Original subtitles

I'm going to take my phone.

Sure.

Roddy.

Yeah, I'm doing great. How are you?

We're just getting ready to do an interview about you.

A little warm down there, huh?

You what?

I... Yeah, not anytime soon, though.

You're holding a place for me.

Right next to you at the table. Great.

No, I...

I'm just going to talk about you. All good things, not to worry about it.

Great.

Thanks, Roddy.

Roddy's in heaven. Roddy's not in hell.

Coming to the WWE, I really wanted to make sure that every single time that I

walked out there, everyone remembered Rowdy, Rowdy Piper.

Rowdy is the only name I could have taken on.

I wanted to make sure that that next generation of kids knew who he was and

respected his memory and what he's contributed to the business.

When I ran into Piper, he's the one that made everything else possible.

He was the key.

The cog in the wheel that's without Piper, we could have never launched into

stratosphere. It's as simple as this. When RP talks, brother, he won't listen.

He was the ultimate bad guy.

How you doing, Faxel?

He sold it, he packed it, he was good at what he did.

Just when they think they got the answers, I change the question.

Even if you had never heard of Roddy Piper, you could tell you didn't like

guy. Nobody messes with Piper!

He was riveting.

I've seen a lot of it!

A really good -hearted guy, a really tough son of a bitch.

He was not like any other wrestler.

He was, in his own world, a real strong family man.

He kept his family completely out of it, and I think he took too much of it on

himself.

Everything he did from the moment he walked out of the ring rubbed people

You're going to see something you've never seen in your life before.

Whatever it was, he went against the grain and he just lived in that glory.

You know, God takes care of fools and babies.

Before I was a pro wrestler, I got hit by a pickup truck.

I lived in an Indian reservation.

I had tonsillitis, so they took out my appendix.

I moved a lot.

I got hurt a lot as a little kid.

My dad, Roddy Piper, he was born in Canada.

It's in a place called Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which is one of the

places in the world.

He used to tell me, you know, the story of running uphill both ways to school,

right, in the snow. He actually did that.

His dad was a police officer that worked for the railroad.

And this meant that they traveled 24 -7. They would spend a week in one town, a

week in the next.

I think he was about 10 years old.

He was on an Indian reservation for about six months.

He's the only white kid on it.

Everybody else is Indian, and they don't like white people at the time. So he

had to learn how to fight his way through and get their respect.

So every few months, no matter where he was going, he would have to start over,

build his reputation, and be the tough guy so he wouldn't get hurt. He would go

out and get in trouble and come home and face all kinds of physical punishment.

It was a hard Victorian.

upbringing, very strict, being the youngest.

He always kind of felt like he was an afterthought in his family is what he

would tell me, like he wasn't expected.

Not a lot of hugs, not a lot of verbal I love yous.

My grandpa did beat my dad, I don't know how often, but he was physical enough

with him that it was a dark place that my dad never really wanted to talk about

with us.

You're 12, 11, 10 years old.

You move ten times, where all of a sudden you get into a fight.

You come back home and you get into a fight because you got into a fight.

You know, it's... I don't think that

punishment, physical punishment, is a way to raise a kid. None

of it goes out of my house ever.

There was a lot of trauma in his childhood, and...

It followed him.

He seemed like the kind of person that always had a demon or something on his

shoulder and that he was fighting with. And I think that that started at a very,

very young age, long before wrestling.

I got into my bagpipes a lot.

And then it kind of pulled me away from everybody.

I don't know how, but that's where I started when I was six years old playing

the bagpipes.

It was a place for me to go. It was loud.

People knew, don't interrupt.

It actually became a hideaway for me.

One day, I was in my house, and there was a knock at my back door, and there

two friends of mine with this new guy, Rod.

And so they said to me, Cam, you're a pretty tough guy, and this new guy, Rod,

he's a pretty tough guy. Why don't you have a fight?

I said, sure.

And we went at it.

Like in the movies, he drilled me a good one and I flew over top of my

motorcycle and he won the fight.

As I found out later, Rod told me he was the light heavyweight boxing champ for

Toronto.

And from that point on, we became best friends.

He was a high school wrestler and he was number two in the city.

That was his goal, was to be a wrestler.

And A, he did graduate school. He finally did leave home.

He would have liked a better relationship with his father, you know?

That was eating him up.

As Rod became a young adult, it just became too much because Rod wanted to

Russ back.

The only other choice would be to have an all -out brawl with your father.

He left home and was out on his own.

It's just time to go. So I took my bagpipes, and I just never went back.

He was really a nomad. He went to youth hostels, YMCA, anywhere, usually back

then, at five bucks for the night. You could do it, or you'd get there and it'd

be full, so you would be on the street that night.

I had to make money, so I played my bagpipes and I'd get quarters or

they gave me.

You sleep during the day. It's too dangerous to sleep at nighttime.

At nighttime, you get cold, you get hungry, and so you start to try to feed

of these necessities.

I started stealing what I needed and then got with a group of bad guys.

You know, all of a sudden you're carrying a switchblade and, you know,

the fights.

Now I was getting off on this bully type of thing, which I hate.

