Rowdy

by Ariel Teal Toombs

  Works in the ring didn’t change the fact that wrestlers of any stripe could relate to no one else in the world like they could to each other. One weekend, Mando, Chavo and Roddy escaped to the California countryside for a day off. Accompanying them was a man to whom their business owed much, and to whom Roddy in particular owed his entry into Los Angeles, Red Bastien. “Needles, California,” said Roddy, “it’s got this beautiful river, and high rocks.” The foursome had made a date to go water-skiing with Chavo’s jet boat, a water-skiers’ dream with an enormous Ford Cobra engine. They’d spent the night before at the local Red Dog Saloon, where Bastien cautioned the Guerreros that he couldn’t swim. In the morning, as they were making their way down the dock, he was anxious about getting into the boat. The brothers urged him on. They all had life vests. He could just enjoy the ride and leave the waterskiing to them. He got onboard and they were soon racing down the pristine river. “So, I’m water-skiing, Mando’s water-skiing. It’s Chavo’s turn to water-ski. Mando’s driving, just like Mando drives!” As Mando ratcheted up the speed, Chavo realized he was going too fast. Mando sped up more and Chavo let go, sinking low in the water. Holding his water-skis, he began drifting slowly away in the current. Instead of circling around to pick him up, Mando turned the wheel hard. It was a small boat. There were only a few seats so Bastien was sitting on the bow, without a lifejacket. The hard turn sent him tumbling into the water. “Now, I’m the only man on earth who saw the rest,” said Roddy, barely able to contain himself. Bastien went under the surface of the river and didn’t come up. His hat was floating where he’d gone down. Chavo, drifting still, was desperately trying to get someone’s attention. Mando was having a good time with Roddy and hadn’t seemed to realize Bastien was in the water. Once Mando noticed, he panicked and fell trying to get over the side, scraping his knees bloody in the process. He dove in. Chavo abandoned his skis and tried swimming against the current to reach Bastien, too.

  Roddy laughed at the memory. “Red Bastien comes up, spits water out of his mouth and puts his hat on. He’d been in the navy.”

  —

  Through a heavy steel door and down a dimly lit flight of stairs with paint peeling off the walls and pipes dripping overhead, night after night Roddy headed for the Olympic Auditorium locker rooms. Every night after his match, an old black man shuffled into the showers with a bar of soap and washcloth to scrub him down. Roddy knew him as Tiger Nelson. “Oh, Horse-cock, you could have heard that heat in Tokyo,” Tiger said as he washed Roddy’s back. He said the same to all the wrestlers. It was a clever line, as heat—or the crowd’s outrage—was a positive result for any wrestler, no matter who won or lost. Tiger didn’t watch the matches.

  Roddy liked Tiger and would tip him each week. Finally he asked the old man why he called him Horse-cock. “Well, sir, everybody likes to be called Horse-cock, and that way I don’t have to remember anybody’s name.”

  One night Roddy found Tiger outside the arena, upset that he’d missed the last bus back to Watts, where he lived. Roddy offered to give him a ride. Tiger was reluctant. “Not many white folks live where I do, sir,” he said. Roddy insisted, and Tiger didn’t have another option. Besides, he’d never ridden in a Cadillac and Roddy had just bought one.

  They drove to Watts and Tiger invited him in to his tiny house for a drink of Ripple, a cheap flavoured wine (Red Foxx on the show Sanford and Son joked that he mixed it with ginger ale to make “Champipple”). A poor, elderly black man living in Watts drinking Ripple was easy to imagine. What Roddy stumbled on next was not.

  As he scanned a scrapbook full of photos he noticed a picture of two men in black ties, tails and stovepipe hats. One looked like Bob Hope. “That is Mr. Hope, sir.”

  The other was Tiger. He’d owned a nightclub and Hope used to perform there. “When I wore that, people used to give me respect.”

  Roddy then came across a photo of a woman, Tiger’s wife, Rosie. Tiger didn’t know what had become of her. “They think that she may have just wandered into the wrong neighbourhood.”

  Tiger wasn’t making sense, thought Roddy. He’d owned a nightclub that could hire Bob Hope, but was so poor his wife could just disappear off the face of the earth. Roddy turned another page and found the answer.

