This is one of the more intense, and awesome, promos from "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, who died July 31st of a heart attack.
Roddy was one of the best to ever do it on the microphone. I cannot do justice to him, so here again is the Masked Man, David Shoemaker:
Piper is hardly the first wrestling star who started as a paid loser, but with him, it feels like the rest of his career was informed by that experience. It was LeBell who first saw something in Toombs, and he decided to give him a shot in the Los Angeles promotion he ran with his brother. Piper saw that the road from insignificance to the top led straight through the ultra-popular Guerrero family and their Mexican and Mexican American fan base. Piper assaulted the Guerreros literally and metaphorically, slapping noncombatant family members, disrupting trophy ceremonies, and, most famously, coming to the ring to apologize by playing the Mexican national anthem on his bagpipes and instead playing “La Cucaracha.” They started calling him “Rowdy” Roddy. These weren’t just the acts of a young villain trying to make a name — they were screams of determination by a scrawny runaway eager to make good. For Piper, it wasn’t playing heel that mattered — it was getting noticed.
Consider Piper’s famous run in the Pacific Northwest territory, where he fully came into his own. He had left California as a villain, after losing to Chavo in a hair-versus-hair match and later a loser-leaves-town match, though he stuck around a while afterward under a mask, as the Masked Canadian. Up north, he was brought in as a villain but soon turned on his accomplice, “Playboy” Buddy Rose, after an eight-man tag match went awry. Piper, who was pigeonholed as a second-string baddie, had been underestimated again. But, almost immediately, he became the most popular hero in the territory, looking like nothing so much as a kid wrestling in his yard in his underwear. He challenged Rose to a hair-versus-hair match, and this time Piper won.
But what were arguably the most memorable moments of his early career were the times he smashed a full beer bottle against his forehead to prove his toughness — once in San Francisco and once in Portland.1 Piper had developed into a good brawler and an inspired talker, but these moments were Rowdy distilled. It was an indignant, vulnerable explosion. It was a cry for recognition and of lunatic commitment. And it worked, because just like the bottle smashing against his scalp, it was completely real.
When he went to Georgia, it was like an acceptance into the wrestling mainstream, though again Piper was miscast — he worked as an announcer alongside the legendary Gordon Solie. Some argue that the heel-announcer act was a Piper innovation — before Bobby Heenan, before Jesse Ventura, there was Piper. But he cemented his legacy for shocking fans when he came to Solie’s aid when Solie was threatened by the Magnificent Muraco. The following week, Solie attempted to describe Piper’s uncertain allegiances: “He wants to be an island unto himself.”
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Click there for more. Here is a link to the mentioned beer bottle promo:
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