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Rowdy Roddy Piper brings wrestling legends to town
By John Benson
The last man standing is how famed professional wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper feels these days.
“Oh yeah, big time,” said Piper, calling from the Hollywood set of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
“I was in pro wrestling before [Ric] Flair and long before [Hulk] Hogan. And out of all of those guys, I’m the only one left that I know of. Sometimes it gets a little bit lonely, to be honest, because nobody understands you.”
While the roar from the WrestleMania extravaganzas subsided a long time ago, Piper remains busy. When he’s not guest-appearing on television or writing a book, the native Canadian still likes to return to the ring for old times’ sake.
In fact, that’s what he’ll be doing when Legends of Wrestling Featuring Rowdy Roddy Piper comes to Covelli Centre on Sunday. This walk down memory lane includes several matches involving all-time wrestling greats Jimmy “The Mouth of the South” Hart, X Pac, Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, Marty Jannetty, Bushwhacker Luke and Tatanka.
“This is a last chance to maybe see all of these guys,” Piper said. “When you see them interacting, because there’s so much history, it’s pretty wonderful. The ones that have lived and are still breathing, when they get together, they’re a tough breed. The fans will get a sense of what they went through and of course they’ll be entertained that night so they can remember who they are.”
When one thinks of Rowdy Roddy Piper, naturally his popular and innovative WWE interview segment “Piper’s Pit” comes to mind. For those professional wrestling fans too young to remember, this out-of-the-ring act proved to be a forerunner to the genre’s current trend of soap-opera storylines and plots.
Basically, “Piper’s Pit” found Piper interviewing his peers, who then had to match their brawn in the ring with his razor-sharp barbs in front of the camera.
“It was complete improv,” Piper said. “It broke all of the rules. I got the idea of not only are they going to watch me wrestle, they’re going to have to pay. I’m going to come up with a talk show. I had no clue what I was going to do. Then ‘Piper’s Pit’ kind of became a little bit of an arena of how well can you do. A lot of guys didn’t want to go on it, and the ones who did that were thinking about how they were going to sharpshoot you. That’s why it was successful, nothing was made up.”
As far as returning to Youngstown, Piper said he has many memories of wrestling here early on in his career long before the mainstream spotlight — and cable channel WTBS — put his face in every home across the country.
Piper tells stories that could come straight out of the 2008 Mickey Rourke movie “The Wrestler.”
“We used to come to Youngstown, but that was back when we were more of gunslingers,” Piper said. “It was a different generation. Now the way that professional wrestling has gone, they’re a little cleaner, family-friendly. I probably had more fights on the way to the ring back then than I did in the ring. I was a little on the aggressive side, believe it or not. So hopefully this time we can shake hands and make up and be friends.”