Rowdy

by Ariel Teal Toombs

  The women’s match headlined a card filled with staples like Sgt. Slaughter, Hulk Hogan and Greg Valentine, but only the main event was broadcast, on MTV. In a stunning example of wrestling’s new popularity, it earned a 9.0 Nielsen rating (the number represents the percentage of American television-viewing households tuned in to the show), MTV’s highest rated program to date.

  Lauper and Albano eventually made nice, with champion Hogan often in the mix. At MSG she appeared in the ring to give Albano a gold and platinum record, mounted and framed under glass. She then gave another to Hogan, who accepted it on behalf of the WWF. The feel-good ceremony went predictably wrong when Orton appeared ringside and Roddy barged onto the mat.

  Before the assembly made sense of Roddy’s presence, he grabbed the mounted records and smashed them over the manager’s head. Lauper rushed to the fallen Albano, and found herself against Roddy’s boot. With what would for years to come be called a “kick,” Roddy lifted her off Albano and sent her sprawling across the mat. Then he body slammed her manager, Dave Wolff. Hogan returned to the ring (why did he ever leave it?) and Roddy slipped through the ropes on the other side, where Orton was watching. With the crowd exploding around them, they left for the dressing rooms.

  The bit of extra-curricular theatre had set the table for a brand-new grudge, one that in turn would clear the way for a feast, the likes of which would eclipse the success of Starrcade or any event in professional wrestling.

  —

  George Scott, the Charlotte booker who’d brought Roddy to Mid-Atlantic, soon followed the country’s top talent to New York, where he became assistant booker for the WWF. He had shown a lot of grace to Roddy, and it had inspired Roddy to reply in kind.

  George Scott—Scottish born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario—had a son named Byron, and one night back in Charlotte, Byron had pulled his Cadillac up to Roddy outside a nightclub and said, “My dad’s the reason you’re here.” Roddy took it as a slight and punched in Scott’s windshield. The car lurched ahead, so Roddy ran to his own Cadillac to give chase, just as Jack Brisco, who had a cast on one leg, was trying to get into Roddy’s passenger seat. As Roddy told it, he hit the gas while the door was still open, but the Cadillac’s wheels were pointed hard to one side and it accelerated in an unexpected direction, ramming Byron Scott’s Cadillac and sending Brisco tumbling out of the passenger door of Roddy’s car.

  The incident landed Roddy in court. There, George Scott said, “You know, I’m responsible for bringing Roddy in here.” The implication was that he should take some responsibility for what Roddy did and the pressures he was under. That struck Roddy as about as solid a thing as a man could say.

  “You’re right, sir,” Roddy said to the elder Scott. “I apologize.” The matter was settled.

  When George Scott came to New York, he didn’t seem to hold a grudge. In a moment as inauspicious as it was crucial to the future of professional wrestling, Scott threw an invitation Roddy’s way.

  At the studios in Poughkeepsie, Roddy was walking down the hall toward the washroom. Scott was following close behind.

  “You want to fight Mr. T?” asked Scott.

  “Sure,” said Roddy. “Gotta go to the bathroom.”

  It was as simple as that.

  —

  From Lou Thesz to Harley Race, professional wrestling had crowned many great technicians and tough-as-nails street fighters as champions. But no one had ever had a champion like Hulk Hogan. The bronze-skinned blond-haired muscle-bound giant towered over the old-school wrestlers who lingered in the new WWF—George “The Animal” Steele or Bruno Sammartino—and Hogan worked the camera like few of the new giants McMahon was bringing into his orbit—King Kong Bundy or Bundy’s frequent tag partner, Big John Studd, for example. Matched with his new All-American image, urging kids to say their prayers and take their vitamins, the champion was an oversized bundle of kinetic energy, the perfect media darling to drive McMahon’s promotion and avenge the humiliation of Cyndi Lauper and Dave Wolff.

  In February 1985, the principals of this drama gathered at Madison Square Garden for the War to Settle the Score. The fact that it was Roddy’s title shot was mostly lost in the larger narrative: this was Hogan’s chance to defend the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection. More than that, Hogan was defending the heart and soul that fans had invested into wrestling and its ascendance to the pop cultural promised land.