He was beaten up. He was made fun of. Half of those beatings were because

somebody was trying to sexually abuse him. And you fight back.

You know, I think he did a little robbery here and there, and he was

ashamed of it. It was a brief.

Part of his life, he also would fight. People would pay to see him fight on the

street, doing whatever it takes to survive.

I was living in a youth hostel.

This is Father O'Malley, you know, he says, you know, Roderick, have you ever

seen professional wrestling?

I said, no, sir. He says, I can get you $25.

You know, that was like three months rent.

He was 15 years old when he had his first professional fight against Larry

Axe Henning.

You know, Rod, he knew that he needed an angle. I don't believe at that time

he'd come up with Rowdy Roddy Piper. His name was Rod Toombs, so he went by that

name.

I don't know how many wrestlers can play the bagpipes and has kilts. So that's

what he did to distinguish himself based on the talent that he actually had.

The announcer, he just knew my name was Roddy.

He had to announce something, and he says, ladies and gentlemen, here comes

Roddy the Piper.

He was just naturally good at it, and then that evolved into his wrestling

career, since it was a special skill that he could use as a gimmick. People

would stand up and say, you know, and yell at him. That was his goal, was to

people pissed off at him. So they're going to look in the program, who is

guy? My nose is broke, you know, and Larry only hit me twice, but he did a

job. And I was drooping. He says, kid, how'd you like to go to Kansas City? And

that's how I got into pro wrestling, and I never stopped.

He knew that there was going to be many days that he didn't know where the next

paycheck was coming, and so he just threw himself at it. That took him all

across Canada and then into the States and just wherever he could get a job.

When wrestling came along, That's why.

Because it had all the elements without the police.

There were more than two dozen wrestling territories in North America.

So that meant that guys could make a living uprooting, going from territory

territory. I'm so fortunate to have wrestling and the way it evolved.

If it hadn't, I would have been dead. There's no doubt about it.

I've got a baby face that looks well in dress playing bagpipes, and they just

beat me up.

So when you're just getting in, you're breaking into pro wrestling, what do you

do? They beat you up, and you have to continuously get up and keep coming

I got my first break in Los Angeles, and holy cow, really, really

brutal, brutal days.

Roddy came into the gym.

He says, what are you doing? You going to sweep up the place or sell hot

doggies, chicken on a bun?

He says, no, I'm a wrestler.

And I says, you look like you got polio in your stomach. You're so small.

You'll never make it. You got to learn how to wrestle so you could be a

bastard.

We're going to see things that are different, that's never been seen

ever, ever on any film.

Don't practice this without a qualified instructor right there with you.

Gino Jean, if you don't know, look him up, was the toughest man in the world.

Trained Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Rowdy Ronda Rousey.

Jean Lavelle, I would consider the most...

A decorated stuntman of all time.

He was in the first ever televised MMA event.

And when I was doing judo, he would help me a lot. And then when I got into MMA,

he was in my corner for, like, every single match.

Judo Gene saw that these guys were bullying me. And Gene would tell me what

do on the fly.

You gotta beat him with the dark side of the moon.

Roddy'd say, well, what's the dark side of the moon?

Well, what the referee doesn't see didn't happen.

Watch you don't take the eyes out. This is a throw. Throw to great hand.

He'd call me late at night, and my wife said, hey, it must be Roddy

calling again.

So he says, hey, let's go roll for a couple hours.

We worked out hard.

No playing games.

He wanted to know how to wrestle.

The LaBelle family is...

They're legendary.

They ran the Olympic auditorium. And because Dad had earned their respect, he

was able then to wrestle there in L .A. for the LaBelle family.

And that is really where Dad got the chance to spread his wings and really

become not just another fighter, but the one they came to see.

One of my favorite memories with him is when I was like...

15, he brought me to LA to see Hollywood.

And I wanted to be an actress and singer. And so to me, Hollywood was

Marilyn Monroe handprints and glamour and all of that. And we get here, he

a car and he's like, all right, kid, I'm going to take you around town.

First thing he does is he goes somewhere into like the Compton maybe area. I was

a little young to understand what I was looking at. And he was like.

That's where your father slept on the street.

A woman got murdered right outside my window.

But I didn't say anything because I'm not a snitch.

He's just telling me these horrific stories.

So then I come home from that vacation.

My friends asked me, they're like, how's Hollywood? And I was like, they're

like, did you see this and that? I was like, I think I got the wrestler's tour.

I was born and grew up in Los Angeles.

Some of my earliest memories that I have are actually about professional

wrestling, being a professional wrestling fan.

I can remember going down on the bus, running with my stepfather, trying to

catch a bus to go down to the Olympic Auditorium.

In 1976, one of the new faces in the territory was a young lad by the name of

Roddy Piper.

He was 21 years old.

He was a young, fresh -faced kid.

Fans give him slight applause.

They start wrestling and it starts out as a clean match.

But little by little, subtly, he starts doing these things that only a villain

would do.

He was fighting and he was giving people kicks to the groin during this

wrestling match.

It was like watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly.

And you just saw this magic.

before your eyes, people were booing Roddy Piper. They absolutely hated who

was. I am the intelligence.

