Rowdy

by Ariel Teal Toombs

  Much of that book focussed on something Roddy called “the Sickness.” The term referred to a state of mind in which wrestlers’ sense of self became unhealthily consumed by their comfort with violence and pain, and by the belief that the show must go on at any cost—costs to themselves and those around them. Fuelled by drugs, alcohol and the relentless pressure of the “P,” the Sickness was fatal for many wrestlers. Roddy replaced the Hot Rod shirt he’d made iconic back in 1986 with one that said “Frats”—a reference to the fraternity brothers (wrestlers) who had died from the Sickness.

  A list on the back of the shirt named ten wrestlers who’d died before their time: Art Barr, Rick Rude, Brian Pillman, Rick McGraw, Adrian Adonis, Andre, Owen, Kerry Von Erich, Bruiser Brody, Junkyard Dog. “Owen” was Owen Hart, who fell to his death while being lowered from the rafters above the ring in Kansas City, Missouri. The book lists even more, including Dino Bravo, Jay York, three more Von Erich brothers—David, Mike and Chris—and Wahoo McDaniel.

  Roddy also abandoned the custom tartan and started wearing a solid-black kilt in commemoration of these men and all wrestlers who’d suffered from the outsized expectations placed on them. He had entered a dark phase, into which he gave some insight during an HBO Real Sports interview in 2003.

  “Tuinals, Seconals, Tylenol 4, Demerol, testosterone, Placidyls, Valium. You get this going and then you start drinking alcohol. Deadly combination. You bring cocaine into the picture. Does a line. It’s time to fight. No downers there. But it would be nice to have a little painkiller in you as you go in. Or a lot.” When a wrestler with this chemical stew in his veins came out of the ring after a show, his head still full with the roar of ten thousand fans cheering or jeering him, trouble was inevitable. Why then did he keep returning to the ring? “What would you have me do at forty-nine when my pension plan I can’t take out ‘til I’m sixty-five? I’m not going to make sixty-five, let’s just face facts, guys….Everybody’s dead. They’re all dying early. And nobody cares about it.”

  HBO hadn’t yet aired the interview when Bruce Prichard was discussing the lineup of WrestleMania XIX with Vince McMahon. McMahon—an amateur bodybuilder—had begun wrestling some of his stars as a heel, the ultimate corporate villain. At WrestleMania in Seattle, he was scheduled to wrestle Hulk Hogan in a “street fight.”

  “He was on the outs at the time,” said Prichard of Roddy, “and I remember talking to Vince going, ‘You know, he’s sitting at home, he’s not dealing with anybody right now.’ What a kick, what a surprise if you put that son of a bitch out there in the middle, with Vince and Hogan.” McMahon agreed and Prichard called Roddy at home in Portland, a short drive from Seattle. His insinuation into the storyline was a secret. Fans and staff expected to see him backstage, signing autographs with some of the other retired stars. “Even when he was in the locker room, people just thought he was there to do an appearance or something. It never got out.”

  While McMahon and Hogan were fighting a match with more colour in it than Roddy and Bret Hart had produced (pro wrestling had changed, favouring the “hardcore” blood-and-guts approach), Prichard walked Roddy down the aisle in a big hat, long wig and black trench coat. Roddy was well enough hidden that a security guard tried to stop them. They hid under a camera position and waited until McMahon had brought a metal pipe into the ring. Roddy climbed through the ropes, tore off his disguise and went after the pair, kicking McMahon onto his face while calling him “Junior!”—a shot he never stopped taking at the son of the promotion’s founder—and clubbing Hogan with the pipe. The crowd popped. Who came more naturally between Hogan and McMahon than Rowdy Roddy Piper?

  In the weeks that followed, that bottomless feud resurrected itself with Hogan appearing in a mask as Mr. America. It ended quickly, because that HBO special finally aired.

  “They released the damn thing,” said Prichard. “I guess it was the first time Vince had heard it, even though I know Roddy had told us about it ahead of time. They had their disagreement, and it was all my fault, because I had brought him in!”