  The main event looked a little like Roddy’s first big match ten years earlier. He was escorted to the ring by the City of New York Emerald Society Police Pipe Band playing “Scotland the Brave.” Doing commentary, “Mean Gene” Okerlund referred to them as “the clan, if you will, of Mr. Piper.” The night had other echoes of Roddy’s past, including an opening match featuring Johnny Rodz, who as Java Ruuk had not only thrashed a much younger Roddy in Los Angeles but provided the occasion for Roddy’s first stint as a manager—the gig that had put him over in Southern California. Jimmy Snuka exacted a sort of revenge by proxy during the undercard by defeating “Cowboy” Bob Orton. Orton collided with a cornerpost during the match, after which he wore a cast, his forearm supposedly broken.

  The cast, and his refusal to take it off long after any legitimate injury would have healed, gave rise to some great gags on Tuesday Night Titans, McMahon’s own wrestling talk show. In one episode he welcomed a doubtful Roddy and Orton as guests, and surprised them with a visit to TNT’s “resident doctor,” who examined Orton and revealed X-rays that clearly showed a healthy forearm. Valuing the usefulness of that cast in a fight, the heels rejected the doctor’s opinion, questioned his education and called him a quack.

  McMahon roped as many celebrities into his promotion as he could. Sports broadcaster Bob Costas joined the War as guest ring announcer. Mr. T, star of The A-Team and villain of Rocky III (which had opened with Hogan playing a wrestler called Thunderlips), was in the front row to pump up his “longtime friend,” in the words of Okerlund, on Hogan’s way to the ring.

  “Cyndi Lauper is here!” Okerlund enthused before the match. “Gloria Steinem!” The match began with a flurry of punches in Hogan’s favour, until Roddy turned it around and began to lay into the champion. As the action progressed, Okerlund exclaimed, “Danny DeVito…I see Joe Piscopo and Danny DeVito, both, standing on their feet!”

  After Paul Orndorff crashed the match and double-teamed Hogan with Roddy, Lauper climbed onto the apron to protest.

  “A hundred-and-four-pound little gal isn’t going to do anything to these two men!” bemoaned Okerlund, his uniquely understated hyperbole in glorious display all night.

  “She’ll get killed in there! Get her out of there!” added fellow commentator Gorilla Monsoon.

  Mr. T climbed onto the apron to defend Lauper, who had been trying to ward off the advancing heels while her hapless manager, Dave Wolff, was in turn trying to talk her down before Roddy and Orndorff got their hands on her. The rapturous din of the crowd swelled. When Hogan revived to save T and chase away the heels, the next and inevitable main event was obvious. The score had not been settled, but the job had been done. The crowd had been baited. When word got out that Roddy’s feud with Hogan had just gotten even larger, demand to see it resolved would exceed anything Madison Square Garden could accommodate.

  McMahon had seen Crockett’s rejoinder to the Showdown at Shea, and McMahon’s next volley would leave no doubt who had won the real war in professional wrestling.

  —

  “I’m the littlest and the last, Napoleon Rod.” Roddy probably wasn’t the very smallest wrestler in the WWF, but he was the hardest for McMahon to bring to heel. In the middle of March, a month after The War to Settle the Score, Roddy was still working without a contract. McMahon was insistent he sign one, but Roddy refused. He’d worked all over the country and abroad. His stock was high. He saw no benefit to swearing allegiance to a single employer. Anyone anywhere (except Japan) would pay him to wrestle.

  Roddy sat down with Vince in a place he remembered look
ing like a warehouse, probably backstage at the Poughkeepsie studios. The contract in front of him filled only a single sheet of paper. Roddy said no. All the other wrestlers working in the WWF were under contract now, but Roddy knew that Vince had bet the value of the promotion, not to mention his own house, on the next big event. Fans were desperate for a resolution to the Piper-Hogan feud. Order had to be restored. But Roddy knew pro wrestling’s greatest rule: never restore order. Order is boring, and boring doesn’t sell tickets.