I think the most controversial thing I did was stir up controversy.

Because it draws money.

Conflict draws money.

The wheels are always turning for him as to what can I say, what can I do next?

Because you had to keep them interested.

You had to keep them coming back.

There's no way, Piper!

Hey, I fool!

Hey! Piper!

Anything he...

did, he wanted to be good at it. I don't plan to go in there and make it easy.

I don't plan to go in there and not have some knocks on my own knocking bullet.

And they used him to do the interviews because he would showboat and help sell

boletos, tickets.

You're a pig, Guerrero! Your father was a pig!

Your brother was a pig!

And you're a pig, Guerrero!

The Guerrero family was one of the first families in professional wrestling.

If you're a Latino descent, you didn't really see a lot of faces on television

that were like yours.

And usually if you did, they played the roles of a gardener or they played the

role of a maid.

So for us to see the Guerrero family in hero roles was very important.

We worshipped them.

You get in that ring, Chavo Guerrero, and it's going to be all over you,

brother, because I don't give a damn about nothing no more. When Roddy Piper

would insult the Guerreros, We took it very personally.

You sitting at home with your fat bellies and your construction boats

your beer, you know who I am.

Roddy really had the whole package.

In the ring, he was a dirty wrestler, but he had all this tremendous frenetic

energy.

But also, he knew how to get a reaction out of the fans.

And one of the ways he would do that was to bring his bagpipes out to the ring.

One time, he told everybody in silence the entire...

stadium. He'd play the Mexican national anthem to apologize for attacking the

Guerreros. I said, you know, I love you people.

I'd like to do something special.

And all the wonderful Hispanic people came in. I'm in the ring.

And please stand for the Mexican national anthem.

I said to myself, I'm going to die.

I put those bagpipes up, man.

It's too late, right?

And Roddy starts playing his notes.

It's not the Mexican national anthem, but he starts playing La Cucaracha.

He starts playing a song about a cockroach.

And the fans, they're just shocked.

Chairs come up, things are being thrown, stages being overcome.

It was like watching a car wreck, you know?

It's a horrible thing to see, but at the same time, you can't take your eyes

away from it. I was there that night.

And I was going to whiz in my pants.

You can't write that kind of stuff.

I said, this guy is a natural.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the Rotated Wrestler of the Year, maybe you guessed

it, Roddy Piper!

You had to move around, especially as a bad guy.

You would run your course, and then you needed to go on and find

another place to go and stake your claim for a while and then you would move on

somewhere else. I am extremely pleased to take my wonderful trophy.

Once I left Los Angeles and I went to Portland, nobody knew who I was. So you

had to start all over again.

32nd birthday gift.

32.

Did you find the choke? Yeah. Okay, kick the engine over, leaving the throttle

closed.

It's probably just new. It takes a lot of kicks.

Yeah, maybe.

I met Roddy in 1979.

I was working graveyard shift as a waitress to the southwest side of

Roderick, you're lucky I had it high enough that that didn't show.

He was the funniest human being on the planet.

Is that it?

Oh, the guy.

All the wrinkles on my face are from him. It makes me laugh.

I was young. I was 19 years old. And so all the other waitresses would say, you

go wait on those wrestlers.

Prime rib was always what he got. He ordered two prime ribs and always two

pieces of lemon pie.

He started asking me, hey, can I have your phone number? I'd like to ask you

out.

I thought he was cute as heck. I thought he was cute as heck. But the crowd he

was with was so loud, and so I'm like, no, you know, hey, hi, hi.

And so we kind of flirted, but after about a month, his tag team partner,

Brooks, got down on his knees, and he says, please give him your phone number.

I'm his tag team partner, and I'm getting beat to heck out there because

only thinking about you. He wants to get to know you.

So I said, okay, I'll take his phone number.

And then we hit it off.

Portland wrestling in the late 70s, early 80s was huge.

The buildings were always packed.

From the moment I started dating him, anywhere we would go, people knew who he

was. Everyone pretty much had the same reaction. They were shocked, but after

they met him, they all understood that he was a genuine guy and caring.

And to have to do something like when he attacked a woman wrestler, he has to do

it over the top because it's so hard for him to do.

This is why men wrestle and why women don't! This is why!

For Roddy, in real life, a woman is on a pedestal.

He's very old -fashioned.

You would never hit a woman. You would never insult a woman.

And I decided early on I was going to love Roddy no matter what. I did, and I

do, and wouldn't change it for the world.

In Portland, it was a smaller territory.

In Atlanta, the business was growing.

You had to move around, and you had to be able to go from territory to

territory. That's the way that the business worked at the time.

They called me in the East Coast.

I was ready at any time to get up and take a left -hand turn, and I drove the

old yellow Canary right across the country.

WTBS in Atlanta, Georgia, Ted Turner's Superstation.

Wrestling was a staple.

Here's Roddy Piper.

Very few people knew who he was on a national basis.

He wasn't the biggest guy in the world, but the one thing that he did better

than anybody else was talk.

It's a pleasure for you to have me here. I'm sure you see, being the expert that

I am. The promoter realized Roddy knew how to tell a story, not just his own

story. but other people's stories.

