I know this is a few days late, but I had trouble finding words to describe what I felt when I heard that Roderick Toombs, best known as “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, legendary professional wrestler and world-class personality, had died at age 61 on Friday at his home in Hollywood, California.
I was on the MAX, having just gotten off work and heading to a card shop to play Magic: The Gathering with a few friends, when I read the news on my phone. I was rooted to my seat, tears beginning to build in the corners of my eyes. I’m not old enough to have seen Piper’s heyday, but thanks to the power of YouTube and the recollections of older friends, not to mention many appearances in the 1990s and 2000s across the wrestling circuits by Piper himself, I grew to love the bombastic, talkative, and controversial character he portrayed.
I did play Magic that night, but it was one of the few times in 15 years of playing the game I can recall that my heart wasn’t really in it. I’m a horrendously competitive person, but that day I was more focused on the news of Piper’s death. I played, yet I didn’t play, if that makes sense.
With Piper, it never was about the action in the ring. From the first days of his wrestling career in the National Wrestling Alliance’s California and Pacific Northwest Territories in the 1970s, to his last days as a podcaster, it was all about his personality. Though he was a Canadian, he paid homage to his Scottish heritage by coming to the ring playing those bagpipes, which eventually became his theme music (“Green Hills of Tyrol”, “The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie”, and ‘Scotland the Brave” throughout his career), wearing a kilt, and showing a quick, unpredictable temper.
He was the most famous “heel” (a term for the bad guys in pro wrestling) during the 1980s in the then-World Wrestling Federation. He was the main event at the first WrestleMania, teaming with Paul Orndorff against Piper’s nemesis Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. That show laid the foundation for the company that would eventually become a behemoth; the now-World Wrestling Entertainment is as close to a legal monopoly as there is, completely dominating the North American pro wrestling scene.
Besides his work in the biggest pay-per-views, Piper was the host of “Piper’s Pit”, a talk-show like segment that produced some of the most entertaining and controversial moments in pro wrestling history. Who could forget Piper mocking Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka’s Fijian heritage by tossing a banana at him, then cracking a real coconut over Snuka’s head? Or Piper repeatedly insulting former WWF champion and wrestling great Bruno Sammartino, leading to Piper getting his ass whipped in a steel cage match by Sammartino? How about the time where he hosted a rare “Piper’s Pit” in the ring during WrestleMania V, hosing down Morton Downey Jr., who was smoking a cigarette, with a fire extinguisher?
Piper’s hijinks weren’t limited to the Pit, either. He famously covered half his body in black paint when he wrestled Bad News Brown, who happened to be African-American, at WrestleMania VI. He interfered repeatedly in “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase’s matches, including his tilts at WrestleMania VII and SummerSlam. His feud with Adrian Adonis–who was portraying a flamboyantly gay character–resulted in Piper’s “face turn”, meaning he was cheered as a good guy despite Piper being a sarcastic jackass.
And of course, there is the ongoing feud he had with Hogan. Hogan-Piper was the first real major draw the WWF had, their answer to the NWA’s rivalry featuring Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes. Both men became household names due to their personalities and ring skills clashing in such spectacular fashion; Hogan’s repeatedly said that there would have been no Hulk Hogan without Roddy Piper. Where Hogan relied on his incredible strength and bodybuilder physique, Piper would win by cheating and with guile; a rake of the eyes, a kick to the groin, then wrapping his arms around his opponent’s neck in his famous Sleeper Hold.
With the recent news about Hogan’s racist rants making the rounds on the Internet before Piper’s death, I find myself ruminating on the sharp contrasts between the two. Hogan played an on-screen character who was the embodiment of American heroism (say your prayers, eat your vitamins, and all that bilge), while behind the scenes, he was a complete leech who always demanded the spotlight. The demise of World Championship Wrestling came about mainly because of Hogan (and Kevin Nash, who founded the N.W.O. with Hogan and Scott Hall) refusing to cede the spotlight, and let the N.W.O. gimmick run its course after his loss to Sting at SuperBrawl 1998. The company’s younger talent fled to the WWF, and WCW was bought out by WWF chairman Vince McMahon in 2001.
Hogan’s rant about his daughter’s relationships with African-American men, and the disgusting comments he made about those men, have caused him to be shunned by WWE. He was exposed, for all time, as a foul human being.
Piper, in contrast, played a character that was as crass, irreverent, witty, and sarcastic as any pro wrestling has had before or since. Hot Rod had no problem attacking people on the basis of race (like with Snuka and Brown), sexual orientation (like with Adonis), or just because he got it in his head to say or do something to get a reaction (too many people to count).