  An overhead photo of a boxing ring showed two men in the middle of a match, one of whom Roddy recognized as the great Jack Johnson. When Roddy asked him who Johnson was fighting, Tiger replied, “Why, Mr. Piper, he’s fighting me.”

  Holding on to the great Jack Johnson for fifteen rounds—and Tiger said holding on was all he really did—meant nobody else wanted to fight him. The fight that should have made Tiger famous ended his career. With it went his nightclub and whatever wealth he’d put together from his fame as a fighter.

  Throughout telling his story, Tiger had been coughing and holding his side. When he was finished talking, he bent over and let loose a terrible coughing jag. He asked Roddy if he’d mind his laying down for a bit. Of course, said Roddy, and added that he should get going anyway.

  It was the last time they saw each other. Tiger Nelson died soon afterward, a forgotten man. Roddy was one of four people at his funeral.

  It might have been easy for Roddy to dismiss that hard lesson about fame. Tiger Nelson was an uneducated black man who’d come up in an unforgiving time for black fighters. Johnson himself had been railroaded by trumped-up scandal. Any excuse to shut down a black contender was jumped at.

  Nelson was nothing like Roddy. And Roddy had fought his way out of the streets of a rough northern town and into the spotlight of the third biggest city in America. Still, the example nagged at him. No matter how high you climbed, it only took one slip to send you back to wherever you came from.

  —

  During his three-and-a-half years in Los Angeles, Roddy made many friends whom he’d wrestle in the years to come. But this was Hollywood. Filled with celebrities and aspirants to fame. Meeting show business people was part of the fun. One Hollywood hopeful used to hang around the Olympic’s rear entrance and do his Elvis impersonation for the police who guarded it. This got him in to see the matches for free, which says a little about how security worked at the Olympic.

  After the matches, the impersonator, named Andy, sought out Roddy and told him how funny he found him. At the end of one match, Roddy was standing, bloodied, over a few other wrestlers he’d just beat up, giving them hell on the microphone. The thoroughly enraged crowd started to get out of their chairs and push through security toward the stage. A riot was inevitable. Seeing the crowd advance, Roddy said into the microphone, “Is there no justice?” Andy thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  Roddy couldn’t figure out Andy’s sense of humour, but the skinny comic entertained him and they got along, so they’d go together to comedy clubs. Andy took the stage at the Improv and, just as strangely, used Roddy’s interview and promo lines to do stand up. It made no sense to the crowd either, and they booed him off the stage.

  Andy did just about everything differently, even hiring a yellow school bus after his shows to take people out for dessert. He introduced Roddy to the star of a show he was working on, Dick Van Dyke. “So this is the genius you’ve been talking about?” said Van Dyke.

  Roddy never figured out why Andy thought he was so funny or professional wrestling so fascinating. There was a transgressiveness to the spectacle that triggered something in the young comedian. That purposeful discomfort, that hysteria-inducing obliteration of social norms spilling over into the audience: it left wrestling fans genuinely changed, even if some nights that meant a full-fledged riot stopped the show—or more accurately, became the show. Nobody could turn that transgressive spark into a show-stopping inferno like Roddy, who was now on top in Los Angeles. But Roddy realized that even the hottest fires eventually burn themselves out. All the Mexicans in California couldn’t stay mad at him forever.

  Roddy told Andy one evening that he was leaving LA. He’d done all he could in Los
Angeles, so he had accepted an offer to wrestle elsewhere. To stay any longer would risk all the value he’d built into his name.

  With eyes glistening, Andy looked at him, deeply sad, and said, “I’ll make you proud of me, Roddy.”

  With that, Roddy said goodbye. He and Andy Kaufman never saw each other again.

  Roddy said his farewells to Mike LeBell and Leo Garibaldi as well. They had given him his first chance to be a main-eventer and he’d pushed the opportunity as far as it would carry him. They had cleaned up at the box office and Roddy had built a reputation and skill set that could take him almost anywhere.

  They weren’t keen to see him go. By this time, Chavo was doing much of the booking in LA and had been in the office to hear LeBell phoning around the country, trying to determine who was poaching his prize heel. Realizing that Chavo and Roddy were close, he tried to squeeze Chavo to tell. “I never said a word,” Chavo said, though he knew full well it was Don Owen in Portland, Oregon.