People want to get familiar with me. He was brought in as Rod Piper, the color

commentator. Sport coat, no kilt. And then the color commentator began to

skew his views.

You got a big, big, big mouth.

Maybe a little bit more nasty.

Maybe a little bit more against the fan favorites.

And they created another way to get this character over.

They say sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Well, some of the words he's said about me and my family have hurt me deeply.

Sticks and stones may break your bones. You are right.

And I'm not enough to throw sticks and stones.

Now you've got, I can kick that commentator's butt.

The commentator was a wrestler and a tough guy.

Now he comes out with the kill.

Now he's Roddy Piper. Roddy Piper, the only way that he's really been

outstanding in this match is his bad sportsmanship.

They're trying to literally carry Piper out of the ring.

I told you Piper pays back.

I told you nobody, nobody messes with Piper.

When he wrestles as a bad guy, That was the most comfortable for him. Come out

here right now and fight me like a man!

Come right now! If you're a bad guy, fans aren't going to come up and shake

hand as much.

He could be alone more if he was a bad guy.

Maybe because he was alone in life early on so often, that's where he was

comfortable.

As a kid, he was around some of the roughest people you can imagine.

And sometimes I wonder if that's part of what pieced together that bad guy's

psychology that he had.

I am the legend killer.

So my dad did this thing. There are these yellow legal pads that he would

He would write all kinds of ideas. Just in case he had the opportunity that a

mic was handed to him so that he had something great to say. You know, you

couldn't get a date with a $100 bill.

I wouldn't fight you if my grandma was threatened by the Huns.

Sometimes maybe I heard it in the middle of a rock and roll song.

Just had a knack for putting that kind of stuff together.

Of course, I don't have to impress somebody. They got to impress me because

Roddy Piper and you're not. And that's why he was so quick -witted because he

put in work nobody else did. When everybody else was partying and

which he did.

He also was thinking and writing these things down. Like sometimes people say

me, you just say what comes off the top of your head.

Oh, it's an orange.

You have no idea how much work went into it.

I've seen a lot of men buried wearing a $50 Stetson and carrying a five -buck

gun, you geek.

There was a guy named Ric Flair on the East Coast.

The greatest wrestler in the whole entire wide world comes right out of the

-Atlantic area. And Ronnie Piper and I are glad to be here, brother.

Rick and I were so different. You know, I wear a kilt. Rick doesn't.

He's blonde. I ain't. You know, that we got along real well outside the ring.

And then everything started to get out of control.

Piper and Flair have formed a pact.

And where there's trouble, we won't be hard to find.

Well,

I knew, yeah, I heard his name, but I didn't know anything about him.

He came in the studio.

I knew right away I was going to like him. He was full of himself, and man, I

mean talent.

God,

he was entertaining.

It was so good that it made everybody mad.

You're going to find it's a whole lot easier to jump on than it is to jump

I had moved over there to the East Coast with Roddy, and we were expecting our

first child.

It was a very rowdy time.

Roddy and Rick and other wrestlers, they lived on a planet that was theirs.

They were a wild, wild pair of men and lots of drinking and hotels getting

damaged and such.

Next thing I remember, I'm in my bed, my clothes are on, the doors knocked off

the hinges.

I didn't know what happened, but I got the hell out of here.

You hear things, you know some things, you don't know a lot of things.

Roddy was Roddy, and that's what it was.

We like our kamikazes on ice and our women on fire. You understand what I'm

saying? And everywhere we go, we do it better, longer, harder than anybody

We were the Beatles, man.

It was suicidal putting us together.

Ingesting or drinking, anything.

Roddy could beat anybody to the draw.

It just got way out of hand.

This is where Ric Flair started, you know, 99 Tomahawks. And, you know, here

like, cool, you know, I'm pretty hardcore, man, pretty hardcore.

I'm drinking mine, and I'll be the one I always get in trouble.

It was a time to make money, but it was go, go, go, go, go, and you get three

days off, and then you come back on the road for another couple weeks.

And I remember we were driving in a snowstorm.

You know, we had beers and everything in the car.

So we got out, and we were all taking a leak on the side of the road, and all of

a sudden, Roddy ran to the car.

And I remember it was like we ran after him because we knew that Roddy was in

one of those kind of states of mind where he was going to take the car. We

pretty much tackled Roddy while he was trying to drive off in the car.

He was a tough guy to handle.

He was a heavy partier.

And I would scoop him up, and I'd make sure he got to where he was supposed to

be going, got him to his rooms.

Got him to the hotel and got him to the airport.

You go out there and wrestle for 45 minutes, and you come back, take a

and you're wide friggin' awake.

And a lot of times I'd look at the coke and, oh, I don't want to do this.

But you end up doing it.

It was, I need this to wake up to wrestle. I need this to go to bed

work in an hour. This is all I have.

It was also about to numb the pain, the physical pain, the pain of being alone.

Always having to be in transition, you know, you're never sitting still.

It's a vicious cycle that would just go round and round.

It's easier to go have a drink. It's easier to go take a pill or go smoke a

joint.

Back in those days, like, any injury could cost you your job.

