawler. He would never stop, he was like a machine. Always moving. He wouldn’t really mess around with the people too much, he would just worry about the guy in the ring. He was just happy being there, having a job, having his dog and having money to eat, and staying on the beach in Santa Monica. We were having a great time. He was doing what he was told. He never complained. He was always quiet in the dressing room.”
Garibaldi often brought in Mexican wrestlers, who were popular with the largely Hispanic audience in LA. That was fine in the ring, but promos were a problem. “No offense to Mexicans—I’m Mexican—but they didn’t know any English,” Chavo said. “So they’d put Roddy in to interview for them. That’s how he got a lot of his experience. They would throw all these different characters at him, and he’d make them shine with his talking.”
In those early days as champion, Roddy attended a press conference at the Olympic for a most unusual fight. Sitting in the front row, he listened to Muhammad Ali threaten a Japanese wrestling champion named Antonio Inoki. In what was billed as an exhibition match between boxer and wrestler, the two were scheduled to fight in Japan in June 1976. During the press conference, an actor and karate specialist named Joe Lewis pinned Ali twice, exhibiting the threat a martial artist posed to a boxer, even one as dominant as Ali. The champ’s entourage didn’t like seeing him handled that way and nearly ran Lewis out of the ring. Ali intervened to keep Lewis out of trouble. Next, Ali pointed at Roddy—whose head was roughly shaved from losing a recent haircut match—and dared the young wrestler to get in the ring with him. Roddy was wearing a snug green corduroy suit, hardly his usual attire in the Olympic Auditorium, but when Muhammad Ali tells a fighter of any sort to get in the ring, it’s tough to refuse.
Gene LeBell was at the press conference because he was slated to referee the Japanese card. As Roddy made his way to the ring LeBell caught his eye with a look of disbelief. Roddy shrugged, climbed in and locked up with the boxing champion like he would with any wrestler. Ali had barely been able to call off his handlers after Lewis had put him down. He was about to make them even angrier.
Too close for anyone else to hear, Ali told Roddy to hip toss him. Roddy obliged, landing the boxing champ flat on his back. Ali’s handlers went nuts, and Roddy got out of the ring.
Only Roddy could have heard Ali say that to him. He was grateful for the little boost to his notoriety. He had a belt, but he wasn’t yet the main eventer he hoped to become.
In that first year, Roddy made a few friends who would be dear to him until their early deaths. Two of them would fight him dozens of times, starting in Los Angeles.
One night, Roddy found himself looking across the ring at a man much more than twice his size. Andre the Giant was one of few wrestlers whose nickname was no exaggeration. Over seven feet tall and weighing in excess of five hundred pounds, by just his stature alone, he eliminated the idea that Roddy—or just about anyone—might beat him. Comically, after being thrown out of the ring yet one more time, Roddy threw up his hands in disgust and headed off the Olympic floor toward the dressing rooms. Security escorted him back to the ring moments later to continue his Sisyphean chore. As usual, he failed to beat the Giant, but he made an impression on the towering Frenchman that would pay enormous dividends in the future.
He met another lifelong friend and enemy in Adrian Adonis. As a tag team, they were nicknamed (if not actually billed) as the Twenty-Twos, for their shared age. Adonis was still going by his real name, Keith Franke. He was working a leather-clad biker gimmick, which worked well when he was young and trim (fans of the early WrestleMania years were familiar with him as a much heavier man, usually appearing in a mockery of drag as “Adorable” Adrian Adonis).
In April 1977, another title traded hands between Roddy and Chavo Guererro, the NWA (Mexico) World Lightweight title. The Twenty-Twos would claim the NWA tag-team title from Mando Guerrero and Tom Jones in July, then pass it back a week later.
Roddy was in the winners’ circle. The LA stage was big and bright. But was it bright enough to ensure he’d never slip back into obscurity?
—
Gory Guerrero had endured his own hard path to wrestling legend. He had once been shot at in the ring. The shooter missed him and killed a woman in the front row. He’d been stabbed so many times, he once told his grandson, Chavo Jr., that a knife wound didn’t hurt as much as he’d think. Listening to this, Chavo Jr. was seven years old.
Roddy carried his buck knife, but it wasn’t his only knife. He was still only two years removed from the streets of Winnipeg. The instincts formed in his teens sometimes moved his hand toward the hilt of one of those knives, this time on a weekend run with Chavo through Texas.
“Roddy hated to be poked in the ass,” Chavo said, and la
ughed. The kilt he wore in the ring drew all sorts of harsh ribbing, even from Chavo, who could get away with a little more teasing than most. “So on that tour, man, I wanted to get even with him for a bunch of shit. I guess I was just trying to fuck with him. That’s just me, I fuck with everybody. So I started fucking with his ass.”
Roddy grew miserable with the teasing. “Stop it, stop it!”
“We drive to Corpus Christi, we’re having a great time. We get to the hotel. We go to the beach for a while. We have our wrestling trunks on, I say, ‘Oh, you look so good,’ and grab him in the ass.” Back at the hotel, the ribbing continued. Roddy came out of the shower and pulled on his pants. “I kinda just slap him on the cheek. He always had the knife attached to his pants.”
Before either knew what had happened, Chavo had a shallow slice down the length of his thigh from Roddy’s pocket knife. Chavo, however, was never in too much shock to rib his buddy. He went for the emotional jugular. “I’m going, ‘Amigo! You stabbed me! You stabbed me!’ And of course, me, man, I make it like…” Chavo moaned like he’d been stabbed in the gut.
“Oh amigo, I’m sorry! I didn’t want to do it!” cried Roddy.
“Man, how could you do that? You’re a murderer!” replied Chavo. “I milked that so much. He apologized and kept apologizing, and I said, ‘Yeah, right, you did it on purpose. You were waiting your turn, man.’”
By the time they got to the arena that night in Corpus Christi, Chavo had all but forgotten the incident. A cat could have scratched him more seriously than the cut on his leg. So he was surprised to see Roddy throw away the knife when they returned to their hotel.
“What’d you do that for?” asked Chavo.
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