  Then he thought again. There was going to be merchandise to sell, T-shirts and dolls and myriad other ways to earn money that weren’t part of working in any other territory. And there was always the remote possibility that McMahon might get fed up and try to do without him. Roddy was ambitious. He wanted in on what was coming. So Roddy signed. Of course, that didn’t mean he was going to accept without question whatever role McMahon had in mind for him.

  “McMahon and Hogan and [Pat] Patterson were in the office and I’m on the phone,” said Roddy, recalling how they’d planned the main event of WrestleMania—“The greatest wrestling event of all time,” as its tag line went. He listened to how the others saw the match playing out, and he disagreed, vehemently.

  As management saw it, the match went like this: “On the big comeback, bang their heads together. Typical match that you could think of, throw them together and they’ll crash. Get down and roll their legs.” In the finish they were plotting, Roddy would at long last be pinned and defeated by the heroes, within the rules. Deferred justice would at last be served. “And I’m saying, emphatically I’m saying, ‘You’re wrong, you’re fuckin’ wrong, all wrong! I’m telling you, it’s the wrong way.’” Roddy had fought signing a contract, and now he wanted to run the biggest match in the history of professional wrestling. “Vince says, ‘Hot Rod, there’s many right ways to do a match.’”

  Roddy was adamant. “I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re wrong, wait, wait.’ I’m screaming at them.”

  Roddy was concerned about two things. First, if Mr. T tried wrestling like the professionals, something he had never done, he’d make it look phony right when more eyes than ever were on their business. “Mr. T, he wanted to come in and bang heads around, make dolls and fun and then go home and laugh,” recalled Roddy, the taste still sour in his mouth decades later. “That’s why I didn’t get along with him right away. I insisted with Vince, I said, ‘No, there’s only one right way to do it. Keep it amateur. He wants to go in there and throw punches and stuff, he is going to look like shit, I’m gonna get mad, it’s not going to work. You got your house bet on this!’”

  By this time, Roddy and Bret Hart had become the kind of friends who talked late into the night in hotel rooms and on the phone, sharing their concerns about work and family. Hart understood the second reason why Roddy was so worried.

  “He was very defensive about the wrestlers and the business,” said Hart, “and he was very distrustful of the office and their motives and their susceptibility to doing the wrong things. The way they used to push guys or make guys based on such flimsy logic sometimes….Roddy was always the guy that earned everything he got and defended his position to the end. You couldn’t get him to change his mind about something like that. With Mr. T, I think there was a lot of pressure on Roddy to comply and let Mr. T go over on him.”

  Roddy worried that if Mr. T pinned him—if a TV star could waltz into the ring and beat the WWF’s top contender for the heavyweight title—then no gimmick or celebrity appearance could repair the damage that decision would do to the whole business of pro wrestling, never mind the WWF. Mr. T would move on, that feather forever in his cap, and the wrestlers would be left looking like pushovers.

  Roddy was old school. If you wore a belt—and even if you didn’t—when you were in a bar and tough guys called you on it, you fought them, plain and simple. And if they beat you up and the promoter found out, you’d lose the belt and probably your job, too. In the territories, the illusions of pro wrestling had to be maintained if the feuds and hostilities in the ring were going to keep filling arenas. For all the wilful blindness that went into watching pro wrestling, no fan should ever doubt that the wrestlers were genuine tough guys. Further, Roddy saw no reason to think the WWF was immune to the cycles of fortune and loss experienced by every other territory he’d worked in.

  “Territories got red hot and then died. All the time,” said Hart. “It’s really hard to keep the momentum going.”

  Of course, there was another possible finish to the match: Roddy losing to Hogan. So long as Mr. T was a minor player in the defeat, wrestling would leverage his celebrity without losing its credibility as home to the toughest characters on the planet. Interest might not collapse the way it would if Roddy lost to T, but interest in Roddy as top contender, or at least as an ever-dangerous menace, would be done. Roddy wasn’t sure how they’d finish the match, but he sure as hell wasn’t taking the fall.

  —

  On the last Sunday of March, Madison Square Garden filled again. Mr. T’s mohawk was the only aspect of his usually flamboyant self on display that night. No feather earrings or gold chains. He was stripped down to the essentials to fit in with guys who made their living in their underwear.