If you can't do it, they replace you a few minutes later with somebody else.

You learn to be your own doctors. That's kind of the sad thing is you're your

own doctor.

Roddy was pretty out of control.

Lord knows what kind of drugs and alcohol were being consumed.

Having Roddy travel so

often and be gone so much and having a growing family, it was very difficult.

When you live like we did, you know, 3 ,000 miles.

A week to become desensitized.

One thing that Roddy did, he kept his family

completely out of business.

Because he didn't want them to see what he went through.

He wanted them to grow up, be beautiful, healthy and happy.

And I think he took too much of it on himself.

Sometimes when Rod would come home from the road, he wouldn't come straight

home. He would check into a hotel room and just get rested because when he got

home, he couldn't rest.

He's almost had to do a transition mentally when he came from the road to

because he didn't want to bring that character home. He had such a hot temper

Hot Rod.

And he had to because he had to be on guard a lot.

It was very separate.

He didn't like to take us to a lot of events.

We were very concerned about safety because of how much aggression was being

towards Rod.

He'd been a villain in the Deep South and fighting fans and getting assault

charges. I mean, I can think of a few situations with Roddy with fans trying

run us off the road and chasing us.

Cities like Detroit.

People throw thumbtacks in the ring, hit with beer bottles.

I was in Asheville, North Carolina, threw a rattlesnake in the ring one

Guy ran down to the ringside with a gunny sack, threw a rattlesnake.

It was a lot of crazy fans back then, and being a bad guy could be a very

dangerous living.

I'm going to shove it down your throat!

There's certainly times when I'd see him say or do something on TV where I'm

like, oh, my gosh, we're in for it now. This is going to get worse before it

gets better.

But I never asked him to curtail or tone it down because that would hinder his

creativity.

The people wanted to kill me.

I remember there's a gentleman I wasn't really paying much attention, but Roddy

was taken off down this hallway.

And the next thing I see, I'm having some words.

And the police got involved in it.

He did have a big knife, you know, like a bowie knife.

So finally their officer said, Mr. Piper, we've got him. He's going to

They said, well, I just wanted to have a couple seconds with him. The officer

said, why?

And he said, because he stabbed me.

And Roddy took his thumb off of his chest and bludgeoned. Started squirting

the officer's face at every heartbeat.

It was going... And I went, oh!

Sergeant Slaughter took me to the hospital and held the wound.

The doctor said if that would have went one more half inch or less, you'd be

dead. So what was it like?

It was a living hell.

It wasn't just you're a bad guy on TV and that's it. It followed you

Dad was stabbed three times in his life. Three times they actually stabbed him

to the point where he had a leather jacket that was Kevlar lined and it was

proof because he'd been stabbed so many times.

He was the next generation to take it to the next level.

What a tremendous match to have live.

Millions of fans everywhere can see Greg Valentine and Roddy Piper go at each

other. Me and Piper started out a long, long, long journey.

We probably wrestled each other for a year.

We just walloped each other.

I took Piper's head and rammed it in through the turnbuckle.

Every time I'd go out there, I'd beat on his ear.

Wow.

So I ended up naming it the year of the ear.

Watch him go to that ear. And I'd laugh, ha, ha, ha, the year of the ear.

And then finally, they want to blow it off, end it.

What happened was Bruno Sammartino and Larry Zbysko.

Did $500 ,000 in Shea Stadium.

So it became a war of the North against the South. So the South said, all right,

we're going to put on the first pay -per -view ever.

So they come to me and they said, I want you to make up the meanest, nastiest,

most brutal match you can possibly think of. And Piper came up with this dog

collar. 40 pounds of change. I want you to check it out. You're going to see

something you've never seen in your life before.

It was a great idea. It was my birthday.

Oh, what is this?

This is beautiful.

They presented me with this big cake. I love cake. Wait a minute. What is this?

I look at it, and I see some steel in there, and I reached down and pulled out

dog collar.

No way!

What are you doing? What are you trying to do to me? He wants to have a dog

collar match.

Piper was the best, the best performer.

Good at the mic.

Probably number one at the mic. Some people said he sounded like Daffy Duck.

I love Daffy Duck.

You're talking about the biggest thing that's ever going to happen in the

history of wrestling.

Ladies and gentlemen, our next event of the evening is a very special match.

This is a collar match.

It was the very first pay -per -view ever for wrestling.

Two men linked together like this in Mortal Kombat. This is a strategy.

This is what Piper talked to me about.

See, I'm the first one to get mad.

He could use it to batter the guy.

Now he's going to get me in the teeth right there.

I had to go to the dentist the next day. And you can see the concern of the

people watching this match. They really don't know what to expect when two men

are going at it like this.

Now I'm going for the ear.

It was a ridiculously hard match. It was the toughest match probably I've ever

been in, basically, with Valentine.

Valentine on his knees. Heart blow to the top of the head.

You know, I'm not just selling. I'm hurt.

But it's all for you wrestling fans, giving you our love in a strange way.

This is the end of it right there. You all called me.

He was the greatest of all time.

A really good -hearted guy, but a really tough son of a bitch.

Of all time.

