It was billed as
World War III. On June 25, 1976, in what was billed as a bout for the World
Martial Arts Championship, boxer Muhammad Ali was scheduled to square off
against wrestler Antonio Inoki in Tokyo, Japan, in a confrontation the world
would be watching. With a $10 million total purse and with ringside seats going
for a then-unprecedented $1,000 a pop, the event was receiving a mind-blowing
amount of media coverage. And in the final week before the match, Muhammad Ali
was in Los Angeles for his final opportunity to hype the bout with hopes of
increasing closed-circuit TV revenue.
A press conference was being held at the
world famous Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, a hallowed building for both
boxing and wrestling events, and Ali, ever the promotional master, issued a
challenge to a young wrestler sitting nearby to enter the ring with him. The 22
year-old-Canadian wrestler entered the ring, not knowing what to expect and
when Ali, who had been boasting that no wrestler could defeat him, locked up
with the grappler and whispered to him, “Hip toss,” he was quite surprised. But
he did what he was told and Ali ended up with his back on the mat. While Ali
was obviously trying to increase buzz over his impending bout with Inoki,
hoping that wrestling fans would fork over there cash in hopes of seeing a pro
wrestler defeat a boxer, that young wrestler, Roddy Piper, was also convinced
that Ali was looking to give him a break.
“Muhammad Ali was such a great man,” said
Piper many years later. “He saw this skinny kid just sitting there that needed
a break, and right in the middle of everything, he just …boom! – gave me a rub. I’m up. He continued on. That’s a great
man.” While he undoubtedly was appreciative of what he felt was the boxing
champ’s effort to ‘give him a rub’ and boost the attention that the young
wrestler would receive, for the wrestling fans of Los Angeles, “Rowdy” Roddy
Piper was most definitely already “up.”
It was only five months before that the
young man who claimed to be from Glasgow, Scotland but was in fact born and
raised in Canada, had arrived in promoter Mike Lebell’s Southern California
wrestling territory. After an inauspicious start, territory booking genius Leo
Garibaldi had the idea to turn the young baby face or “good guy” wrestler into
a “heel”, a wrestling “bad guy.” And the rest as they say, is history.
Less than two months after that fateful
decision to turn Roddy Piper heel, he was the holder of the Jules Strongbow Scientific Trophy, a co-holder of the America’s tag team titles and had
recently defeated his nemesis Chavo Guerrero for the America’s Heavyweight
Wrestling title. While Guerrero was definitely the top baby face of the late
70’s in Southern California and a great draw, a territory is only as good as
its best heel, and Piper was inarguably that top heel. He was the Joker to
Chavo’s Batman, the great antagonist that every would-be hero needs to battle
in hopes of achieving heroic status. For what need would there be for a hero if
there was no villain to overcome?
The pairing of Piper and Guerrero was
magic for the wrestling promotion and gave it the boost it needed after the
previous Freddie Blassie-John Tolos feud had run its course. With his charisma
and gift of gab, Piper was phenomenal at inciting the hatred of his fans and
opponents alike. And the culture of the largely-Latino fan base as well Chavo
Guerrero and his wrestling family members comprised Piper’s favorite targets.
Whether it was by offering to play the “Mexican national anthem” on his
bagpipes, only to follow that offer by playing “La Cucaracha” on the
instrument; or by wearing a t-shirt that said “Conqueror of the Guerreros”; or
by hurling insults at a mile-a-minute during one of his high-energy interviews,
people hated the things they saw and heard from him but loved that they were
there to witness it.
Roddy Piper may have started his career a
few years before entering California, but California was the first real
platform he was provided to display what he had to offer to the wrestling
world. It was the first place he was given the ball to run and run he did. And
just like Walter Payton in his prime NFL years, they gave Piper the ball over
and over, and he ran and ran and ran. It wasn’t unheard of for him to appear in
or near the wrestling ring for the majority of the night, in a single’s bout, a
tag bout and as a wrestling manager. For the better part of three years, he was
the “go-to” guy of the Southern California promotion.
It wasn’t long before the wrestling czar
of the northern part of the state, Roy Shire, brought the “Lean, Mean Machine”
as Piper called himself, up to Northern California for occasional appearances
to see how the fans responded to him. Fans in some of the towns up north had
seen his antics via broadcasts of L.A.’s “Lucha Libre” television show,
telecast in Spanish over the Spanish International Network. While Piper’s
charisma and star power were certainly out of this world, at first he didn’t
lend much to the first several live wrestling cards he appeared on for Shire.
But eventually he found himself in another memorable feud, this time with
United States Champion Lonnie “Moondog” Mayne.
It’s hard to imagine that as memorable as
the Piper-Mayne feud was for Northern California wrestling fans tuning into it
during the summer of 1978, that the “feud” only consisted of a mere three
matches over a five week period. Oh, but what a feud it was! The intensity of
their matches was unbridled, and the fans in attendance at those live events in
San Francisco’s Cow Palace were on the edge of their seats during the entirety
the bouts. Even so, it’s safe to say that their promotional TV interviews
building up to the matches were even more of a highlight.
In Los Angeles, the TV show was taped
lived and everything moved just a little faster than they did in San
Francisco’s shows. Both men gave compelling interviews but Piper, having the
edge in his gift of gab and ability to verbally improvise, was truly
remarkable. But with the interviews in Sacramento’s KTXL studios being taped after the matches were taped and with more
time being allotted for the interviews, wrestling fans in Northern California
were able to enjoy more of Piper’s manic and extremely entertaining rants. But
regardless of what part of California he was doing interviews for, he made the
fans alternately yell in anger and laugh out loud over what he said and did.
Roddy Piper may have started in Canada,
may have made an impact virtually everywhere he went after that, and was thrust
into the national spotlight in the World Wrestling Federation during the 80’s,
but it was in California during the late 70’s that Roddy Piper first became a wrestling
star. – RR
Source for Roddy
Piper’s comments:
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper talks about handing his nickname
over to Ronda Rousey, by
Sarah Kurchak, Fight Land Blog
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