By the end of that day, volcanic ash had reached 80,000 feet above Washington state, and had spread across several other states and parts of Canada. Fifty people were dead. One of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States had slowed the pair down, but it couldn’t keep them from arriving like the true professionals they were.
Hair filled with ash, faces and clothes caked with dust, Roddy and Martel walked into the arena, where they were greeted by the booker, Dutch Savage. Martel laughed when he recalled the welcome: “He says, ‘You guys are fuckin’ late!’”
—
Roddy and Rick spent most of Martel’s short time in Portland as tag-team partners. “Like a hockey team, they change on the fly,” enthused one commentator as they ran circles around the Sheepherders. Roddy’s high-octane mic work fuelled fans’ interest, but Martel had appeal outside the ring, too. One interview gag had Roddy reading his own fan mail out loud. As the letter ended, he’d read the fan’s postscript, a request that he help her get a date with Rick. Roddy would storm off camera to give his partner a piece of his mind. “Great teammate,” recalled Martel. “All he thought about was business. Give the people one hundred percent. Never mind about how you look or who got the best whatever…He was there strictly to make people enjoy their evening and make sure that they got their money’s worth.”
If that meant Roddy had to take a fall, Roddy took a fall.
One of the biggest was unintended. Every second Monday, Roddy drove with his partner north into British Columbia, usually to wrestle at the PNE Garden Auditorium in Vancouver. As he and Rick Martel crossed the border this time, Roddy’s head was still ringing from bottling himself in the recent promo. The cage match against the Sheepherders had a lot of heat going and both men were excited. When they appeared on the floor to join the Sheepherders in the ring, Roddy’s excitement took over. “The cage was high, thirty feet high,” recalled Roddy, maybe embellishing by a few feet. “The adrenaline’s pumping. I saw that cage and I took off running. Like Spiderman crawling up the cage.”
Martel followed his lead. As Roddy threw one leg over the top his fear of heights caught up to him. Further dousing his head full of steam, the cage—really just some sections of chain-linked fence tied together with rope—wasn’t as solid as he’d expected. “Looking down and there’s the two Sheepherders, staring at me. One foot over and it starts swaying.” It shook and he fell, right onto the apron. Seeing his tag-team partner flat on his back with his kilt over the wrong half of him, Martel climbed back down and walked into the cage through the door. “We covered our faces up and burst out laughing,” Williams said. Roddy was less amused. Much less. He jumped up, trying to look like he’d meant to do it, and joined his partner in the ring.
By summer’s end, though, it was Martel who went down. He lost a loser-leaves-town match and moved on from Portland. He left Oregon a happier man for the friendship that had helped sustain him during the past year. “When I met Roddy in ‘79, I had just lost my brother the year before,” Martel said. “Of course it was a big, great void in life. Roddy kind of filled that. I’m not saying he took my brother’s place, but I felt such a bond with him that it made me feel better about what was going on. When my brother died, I was on the road and kinda felt by myself. Then I met Roddy and we got to spend time together. He really helped me go through that period.”
Roddy would have other tag-team partners in his career, but in Portland it was the guy on the other side of the ring that made his tenure memorable.
—
Buddy Rose continued to draw crowds when facing Roddy. Their rivalry sold out Portland week after week, and attracted media and fan attention like wrestling rarely had before. Pro wrestling was capturing a rapidly growing piece of the public’s imagination. As in Roddy’s feud with Chavo Guerrero in LA, Roddy and Rose needed to keep coming up with fresh reasons for the two of them to beat each other up.
Buddy Rose loved his yellow Lincoln Mark IV. It could cruise for hours doing over a hundred miles an hour, valuable for a travelling wrestler. So he and Roddy scheduled a cage match to see if Roddy could win it away from him. The car was put on display in the arena and forty minutes after the steel door slammed shut, Roddy emerged the winner. He accepted the keys triumphantly to the car that became known as the Yellow Canary. That he was seen driving the car around town (many fans assumed the car match was a gag) only furthered interest. If wrestling was fake, he wouldn’t really have taken away Buddy’s car, would he?