You say your strategy was to take away all my hair, and you say what you forgot

is you've got one more year to go!

When you look for attributes of a bad guy, you have to be fearless.

You have to have a gift of gab. You can say anything that you want, even though

you know it's got to be controversial.

You have to be able to communicate with the audience.

And you have to have a certain attitude about you.

And Roddy had all those attributes and more.

Vince McMahon had these plans of expanding nationally.

What's the best way to expand all over North America?

You get the best wrestlers from the individual territories, and you bring

all to WWE.

And Vince McMahon wants it all.

I got a call from Roddy. He said, Mr. McMahon called.

I said, yeah, are you coming up? He goes, yeah, he wants me to come up. I

come on up.

Roddy was coming to New York City.

Well, let me tell you how to be Roddy Piper.

Have a nice day.

Go yourself.

Give me the microphone. Get out of my way.

Full -legged, big, fat, ugly penguin.

You know what? You both stay.

It's as simple as this. When RP talks, brother, people listen.

In New York, New York is big guys.

At least 250 pounders, six foot, whatever. That's what I was.

You know, Piper, later on, I guess he gained weight, but when he first came

he was smaller.

So if Roddy's not the greatest physical specimen in the world, don't let him do

that. Do what Roddy does best, and be a talk show host.

In a moment, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take you to Piper's pit,

involving, of course, the rather controversial and certainly opinionated

Piper.

They put up a backdrop, and it was...

basically a wrestling talk show to stir the pot. You're a lousy wrestler.

It's as simple as that. I might be a lousy wrestler, but I'm still in there.

got not a play or no play.

It was the Tonight Show where the host could end up beating up the guest. It

just the most off -the -wall, unpredictable, amazing idea that ever

television. In my opinion, I'm biased, but whatever.

Is he supposed to scare me?

You had to be ready.

He was witty, smart. He was like the fastest gun in the West.

You could take some guys and

make them look like heroes and superstars, or he could kind of like, if

wanted to, he could chop you down to size pretty quick.

The most famous one, of course, is the interview with Jimmy Snuka.

There were a couple of tokens.

And one of them, you know, had been what we call gimmicked.

But that's not the one Roddy chose.

Am I making fun of you?

No, sir. No, sir.

Nothing was scripted on Piper's pit.

It was all up at the top of Dad's head or something that he'd maybe written

in a notebook before.

And that's where the magic happened.

When they think they got the answers, I change the questions.

He wasn't famous for his technique or his type of wrestling or how big his

were. He was just an incredible talker and a guy that was taking wrestling and

telling a different story.

but began to work with MTV, which was absolutely red hot.

You look wonderful, Cindy.

Captain Lou Albano and Cindy Lauper were friends, and Cindy Lauper had put Lou

Albano in her Girls Want to Have Fun video.

I got this guy named Dave Wolf that manages Cindy Lauper. They just did a

with Albano, but now they want to get involved in the wrestling business.

That's, hmm, hmm.

Dave thought it was going to be good for Cindy's career.

You know, here she's doing this crossover in this very unusual world.

It's like, what the hell is this?

Would you please welcome Cindy Leppard!

So now, there's all this attention somewhere to WWE.

People who are fashionable, people who are in the rock and roll world, they're

going to start watching WWE.

They have this ceremony in Madison Square Garden.

Lou Albano was one of the primary forces responsible for the rock and wrestling

thing in China. And what better way to honor a man but to give him a gold

record? I'm so grateful to receive this award.

Now that's going to provoke some jealousy. And who is the most jealous

of all?

Maybe they have some kind of presentation to make. I want a

Oh, look out!

Captain Lou Albano, clobbered!

Roddy Piper, shocking, kicks the biggest pop star in America, a

female pop star in the head.

David Wolfe trying to come to the rescue, but he's no match.

Oh, his palm drives it right down into the canvas. 20 minutes before the match,

I was asked, do you think you can kick Cyndi Lauper and not hurt her?

by her manager.

I hope you never manage me.

But when they saw that, Saddam Hussein got nothing on me.

Cindy wasn't a wrestler, so she had to have somebody defend her honor.

He knew what he was doing. He was stirring up the crowd, and he knew it,

loved it.

All heels do.

What a disgraceful display.

Cindy looked at her, tears running down her face.

Hulkster's hot.

Everybody's hot. Boy, he wishes he could have got his hands on Roddy Piper.

Every dog has its day. You know what I'm talking about?

And that one's going to get his.

She expects me to sit there and do nothing about her. So I kick her 12

across the field.

Just imagine this. In about a four -month period, I had kicked Cindy Lauper

the head.

I don't know how many guys on Piper's Fit I had, whatever I had done, all in

this very short time, is getting really heated up.

I couldn't go anyplace. I was fighting. I had a family. I was fighting in and

out of Denny's. It was crazy.

Roddy understood that bringing in a musician brings it to a whole other

so he was on board for that.

But he found it very hard being an old -school person, and he

tried best he could to cooperate.

It was never easy.

Once we got hooked up with MTV, it took us to mainstream.

MTV.

Music to vomit by.

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, the war to settle the score.

The hottest ticket in town.