  McMahon already knew Roddy wasn’t happy. In an interview with Vince, HBO reiterated Roddy’s claims about the promoter’s unreasonable demands on wrestlers. McMahon pointed out Roddy’s enduring anti-promoter attitude and summed up their relationship, in a way that said everything about how he had managed Roddy’s push to his own pull for so many years: “That’s okay. I don’t mind being who I am and I guess he doesn’t mind being who he is.”

  Roddy was out again. This time from the WWE—the mighty World Wrestling Federation had been bent to the breaking point by the fallout from the steroid trials (McMahon was himself put on trial in 1994 for peddling steroids to his talent; he was acquitted of all charges). It was time to fess up to pro wrestling’s worst kept-secret, that it was all work. McMahon’s promotion was now called World Wrestling Entertainment.

  —

  Colt spent a lot of time on the mats in our basement, learning how to grapple, box and stretch. Roddy’s assistants, who were usually wrestlers, often joined in, giving Colt, who wasn’t as tall as Roddy, experience wrestling with bigger bodies. Then, in 2003, during his freshman year at high school, Colt went to LA to train with the one man Roddy always said he’d never want to fight.

  In his seventies, Gene LeBell didn’t like to take a bump while training students; even a controlled fall on the mats left him aching for days. His reluctance was simply a matter of age. So while training Colt, LeBell took the lead and Roddy subbed in as his son’s sparring partner.

  Colt won a number of martial arts tournaments through high school, but it was later, on the road in Chicago, sitting in the sauna with Roddy after one of their early-morning workouts, that Roddy asked if he’d ever considered becoming a professional fighter. Not many people come out of high school with the kind of training in any discipline that Colt had received in martial arts. Colt knew he didn’t want to live our father’s nomadic existence as a professional wrestler, but there were options now beyond grinding through the territories. The conversation stuck with him. And then he did something about it.

  —

  “Oh, God. I’m gonna die.” Colt had never been so scared in his life. He’d been cleaning mats, getting stretched and beaten up for years in preparation to fight competitively. He was thinking he probably should have gone to college instead.

  With Roddy pacing nearby, Colt was waiting for his first amateur MMA (mixed martial arts) fight. He was seventeen years old. His opponent was a thirty-year-old firefighter from New York City. Roddy was trying to keep him calm without intruding too much on his experience. Colt had paid his dues. He deserved his own time in the spotlight.

  “Okay, kid, get out there,” came the order. Colt was making his way to the ring when the announcer introduced him as the son of Rowdy Roddy Piper. He didn’t even say Colt’s name. His heart sank.

  Like the fight Roddy always referred to as his own first, Colt’s first bout was short. He scored a technical knockout in forty-seven seconds. Proud as Roddy was, he was incensed that the announcer hadn’t called Colt by name and gave him hell afterward.

  Roddy spent most of Colt’s MMA fights in the audience, but he didn’t always stay there. He rushed the corner, pushing past security, to stand with Colt’s coach. Sometimes he shouted from the audience in a voice that couldn’t be mistaken. Well back from the ring, he yelled one night, “Knee him!” Afterward, Colt listened to the audio from the fight but couldn’t hear Roddy on it. He asked Roddy if he’d imagined it. No, said Roddy, he’d really yelled it. Colt had done what Roddy said and won the fight.

  When two men fight each other, bleed on each other, break each other down to a point that would make most men cry, a rare bond results. It was also a familiar one to Roddy. It was one of the only places where he felt truly comfortable with others—and it pleased him to no end to share that hallowed ground with his son.

  —

  With the help of manager Freya Miller, the UK was continuing its cr
ush on Roddy Piper. In 2005 ITV invited him to co-host a British reality show called Celebrity Wrestling, on which chefs, rugby stars and actors were pitted against one another in a series of competitions. Roddy flew to England and brought Len Denton with him as an assistant. “The Grappler” knew as much about wrestling as anyone, and Roddy liked to have a trusted friend for company.

  On their first day, they walked down the studio hall to Roddy’s dressing room. A sign with Roddy’s name hung on the door.

  “Look at that, brother!” said Denton. They also found fresh fruit and flowers inside. A veteran of the old territories, Denton wasn’t used to this kind of treatment.

  “Lenny, you see that sign?” said Roddy. “You see this food and these flowers and all this pretty stuff? When we do the last shoot and we come back, that sign will be gone and there won’t be one flower in this room or any food.”