  It was hard not to like Roddy. The other wrestlers admired him, too, and stepped up when they worked against him. And his authenticity lent him an uncommon charisma with fans. He seemed to be exactly who he said he was. In the Southern states, who would recognize the difference between the flatness of a Canadian prairie accent and a Scottish brogue? Beyond the small matter of his origins, his gimmick was hardly a gimmick.

  He’d learned a lot in LA. His mic work was second to none, he was the consummate heel and able to handle the heat, and he had developed a style in the ring like something out of a back alley, with a level of reckless energy fans rarely witnessed at such a high professional level. Gene LeBell had given him tools a wrestler just couldn’t get in Winnipeg. And Winnipeg had left him with enough simmering aggression to drive his performance for a lifetime. With Gene’s training, that aggression bought him space and respect in the ring. Leo Garibaldi had taught him, as well, about selling all that pent-up hostility. The fear was gone, the spirit was willing and the body was finally strong enough to carry him in the only direction an ambitious young man wanted to go. “Thanks for the blood and guts, kid,” said Garibaldi on Roddy’s way out. The booker went back to work without so much as a handshake.

  Roddy threw his bag over his shoulder and headed for the door. As he walked down the hall he’d first traversed barely out of his teens, he passed a photo on the wall of a young blond wrestler in plaid trunks, ready to take on all comers.

  5

  Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You

  Roddy stood with his hand out, waiting for more money. Elton Owen laid a few more small bills in Roddy’s palm and looked him in the eye. Roddy’s hand stayed put. Owen placed a few more bills down and glared at the new recruit. Roddy remained stone-faced. He’d gotten the memo on Elton, Portland promoter Don Owen’s brother. Don’t smile when he’s paying you or he’ll stop paying you.

  Sometimes, when doling out the night’s take, Elton laid down a ten, took it back and replaced it with a five. “You’ve got a good attitude, son,” he’d say, and give the wrestler another five “for beer money.” Then he’d lean in, “But don’t tell the boys.”

  “The boys” told each other all they needed to know.

  Short-changing the grateful wasn’t Elton Owen’s only trick. He liked to tell his wrestlers to shoot for the first few minutes of their match—in other words, no showmanship, just compete. After a minute of going at it, if someone hadn’t been pinned for a one-count, the referee would tap both men on the shoulder and they’d proceed to lock up like pros. At the end of the night, if the shoot hadn’t been decisive, Elton asked the dressing room who they thought had got the upper hand. He gave the consensus winner $25 and the loser $15.

  The Pacific Northwest was a more traditional territory than Los Angeles. While young men like Roddy and Chavo Guerrero had ruled Southern California, older men were on top in Portland. The veterans here, guys on short contracts or wrestlers who lived there, were quite capable of handling Elton Owen. Before the matches, the wrestlers flipped a coin to see who would dominate the shoot. When Owen paid out at the end of the night, the “winner” handed the “loser” the extra five dollars to make it an even split.

  The ranting, cigar-chomping Owen rubbed the wrestlers the wrong way. Some nights they’d lock him out of the dressing room. It was best for Owen when they did. One night between matches in Salem, Oregon, he began ranting about the night’s card being too anemic for his liking. “You guys couldn’t draw flies to shit,” he growled. He put his cigar down on a massage table so he could really light into the boys.

  Roddy’s new tag-team partner, Killer Brooks, grabbed that cigar while Owen was distracted with his tirade, dipped the unlit end into the back of his trunks and gave it a good, deep tour of the area. When Owen was done yelling, the promoter found his cigar where he’d left it. He picked it up and headed for the door. “All right, you guys, get out there and I want you to work, work, work!”

  Roddy sat on the bench, tears leaking out of his eyes, he was trying so hard not to laugh. Owen noticed him and asked what was the matter. Roddy shook his head, nothing. Owen cussed at the room a little more and shoved the cigar in his mouth. He opened the door to leave and then stopped. He spun around and the whole room held its breath. “And another thing,” he snarled. “It smells like shit in here!”

