Story Photos
 Photo by courtesy Rowdy Roddy Piper applies his trademark sleeper hold to a hapless opponent. |
Leave in stitches after Saturday's show by wrestler-turned-comic
Thursday, May 4, 2006 7:21 AM PDT
By Tom Paulu
Printable version
E-mail this articleWhen you think about it, it's really not so strange that Rowdy Roddy Piper now has a stand-up comedy/talk act.
Pro wrestling owes its popularity to outrageous story lines and over-the-top histrionics as much as actual athletics. And Piper, one of the biggest names in pro wrestling, is known as much for his mouth as his body slams, eye pokes and sleeper holds.
The 52-year-old muscleman brings his new show to the Columbia Theatre Saturday night. Also on stage will be another wrestler from the Portland area, Playboy Buddy Rose. Wrestling announcer "Mean Gene" Okerlund, who had previously been scheduled, will not appear here.
In a phone interview, the gruff but articulate Piper promised to share behind-the-scene stories of his biggest bouts with the Longview audience.
For instance, during an infamous 1984 Piper's Pit interview with "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka, Piper started insulting Snuka's Fijian heritage by bringing out pineapples, bananas, and coconuts. Snuka took offense, so Piper hit him over the head with a coconut, then shoved a banana in his face.
"They want to hear what I was thinking" during the coconut caper, Piper said. "In Hershey, Pennsylvania, where did you find a coconut?"
Piper will also play a bagpipes tribute to dearly departed wrestlers.
"It's a show that's rather astute," he said. "I'm not telling my life story, rather 'you should see what I've seen.'
Look out, fans, because Playboy Buddy "hates my guts," Piper warned. "He once lit my kilt on fire. If he throws a punch, let's go for it."
Piper said his one-man show was born at Harvey's comedy club in Portland when the owner asked him to come up on stage.
"I've been in front of a microphone all my life," so the patter flowed naturally, he said.
Piper was born Roderick George Toombs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
He left home at age 12 and had his first pro wrestling match at 15. By the late 1970s, Piper was winning matches in Los Angeles and then the Northwest. He and Rose appeared at a match at the Cowlitz County Fairgrounds in the late '70s, he said.
In the 1980s, Piper moved to Georgia and became a wrestling star. In a "dog collar" match with Greg Valentine in 1983, he lost most of the hearing in one ear.
In 1984, Piper joined the World Wrestling Federation, at the time the dominant national forum for the "sport." Piper "quickly became the single most hated man in the WWF," according to the wrestlingmuseum.com Web site.
"While his choice of opponents and his cheating methods definitely enhanced his status as a ring villain, it was Piper's exemplary speaking skills that truly put him over the top as the WWF's most hated heel," the site says.
As wrestlers go, Piper wasn't all that big, at 6 feet 2 and 230 pounds. Neither did he display the physical feats of some wrestlers. He made his reputation as a brawler -- and a good interviewer.
The WWF capitalized on Piper's strengths by initiating the "Piper's Pit" interviews as regular parts of WWF TV shows.
Piper kept busy in the ring, too, and became one of the WWF's major stars, along with Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and Andre the Giant."I had a lot of matches with those guys," he said.
In 1987, Piper turned his focus to movies, and got favorable reviews for the 1988 sci-fi flick "They Live." He's since made about 20 more. Along with Richard Tyson and Jonathan Davis, Piper gets top billing in the horror movie called "Syn-Jin Smyth," which will appear in the fall.
He was back in the WWF by 1990, and held various "world championships" from time to time.
Piper had a total hip replacement surgery in 1995, though it didn't stop him from wrestling. He worked for several pro wrestling companies since then and has wrestled professionally as late as last year.
His autobiography, "In the Pit with Piper: Roddy Gets Rowdy," was published in 2002.
Piper, who's married with four children, now lives in Hillsboro, Ore. He's active in attempts to start a home for aging wrestlers who need health care and in a group called FAME, for "Fathers Against Methamphetamines."
Longview is the second stop of his solo show, with dates in Spokane and Wenatchee to follow.
"We're just working the kinks out of it," Piper said. "I'm in training to take it to Broadway."
Even more Rowdy
For a glimpse into Rowdy Roddy Piper's former life, check out the video of Super Brawl VII, filmed in San Francisco in 1997.
In the opening scene, Piper is released from a cell in Alcatraz, where he has had himself incarcerated for a week just to get meaner. He runs out of the prison in his kilt and ripped T-shirt, roaring insults at upcoming opponent the Hulk Hogan.
At ringside, so demented is Rowdy Roddy that the Hulkster is afraid to enter the ring. Roddy chases Hulk around the ring, smashes his head into a steel barricade, throws him through the ropes and starts poking Hulk's eyes and biting his nose.
"Piper's like a wild animal!" the announcer exclaims. "Look, he's mumbling something. I wonder if it's Gaelic?"
Hulk is getting hammered -- and almost succumbs to Roddy's sleeper hold -- until Macho Man Randy Savage hops in the ring to help defeat Roddy. The tape ends with Piper prostrate on the canvas. (Not to worry -- Piper beat Hogan in a cage match a few months later.)
Roddy Piper Trivia:
• Piper was once disqualified in a boxing match against Mr. T.
• When Morton Downey Jr. blew smoke into Piper's face during a 1989 interview, Piper doused him with a fire extinguisher.
• Piper's trademark quotes include, "I'm the reason Hulk Hogan lost his hair."
Past Month's Most Commented Stories