  “Come on,” said Denton. He figured Roddy was kidding.

  MMA star Ian Freeman was the show’s referee. American D’Lo Brown and Canadian Joe Legend trained the competing teams; but you didn’t have Roddy Piper and The Grappler in the building and not ask their advice. They weren’t sure how to advise the competitors, though.

  “They came up with these crazy games,” said Roddy. “They had poles with big humps on the end of them. And they just beat each other like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.”

  Denton gave the only piece of advice he knew to be universal. “Hit him harder!”

  As filming continued, Roddy’s voice started to give out, so he drank tea with honey. Denton was happy to make him a cup when asked, until something occurred to him.

  “Listen, does your throat hurt or do you just like the drink?” he asked Roddy. “’Cause if you just like the drink, get your ass up and go get it!”

  Lunch was difficult because the celebrities wouldn’t leave Roddy alone to eat, so they started taking their lunch in the dressing room. Roddy needed the downtime.

  A young man came to the room to take their lunch order.

  “And for dessert, what would you like?” he asked.

  “What do you have?” asked Denton.

  “Well, we have spotted dick.”

  Denton was a Texan. He had never heard of spotted dick, and he sure didn’t like a wise guy, especially one with a fancy accent.

  “Hey, asshole! What’d you say? You trying to be a smart ass, boy?”

  Roddy had to intervene and keep his old buddy from teaching the kid American manners.

  Celebrity Wrestling didn’t do well. Wrestling fans wondered where the wrestling was. So the show was moved from its Saturday night primetime slot to Sunday morning.

  “Loads of accidents happened,” explained Miller. A chef broke his arm. “So that got cancelled.”

  After the final shoot Roddy and Len headed back to the dressing room to clean up and collect their things.

  “We’re walking down the hall and I look up,” said Denton, “and the sign’s gone.”

  Fame’s hard finishes struck Denton as a slap in the face, but Roddy didn’t let it bother him. By his count, he’d wrestled nearly ten thousand matches. There was always the hope and promise of another dressing room, another entrance, one more crowd wanting to say thank you.

  10

  Finish

  In 1982, Georgia Championship Wrestling commentator Gordon Solie went deep on the character of Roddy Piper, this wild young wrestler who’d arrived on the east coast from the west, blowing up wrestling rings wherever he went.

  “I thought it might be interesting to try and get a look at this man, and try and find out what does make Roddy Piper tick,” said Solie. “Piper is a totally unpredictable competitor…a man who issues pain like you would a traffic summons. He appears to be totally and completely fearless. He doesn’t worry about his physical health at all. He also has the capability of forgetting about law and order, of taking it into his own hands….The man is such a series of interesting conflicts, and I can’t help think that he has a lot of conflict within himself. Be it because of his environmental background or what, I don’t know, but he is a man of many inner conflicts, I do know that….Such an enigma in his own way.”

  Around the time he turned fifty, Roddy began to wonder about some of these same conflicts himself. He’d outlived many of his friends and peers. (In 2003, “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig died at forty-four from a drug overdose. “Big Boss Man” Ray Traylor Jr. died in 2004 of a heart attack, aged forty-one.) Roddy had raised the bar for his profession and also for wrestlers looking to branch out into acting careers. (By 2005, wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had starred in a big-budget sequel and spin-off of the box-office hit The Mummy.) Roddy had worked non-stop for thirty-two years. He was still working hard. He’d spoken out about the business and his place in it, but he’d never stopped to take stock of who he really was and where he’d come from. A special event in 2005 marked the beginning of a more reflective period. He’d play down what the honour meant to him, but Roddy was proud to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, along with several of his greatest peers from the eighties: the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff, Paul Orndorff, Jimmy Hart, Bob Orton and Hulk Hogan. He knew his acceptance speech at the ceremony in Los Angeles would be remembered, for better or worse, so he enlisted the help of Barry Kolin, or “Coach,” as Roddy called him. Kolin owned the Portland comedy club Harvey’s. A mutual friend in Portland had introduced them a few years earlier, when Roddy expressed interest in developing a stand-up comedy routine.