The rock and wrestling connection helps us change the look of the business to

where we've got families and kids at ringside.

This is broadcast on MTV.

This is big time.

Everybody wants to be a part of it.

Well, there's something going on here. I got to see what it is. I got to check

it out.

Piper was the ultimate villain. So you want to have the ultimate villain

the ultimate hero.

It was the biggest thing ever was Hogan and Piper going at it.

When I ran

into Piper.

He's the one that made everything else possible.

I had to have an opponent, and nobody had the air, the arrogance, the

attitude to go toe -to -toe with me and not back down. Without Piper, we could

have never launched into the stratosphere.

Piper has two Confederates, Cowboy Bob Borden Jr.

and Paul Mr. Wonderful Orndorff.

They interfere in the match.

Who

is going to

save the day?

Well, Mr. T, the biggest TV star in the United States.

Everybody in the country knows Mr.

T.

And so insert Mr.

T. It was Vince's way to interject entertainment.

It was nothing but excitement and electricity, and it sure worked.

I don't know anything about his background as a wrestler.

I used to be a bodyguard. I used to be a bouncer at a disco and all that stuff.

You know, and I knew how to wrestle, you know, and I wasn't no fluff.

So I stepped in the ring, and Piper snuck up behind me.

I didn't think it would go down like that. If I knew it would go down like

I would have did something else. So that's why I was so, I guess I could say

pissed.

Roddy was the ultimate bad guy. He sold it, he packed it, he was good at what he

did.

And it just went berserk, you know.

I live with it now because it's so old. I think about it, you know. It was man

of the keystone cops because everybody was fighting.

What happened to our match?

We don't have a match anymore. It's pandemonium.

Well, back then we were still really protecting the business.

Should we tell the cops what we're doing or not? And the standard modem was, I

don't tell anybody anything.

Let's just get their natural reaction.

All of a sudden, some policeman came in the ring on me.

Here's a cop with a gun and here the rest of them come.

Piper was fighting the cops and everything. It's just insanity.

Hulk Hogan was the biggest hero.

Roddy Piper was the most detected villain.

And now we are ready to start.

Our road to the first WrestleMania.

Okay, Ariel, let's go.

Come on, Ariel.

I'm sorry.

Mr. Proud Papa.

Papa Piper.

My dad often would say things like, I can't imagine how hard it is to be Roddy

Piper's kid.

Here comes Roddy.

Ariel.

He felt guilty, like he was some way a bad parent because his career was in

way affecting our lives.

When we were starting out as a young family, he came to me and said,

I really do not want our children to grow up in a hundred different places. I

want them to have roots.

You sure are pretty.

Because he never felt like he had a home.

We chose to live in the country and have a lot of land around us.

It was a safe zone.

We lived on a 10 -acre ranch in the middle of nowhere, end of a gravel road,

we really kept to just that ranch.

Goodbye. With any kind of luck, she'll keep going. We won't have to feed her.

We wanted to be isolated because...

We had actual stalkers who would come and try and break into our house or be

our property.

We did not go to the malls. We did not go to the movies.

I must have gotten 30 fights in one year just because people wanted to test

their moxie against me.

This kind of thing is real life.

This is the kind of thing that makes a family.

It's a great way of nature just teaching a family how to be a family and stay

together.

I had a meeting with a small room full of our executives, and I said, there is

Super Bowl.

Here's the World Series, there's this, there's that. It was really common

So why not have one of your own? Call it WrestleMania.

We would not have had WrestleMania I had it not been for Roddy because you have

to have, again, a strong antagonist to get with the protagonist.

Check this out, dude!

Check that out! You have to have good stories and you have to have bold

characters and larger -than -life individuals, and Roddy was all that.

So I knew I had Roddy, I knew I had Hogan, I knew I had Mr. T.

It was like that was going to work. How does it feel to be portraying someone

like myself?

Well, you ain't nothing, man.

Roddy Piper really did not like Mr. T.

In those days, you know, you really paid some dues

to be in the main event.

Then Mr. T walks in, not even having a match anywhere, and it's like... What

right does he have to be in my ring in the main event?

You want to get in there, brother, and you want to try some fighting, huh?

We've never brought in somebody from the outside.

And one of the biggest problems I had was the barbaric mindset of Piper and

Orndorff. You're looking at someone that... He's an actor. He's not a

We're just going to break his legs as the guys, please.

How can I say it without sounding cocky? They didn't understand that bringing me

in would broaden their thing.

Because basically...

You know, Vince, being the pioneer that he is, he said, wow, we're going to

broaden and bring it to the world. You come on down, T. We'll put an X where

T should be.

Roddy hated the thought of a Mr. T coming into his arena.

It's an insult. It's a slap in the face to the business.

I had these two guys that had this old -school mentality, and plus I got this

guy who's got a real edgy attitude.

You know, he always talked in third person. Mr. T, don't do that. Mr. T,

put up with that. Mr. T ain't no powder puff, you have to understand, you know.

They didn't want to lose to Mr. T because he's not a real wrestler.

There I am, the hottest heel they've ever had, and now they want me to take a

dive.

I said, I ain't doing it.

I was kind of like the babysitter, the moderator, the peacekeeper.