  McMahon had brought in even more celebrities. Guest referee Muhammad Ali patrolled ringside in the event of extracurricular trouble (Orton). Guest timekeeper Liberace seemed like an odd fit save for the fact that he was one of the few stars in the country as camp as McMahon’s wrestlers. He danced with the Rockettes in the ring and rang a tiny crystal bell to start the match. New York Yankees manager Billy Martin announced the wrestlers.

  Orton was ringside and so was Jimmy Snuka, an ideal counter to Cowboy Bob, both quiet but excellent performers. McMahon took no chances with his referee. Pat Patterson, the former wrestler who played a crucial role in managing the WWF, made sure the pre-ordained chaos was convincing.

  The opening moments—several minutes, really—of the match were as perfect an example of ring psychology as Roddy had ever staged. He had lots of help. Hogan and Orndorff were no slouches at working the crowd, and T was a television star. After a long standoff before the bell went, Orndorff grabbed a broom from an attendant who was trying to clean up debris tossed into the ring. He snapped the broom over his knee before he, Roddy and Orton finally retreated to their corner. With giddy embraces, they set up to begin, with Orndorff and Hogan in the ring. They could have started the match right there, but the stage was too big and too bright to settle for such a simple beginning.

  Roddy became frantic, waving Orndorff over to tag him in. With a slow, high tag, Orndorff obliged. Roddy got in the ring with the champ, right where the crowd so badly wanted him. But then T started jumping up and down, hollering for Hogan to tag him. Sensing the poetic justice offered by the moment, Hogan complied. Suddenly, it was Roddy and T facing off. Roddy reacted with notable discomfort but then, with a creeping sneer, embraced the moment. He crossed the mat slowly, staring down T the whole way—the loudmouthed bully realizing the littlest guy in the match had just been offered to him on an otherwise empty mat. As they came together, Roddy pressed his forehead into T’s, grinding into him until they exchanged slaps across the face. Roddy turned and signalled time out to Patterson, then spun and kicked T in the stomach, and the amateur wrestling began.

  It quickly led to a moment Roddy loathed, when T picked him up across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Cathartic for the fans, the moment where the actor had the wrestler at his mercy was immortalized on the front of newspapers all over the world. Roddy could stomach taking the bump for the sake of the match, but he couldn’t get past the sense that this was bad for business.

  From there, every potential breakdown of the rules was exploited to maximum effect. Orndorff and Roddy double-teamed Mr. T in the corner, Ali took a swing at Orton when he tried to interfere, Roddy led his entourage toward the dressing rooms before being turned around by security, while Hogan urged Patterson not to count
the heels out during their absence from the ring.

  At the end of so much theatre, Orton jumped off the ropes to finish Hogan with his cast, but instead knocked out Orndorff, who was holding the champion from behind in a full nelson. Hogan pinned Orndorff for the win, Roddy knocked out Patterson and stormed out of the ring in disgust with Ace in tow. “A despicable, disgraceful display,” Monsoon once called Roddy’s antics. They were on full display in Madison Square Garden. Orndorff woke up, abandoned in the ring, which set up a feud with Roddy and Orton to follow. The next plot started and the work never stopped.

  “When you watch that match, you watch when T finally gets to Hogan,” said Roddy. “I was waiting ‘til I got just tired enough. I front facelocked him, then, boom, got over. You watch, he doesn’t throw one punch. He doesn’t do anything. Take him down, ride him and that’s it. That’s why that son of a bitch worked.”

  The match certainly did work. Over a million people watched on pay-per-view, eclipsing the success of Crockett’s Starrcade. McMahon kept his house. Most importantly to Roddy, Hogan still hadn’t settled the score between them individually. Fans would keep calling for Roddy’s head—and paying to see the feud reprised.

  “He never let Hogan beat him,” said Hart. “He stood his ground on that, because once he beats him the power’s gone. He protected himself that way. If you really look back on those days, that protection of his stock at that time is what protected him for his whole career. He was right about it. I remember him saying, ‘I don’t need a belt. Other guys need them, but I don’t need them.’ He was on a different plane. He understood that. This shows you how far Roddy’s sense of worth went and how the business really operates, how dead-on he was about what he needed to do to protect himself.