Ring psychology was an ever-improving art in Roddy’s hands. Rose’s too. They worked the crowd just as effectively when Roddy’s time in Portland was coming to an end. He’d been invited to Charlotte, North Carolina, by the booker there, George Scott. And Roddy was sensing something he always had a good take on: it was time to go. He had grown close to the wrestlers in Portland, and as cheap as Elton Owen could be, Roddy maintained a lifelong affection for Don Owen, considering him one of the most honourable promoters in the country.
But it’s best to go out while you’re still on top, and Roddy had been on top in Portland for long enough. Not so long, however, that he and Buddy couldn’t push their rivalry up one more notch before they parted company.
—
Nobody held loser-leaves-town matches to usher mid-card wrestlers out of state. It was the guys on top who needed a reason to leave. As far as the public was concerned, the reason couldn’t be business—which it usually was, in fact—because fans didn’t care or even know about their favourite wrestlers’ contracts. They cheered lustily because the wrestlers fought lustily and paid their dues with blood and agony. If their hero was leaving them, it had better be for one reason: Someone beat the lust out of him so badly that the only thing left for him to do was hang his head, pack his bags and go someplace where they wouldn’t hear from him again for a very long time.
One Wednesday in the middle of September 1980, Roddy stepped out of the ring on Portland television with Buddy Rose’s NWA Pacific Northwest Championship belt in his hands. Roddy was playing the babyface at the time, and fans were ecstatic. Rose, of course, wanted his belt back, and that Saturday night at a sold-out Sports Arena, they fought for a full hour to decide the belt’s fate. Tickets had sold out in record time, and the two wrestlers, knowing it was Roddy’s farewell to Portland, figured they’d work the fans’ excitement for all they could.
After forty-five minutes of more or less even fighting, they collided and both hit the mat. The ref began his ten count. If nobody got up, the match would be ruled a draw and nothing would be decided. Seven, eight…nobody moved. The fans were livid, watching every limb of the two men in the ring for the slightest twitch, any little movement to suggest he was going to return to consciousness and stand up in time to be declared champion. Neither man moved. The bell rang.
Fans in Portland weren’t as volatile as in LA. Riots weren’t the norm here. But these people had paid money for closure, and a double count-out was not what they’d paid to see. Fortunately, the men in the ring were far too smart to leave their fans disappointed.
The ref called for buckets of cold water, which were dumped over the wrestlers’ heads. With all the shock, dismay and alarm they could muster, Roddy and Rose snapped to and got to their feet, wondering aloud what had happened. The crowd roared and the ref declared the match would go on.
For the next ten minutes, Roddy dominated. He bit Rose, he pinned him repeatedly within a hair of a three count, and he knocked him around the Sports Arena ring with every trick he knew. With the outcome no longer in doubt, he took to the top turnbuckle and jumped knee-first toward Rose’s head.
Rose moved.
With a freshly injured leg, Roddy was suddenly vulnerable. Rose kicked, squeezed and bent that knee in every possible direction. Roddy, screaming and ready to concede, was saved by the bell. The match had a one-hour limit, and that hour ended with Roddy only a breath away from giving in.
They would have to try again to determine a winner, and this t
ime there would be no doubt, because the loser would be obligated by the terms of the match to leave town.
Monday, it was south to Salem for the two to lock up in a six-man tag match, Roddy with Mike Popovich and Jonathan Boyd, Rose partnered with Rip Oliver and Fidel Cortez. They fought to another draw, expanding the impact of their impasse across the state, but then hinted at its pending conclusion the next night in Eugene, where Rose and his team won. Wednesday they were back in Portland for television, and their carefully crafted stalemate came to an end. Buddy Rose pummelled Roddy, the belt was his again, and so was the Pacific Northwest.
Roddy hadn’t forgotten about the girl in his life. She just wasn’t in his life very often. Away in Washington, learning her trade with horses, Kitty had things to do. Smitten as they were, both had the pragmatic good sense at their young ages to take care of business first. The time for sweeping romantic gestures and serious commitments had not yet arrived.