  “I’ve got some stories I’ve told. I’ve taped them at home in my basement,” Roddy had told Kolin. “Would you take a look at it and tell me what you think?” Kolin did and he was impressed with the stories, but Roddy’s delivery was so scattered they fell flat. Kolin read Roddy’s book and realized the stories—Victor the Bear, Andre the Giant staring down cops in small town bars—were potentially a comedic goldmine.

  Roddy took a few test runs at Harvey’s, but he wasn’t getting over by telling jokes. It was his incredible warehouse of stories that was making audiences laugh. The stories worked, as did another resource that had made his foray into film so memorable. Kolin said, “He’s got his stock lines. ‘Hey Piper, what’s under your kilt?’ [Answer:] ‘Your girlfriend’s lipstick, asshole.’ They were good. I said, ‘We’ll put those in your show. I love those.’”

  And now “Coach” helped polish that stock of one-liners for Roddy’s Hall of Fame induction speech. Kolin sat down with him and they put together the speech Roddy delivered that night, with all of us and our mother sitting near the front, beside Hogan’s kids. Ric Flair introduced Roddy and then handed over the stage. Hogan was the target of a few gentle zingers in that speech, though Roddy made more pokes at himself:

  “I gotta admit, I was jealous of Hogan. It had nothing to do with the hair. However, I would listen to him, because I would train just as hard…I would listen to his interviews and he would say, ‘Say your prayers and take your vitamins.’ And folks, I took some serious vitamins. Never got them twenty-four-inch pythons.”

  It was how he ended his speech, though, that pointed to the unceasing drive that would push him through the final decade of his story. “I guarantee you this, my name is Rowdy Roddy Piper, and you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

  —

  Aside from a few special appearances, Roddy hadn’t wrestled much in the five years leading up to his Hall of Fame induction. And it was around this time that he also ended his career as a small-business owner. Piper’s Pit Stop had been keeping Portland’s transmissions operating smoothly for fourteen years and, as Len Denton was proud to tell, the owners had paid off the initial investment in half the time. But Denton had seen enough car parts, and it was time to move on.

  “The place is sold,” recounted Denton. “So they issued a cheque to Roddy’s accountant.” He and Roddy were in Toronto at the time at a fan convention, where Denton was assisting Roddy. “Roddy goes, ‘Listen to this, Lenny.’” He held up the phone in their hote
l room as she confirmed the amount received. Then she mentioned the cheque was in Roddy’s name alone. Legally, Denton wasn’t entitled to a dime.

  Roddy wasn’t working as much as he used to, and he wasn’t as flush as he once was. Without hesitation, he told her to send a cheque for half the money to Denton’s house that same day.

  “That’s the kind of guy Roddy was. He wanted me to hear it,” said Denton. “It was a handshake. That don’t happen no more, I don’t believe.”

  At the convention, which took place on the playing field of the Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays, Roddy was due to spend three days signing autographs and having his picture taken with fans. Old friend and former NHLer Cam Connor flew into town to help out.

  “Well, I didn’t know who Cam Connor was,” said Denton. “He comes in the room. Roddy’s in the shower. He said, ‘Yeah, Rod’s a school friend of mine.’ That’s all I knew. I didn’t know he played for the Rangers.

  “So he comes walking in the room and both his knees are torn. I said, ‘What the hell happened to you?’”

  Connor had got cut off in the parking lot and the other driver had given him the finger. Then, Connor explained, he and the driver got out of their cards and had a chat about the incident.

  Damn, thought Denton. He’s my age!

  They’d been sitting in the room talking for five minutes before Denton noticed Connor’s Stanley Cup ring.

  “Hey, where’d you get that ring?” he asked, doubting Connor could have really won a professional hockey championship.

  “What do you mean, where’d I get that ring? I won it,” replied Cam.

  “You ain’t won no Stanley Cup ring!” said Denton, as offended by what he presumed to be a lie as Connor was by Denton’s disbelief.

  “What’d you say?!” said Connor.

  “Roddy had to come out and break us up,” recalled Denton. “’Stop, assholes!’ First time I ever met Cam, almost got in a fight. ‘Quiet down, quit screaming at each other. This is a real Stanley Cup ring!’” Connor and Denton’s tempers dropped quickly after Roddy’s intervention and they had a good laugh. It was the beginning of another friendship.