Behind the scenes, though, he was recognized as a generous, decent, and incredibly funny individual. He made his home in Portland through most of his career, and the qualities that Portland’s people prided themselves on–being nice, funky, and weird–fit Roddy to a T. There are stories about him being very patient with fans, sometimes staying for hours after events signing autographs, even if the event’s promoters suddenly found out they couldn’t compensate him for his time.
Roderick Toombs mentioned more than once that he couldn’t bear watching his character “Rowdy” Roddy Piper at work, that he despised the person he had to become in order to be Piper. Compare that with Hogan, who milked his persona for every dollar he could out of greed, and you don’t need to be a pro wrestling fan to see which was the better man, and better for the industry overall.
Everybody has their favorite Piper moment. I implore you to share your favorite moment with Oregon Sports News in the comments below, or on your favorite social media platform. Whether it’s Piper clocking Snuka with that coconut, or Piper winning the Tag Team Championship with fellow all-time great Ric Flair, or Piper defeating the Mountie to win his only WWF Intercontinental championship, or Piper winning either of his three NWA/WCW United States championships (both titles survive in the WWE today, by the way), or Piper putting his nemesis Hogan to sleep with his Sleeper in 1996, or Piper’s starring role in the 1988 cult flick They Live (‘I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”…said while holding a shotgun) or one of his many, many other famous (or infamous) moments, we want to hear about it.
Here’s mine: in the 2008 Royal Rumble, the 18th entrant was Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka. The Royal Rumble has a few surprise entrants every year, including an old legend, so my surprise passed quickly.
The very next entrant? None other than the Rowdy One his own damn self.
The second those bagpipes hit, my brother and I started screaming like little girls as Piper marched to the ring, with his leather jacket, his “Hot Rod!” T-shirt, and his trademark kilt. As he entered the ring and had a stare down with his old enemy Snuka, the other wrestlers in the ring stopped fighting to stare at them. It was a truly surreal moment, and even the guys in the ring knew it. As Piper and Snuka came to blows, the camera focused for one instant on the ecstatic face of a young wrestler named CM Punk, who idolized Piper as a child.
Alas, both Piper and Snuka were eliminated shortly after Hot Rod’s entry. The eventual winner, in the last surprise of the night, was John Cena, making his return from pectoral surgery and winning the Rumble in order to reestablish himself as WWE’s top dog.
I mention both Cena and CM Punk, also known as Phil Brooks, because they are my generation’s version of Hogan-Piper. Cena exists to sell brightly colored T-shirts to little kids and Make-a-Wish Foundation stuff; during WWE events these days, when Cena’s in the ring, you always hear a high-pitched “Let’s go Cena!” from the little kids…followed immediately by “Cena sucks!”, a deep-voiced bellow coming from adult men.
Punk, meanwhile, was the modern-day Piper, leveling his snark, sarcasm, irreverent “fourth wall” breaking and cutting “pipe bombs” at all and sundry, especially Cena. His WWE Championship match with Cena at Money in the Bank 2011 is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Punk, like Piper before him, had never won the WWE title, and he was threatening to leave the company after his contract expired later that night.
After 40 minutes of back-and-forth action, Punk seized an opening, nailing Cena with his Go To Sleep maneuver in the ribcage. Cena spilled out into the ring in a heap, and as an exhausted Punk hossed Cena’s carcass back into the ring so he could pin him and win the title, Vince McMahon and a lackey came out and start walking toward the ring. Punk stopped their progress with an evil glare, then slowly crawled back in, only to be wrapped up in Cena’s STF submission for the third time that match. McMahon called for the bell, but Cena would have none of that. He released the hold, punched McMahon’s lackey, and yelled “Not that way!”
The ending of that match called to mind all the battles Punk’s idol, Piper, had with Hulk Hogan. Mainly because of Hogan’s desperate need for the spotlight, Piper never won the top title in the WWF/WWE, and CM Punk was determined that he wouldn’t share that fate at the hands of John Cena.
When Cena stepped back into the ring, Punk promptly hit him with the GTS and pinned him. Punk ended the night by blowing an insolent kiss goodbye towards McMahon, and literally running out of the building with the prize his boyhood idol, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, could never wrest from his biggest rival.
It was the kind of theater that pro wrestling is famous for, and that which Piper would have been proud. While Phil Brooks is no longer in pro wrestling, the rivalry he had with John Cena in WWE remains the closest thing to the legendary feud of Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan.
Roderick Toombs was an entertainer, a professional wrestler, an actor, a pod caster, and the kind of personality that touches everybody that comes into contact with him, whether it’s through TV, the movie screen, a WWE event, a meet-and-greet, or just a chance meeting. He was a native of Canada, famous for playing a Scottish character, and ended his all-too-short days in Hollywood, but he was a shining example of the qualities that set Portlanders, and Oregonians, apart from the rest.
Rest in peace Hot Rod. The ‘pipes will always be playing for you.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