It had been almost five years since Roddy had packed his little white Vega in the Maritimes and driven to California. He packed what he cared about in a much bigger car this time, turned the Yellow Canary east and pointed himself toward North Carolina, where he’d face a similar challenge to sharing a territory with Buddy Rose.
There was a white-haired wild man in Charlotte who’d been making as much noise on the east coast as Roddy had on the west. They’d tangled once before, when Roddy was still a teenager. He’d be a little better prepared this time.
6
Flair and the Family Man
Ric Flair was no Buddy Rose. During Roddy’s early months in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he arrived in late 1980 to work for Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, he and Flair were learning to share the spotlight, much as Roddy had done with Rose in Portland. But there was a lot more spotlight to share when the “Nature Boy” was in the ring.
Like Roddy, Flair was tall for the era in which they learned their craft, but hardly a giant like the men beginning to star up the coast in New York. What Flair lacked in size he made up for in showmanship. A pro on the mic who could whip crowds into a frenzy with his platinum blond hair and flashy wardrobe (and taunts to his opponents of, “To be the man, you got to beat the man!”), Flair dominated promoter Jimmy Crockett’s Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. He forfeited his US title belt in January 1981 to Roddy, establishing Piper as a top draw in the territory. But those titles changed hands frequently, and Flair’s popularity wasn’t much jeopardized by the arrival of Roddy Piper.
Wrestler Ole Anderson was booking in Richmond, Virginia, part of Crockett’s territory. Gruff and impatient with his talent, Anderson had a reputation of his own. And he had established it quickly with a Texas-born teenaged wrestler named Len Denton.
“Ole Anderson to me was an asshole,” said Denton. “But I guess he probably had to be to deal with guys like us.”
Denton had been wrestling only a couple of years when Roddy arrived in Charlotte, and he was still trying to get his head around the curious business of professional wrestling.
“I was one of the POOMs—‘plus one other match,’” explained Denton. Just as Roddy had spent countless hours in the backs of cars with more experienced wrestlers, learning how to live on the road and manipulate the crowds and his opponents, all crucial aspects of the trade, Denton was assigned to drive Flair around so he had a chance to do the same.
“I got a lucky break. Flair lost his license, so they got me to drive Flair for a year. I just really picked his brain,” said Denton. “Roddy was the top guy, like Flair. Every time I saw Roddy, I’d ask him a million and one questions. He was always fine with whatever he could help you with.”
If Roddy and Flair were happy to impart wisdom to Len Denton—who would eventually hold several belts of his own as “The Grappler”—Ole Anderson was the kind of hard-ass promoter who didn’t hesitate to impart his own wisdom to the senior guys.
Whether Anderson was an asshole probably depended who you were. But there was no denying that sometimes the brusque Minnesotan was right.
A main event between Roddy and Flair had filled the arena in Richmond. Denton was watching closely, learning what he could. Over the past few weeks, Roddy had been watching Flair and his rival Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, a high-flying, high-velocity wrestler from New York. Roddy wanted in on the fun.
“They would go and do all these high spots,” said Denton, “then Roddy would go out and try to top them. They’d try to top each other.” High spots were the aerial manoeuvres that took wrestlers high above the mat, and usually led to them crashing down on top of one another—or worse, missing and slamming into the mat. It was risky, and it could be painful. But the crowd always popped. So on this night in Richmond, wrestling Flair, Roddy spent more time than usual sailing off the top turnbuckle.
After a match that had repeatedly lifted the crowd out of its seats, Ole Anderson was waiting backstage for Roddy.
“I watched this happen,” Denton remembered. “Ole goes, ‘Piper, what are you doing out there?’ Roddy’d had a hell of a match. I’m like, ‘What’s he talking about? He stole the show, right?’”
Anderson wasn’t soliciting opinions from Denton, and he kept the heat on his new main eventer, making sure he got the point.