  —

  Fortunately for the wrestlers, Elton Owen wasn’t the Owen in charge. Elton watched over the southern towns like Salem, Eugene and Roseberg, but his brother, Don, ran the territory out of Portland. Roddy found him one of the more fair promoters he had worked for. Don Owen brought in talent and trusted them to work their dynamics out for themselves. Roddy’s arrival upset the dynamic at work in the territory, but since Owen trusted them to handle it, the wrestlers worked it out.

  Buddy Rose was Owen’s top heel and Portland’s main draw. But Brooks and Roddy had both made their names as heels. They were tag-team partners as well. That was too many bad guys and not enough babyfaces: there was nobody for the fans to love. Fortunately, Roddy and Brooks were both charismatic and unpredictable. Even when fans hated them, they came in droves to see what they would do next.

  Buddy Rose had a tag-team partner, too, in Ed Wiskoski. The four wrestlers decided Rose and Wiskoski would do heel duty while Roddy and Brooks would operate in a less clearly defined space. They wouldn’t lead the crowd to consider them necessarily heels or faces. Not just anyone could pull that off. Roddy had the vicious tongue of a classic heel, but the crowds warmed to him anyway. It was part of his appeal: he didn’t tell the crowd how to think of him, no matter who he was fighting.

  During his first month in Portland, Roddy went on a tear, winning almost all of his matches. Don Owen was setting him up for a good long run. He even reunited Roddy and Hector Guerrero for matches in Portland and Eugene, and threw Roddy into a tag-team match against his friend Red Bastien. But it was in the new year that Roddy’s running start in Portland really picked up speed.

  Portland wrestling fans remember something that Roddy Piper fans in the rest of the world might not know. His feud with Buddy Rose was quite possibly his best. Roddy was that much more experienced in the ring and on the mic than he’d been in LA, and in Rose he had a creative heel he could play off as the audience’s mood allowed. And Portland brought few of the big-time pressures that so narrowly defined where Roddy could direct his later, most famous feud with Hulk Hogan.

  Bleached blond and on the corpulent side of fit, Buddy Rose was a spectacular professional wrestler. Animated on the mic and creative in the ring, he had a ten-year run in Portland. Away from the ring, he had his appetites and tended not to disguise them from his peers. “I’ve got a little blood in the old man!” he’d shout when feeling amorous. The walls of the motel where most of the wrestlers stayed were thin, so he kept his van stocked with clean towels for the purpose of relieving the old man’s tensions in private.

  He routinely taped his favourite soap operas and sitcoms, and stayed up until dawn w
atching them in the company of his two dachshunds. One day he called Roddy and said, “It’s Pebbles’s birthday,” and invited Roddy to join the festivities. Roddy went to Rose’s room, wondering who Pebbles was. “He’s got a hat on the dog, a cape on the dog.” When the dogs died, Rose had them stuffed to keep him company a little longer.

  Though barely heavier than Roddy’s two-thirty when they worked together in Portland, by the time he retired in 2005 his taste for fast food and doughnuts had him tipping the scales at a hundred pounds heavier and suffering from diabetes. He spent his more considerable earnings from his later WWF run on a propane-powered Cadillac with a satellite dish on the roof so he could watch television in the car. It was a typical spend for a man who never had a bank account and kept his money in a brown paper bag.

  The Piper-Rose feud began at the end of March 1979 with a promo for an absurd upcoming eight-man tag-team match. The four heels—Piper, Rose, Brooks and Wiskoski—were scheduled to take on Adrian Adonis (the re-named Keith Franke), Hector Guerrero, Ron Starr and George Wells. In the Crow’s Nest—a platform above the Portland television studio that placed the wrestlers slightly above and thrillingly close to the audience—the heels gathered around a wheelbarrow full of championship belts, crowing about the damage they would soon do to their opponents and how they’d all become richer working together than against one another.

  Brooks and Wiskoski mostly stood in the background and grinned, rapt with the sight of two top talkers trying to get a feel for who would take the lead during the anarchic interview. In retrospect, it’s clear that Roddy and Rose could never coexist on the same side, because neither could thrive at what he did best—talking—while allowing a partner to take the lead. Both were creative, both were energetic, and both men were impossible to stop watching.