“He goes, ‘You’re working like Flair and Steamboat. You a high-spot guy? You’re Rowdy Roddy Piper. The guy that flies all over like a trapeze artist? It don’t even match your damn name! You go out there and kick ass. When you learn how to do that the right way, you’re gonna get heat.’”
Chavo Guerrero had said it about Roddy in Los Angeles. He was a “brawler.” A rough, uncontainable back-lot scrapper, with moves that had more to do with lateral speed than aerial technique. He sold a match by working an opponent into vulnerable positions where he could apply his sleeper hold, a move he’d based on the blood chokes taught to him by Gene LeBell.
“He was dead on,” said Denton, “And Roddy turned it around.” Promoters and bookers, even one whose talent had nicknamed him Pig Face, sometimes knew more about what worked than the wrestlers wanted to admit.
—
The Sheepherders had come to Mid-Atlantic a month ahead of Roddy. By the time he’d caught up to them, his hard-partying ways were picking up steam. His disdain for authority remained healthy, too. Roddy’s bad attitude may have held one little soft spot for Don Owen, but Anderson was hardening everything around it, despite the booker’s good advice.
One morning, long after midnight, Luke Williams and Butch Miller were coming back to Charlotte with Roddy in the Yellow Canary when police pulled them over. In a mysterious legal manoeuvre, the officer decided that consequences for whatever misdemeanour he’d detected needed to be doled out right then.
“They took us to a courthouse,” says Williams. “The judge came out in his bathrobe and slippers.” After levying the fine against Roddy, he sent the three of them home. They didn’t make it that far before picking up where they’d left off.
As they walked away from the courthouse, they passed a large window. It was the judge’s office, and he was at his desk doing what they presumed was the paperwork related to Roddy’s fine. “We stood there,” says Williams, “looked at him and pissed on the side of the courthouse.”
—
Every Tuesday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Mid-Atlantic wrestlers gathered in Charlotte for up to 90 two-minute-and-fifty-four second TV interviews to promote upcoming matches. When they left the studio, police were usually waiting on the highway. Roddy and the others had to be in Raleigh for the evening’s matches, 150 miles away, and were under enough pressure to get there on time that they’d be easy pickings racing down the interstate.
Roddy would look around that studio where they were shooting promos and marvel at the collection of talent. By the time he’d been in Charlotte a year, gathered around him were Bob Orton Jr., Dusty Rhodes, Dick Slater, Ricky Steamboat, Ric Flair, Bob Backlund, Swede Hanson, Jay Youngblood, Greg Valentine, Jack and Jerry Brisco, Sgt. Slaughter and, he reme
mbered most painfully, Wahoo McDaniel.
“Damn that Indian!” he said about Wahoo, and laughed. McDaniel was a Native American who’d dabbled in pro wrestling during summers while starring as a linebacker in the NFL. Once he became a full-time wrestler, he worked an Indian chief gimmick and developed a reputation for his thundering hard chops. Aggravating these powerful blows was the athletic tape he wore on the second knuckle of his fingers. “Every time he’d chop you,” Roddy said, “he’d be ripping the flesh off you.”
“I used to see Roddy come back after,” said Len Denton, “and I’d go, ‘Oh my god, Roddy, you okay?’ His chest would be lit up. I know it hurt ‘cause I got some from Wahoo, too.”
Chops were hard strikes across the ribs, executed in a classic karate-chop position. They had few fans among the wrestlers themselves. Chops stung, especially if delivered by a man as strong as McDaniel. And they never decided a match. No audience believed a legitimate contender lost a bout because of a chop across the ribs. But the impact on a broad chest sounds spectacular, and the blows leave a mark, both of which help legitimize the action in the crowd’s eyes.
Roddy would get back up and dare McDaniel to try it again. “Come on, lay it here, Indian, come on!”
“I’d chop him back with everything I had. I had the rotator cuff that was torn at the time. So I learned how to bring the hand straight down. He’d have big welts and he wouldn’t even say ouch. He wouldn’t even put me over, that damn big Indian chief.” He smiled. “I loved him to death. He wouldn’t back off.”
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