I was ready to have a nervous breakdown.

The wrestling extravaganza of all -time WrestleMania.

The people knew the wrestling business was changing that night. There was a

fever pitch in Madison Square Garden.

Piper's going to get it. Get what?

His punches.

What do you do to show the world what this product is and what it will be in a

really big way?

How does he fit in any of this? He does it.

That's why I had him.

This is what sports entertainment is all about.

It was everything we had, we threw it in, and let's roll the dice and do it in

big way.

Everything I had was on the line.

This is what is arguably the turning point of the WWE in just so many ways.

Roddy was very stubborn.

But you're about to make more money than you ever had in your entire lifetime.

Roddy was smart enough to know, yeah, I'm going to do business.

and I'm going to make it look right.

You don't have to like it.

At a certain point, Roddy Piper instructs Mr.

T, pick me up in a fireman's cabin.

Even though he didn't want Mr.

T to take advantage of him, Roddy Piper knows how to sell himself, and he knows

that's the photo that will go all over the world.

You need to make Mr. T the hero. This is what this is all about.

Mr. T should have beat one of those guys right in the middle of the ring.

Preferably Piper.

But instead, they had to have Orton jump off the top rope with a cast to hit one

golf on the head just so he could get a win.

Piper didn't want to do the job even in WrestleMania.

You're the bad guy. You're supposed to get beat. That's what bad guys do.

He was so protective about protecting Roddy Piper.

He didn't realize if you just listen to our opinion, I think you might find

things a lot easier.

But Piper didn't like me, you know, at all. I mean, there was no rapport at all

with him and I.

It was strictly business. We didn't talk unless we had to.

But later on in life, when Piper and I got to be real good friends, I said, you

screwed up, man.

You could have been one of the richest guys I've ever met, but you wouldn't let

me beat you.

So he goes, damn it.

I'm so pissed. I wish we had talked. I said, I tried to talk. You wouldn't talk

to me.

Hulk Hogan, Mr.

T kind of taking the center stage of that whole event. He always felt they

couldn't have been the center stage without him being there, being the bad

And he knew his worth. He knew his worth.

It's things like that, that.

made Roddy the ultimate rebel.

For myself to stay on top, I needed to get out of the business completely, do

something in another form.

I spent a lot of time with Roddy and had a lot of big talks with Roddy about

that time period. And I remember Roddy basically telling me that you got to

something else after wrestling.

What are you going to do after that? He's like, Hollywood.

Roddy had a quality that I could use in a movie.

Well, first of all, he didn't have a pretty boy face like a Hollywood actor,

this role required him to be kind of a working man.

You, you're okay.

This one, real ugly.

The character of John Nada is really based a lot on Roddy, and his past and

he'd been through, and he added a lot of color to that.

He gave me a notebook.

Now, in this notebook were written all these phrases and ideas he had for

interviews.

And right there, sitting there, was I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick

ass. I'm all out of bubblegum.

Well, that's a great line. I can use that. I have come here to chew bubblegum

and kick ass.

And I'm all out of bubblegum.

That's all his idea. That was all from his brain.

I've never felt safer in my life than fighting with Roddy Piper.

I believe that fight scene lasts literally about seven minutes on screen.

We really, you know, choreographed a ton of it. But there was one time we were

both so hyped up. I was especially hyped up. And that first punch, I hit him

right in the face. And I was like...

And he's like, come on, man, don't worry. Come on, come on, step out of it.

on, don't worry. Come on, let's start again.

And he was great.

Brother, life's a bitch.

Don't feel sorry for me.

My name's John Nada.

The year and a half we were in Los Angeles while he was filming those

brought the scripts home and we'd go over them.

Here we are.

He was always leaving to go to acting classes.

I mean, it was a whole other lifestyle.

It was not like it was today where it's a lot more flexible for wrestlers to

also do acting.

Back then, you didn't do that. It was not an easy road to be really the first

wrestler to go into film.

When Vince was booking everything without Piper's name, it was real hard

to make that transition because Piper was so hot at the time.

If Roddy wanted to go off and do film, What am I going to say? No, don't take

advantage of that opportunity. As long as I know that he's coming back.

He loved acting and he loved the work of it, but he felt alienated and didn't

really have a lot in common with a lot of the people in Hollywood.

The only people that they can understand me are other wrestlers.

I needed to come back to the WWE and walk back in the front door.

When I came back into wrestling from Hollywood, bringing that credibility

was huge.

As far as Roddy's standpoint is, well, you had to bring me back because I was

the greatest star of all time.

You know, that would be Roddy's point of view.

But it doesn't matter what you want. Give the audience what they want.

They want Roddy to come back? Let's give them Roddy.

And after a respite, you know, Roddy's ready to come back. Great, he's fresh,

he's new all over again. Different set of opponents.

Mr. Downey.

Yes, Mr. Piper.

Don't blow no more smoke in my face. When Downey Jr. was a talk show host, he

had a big mouth.

And Roddy had this impeccable timing.

So when Downey blows smoke in Roddy's face, it's like, one, two, three, four.

Instead of immediately doing it, watch, something's going to happen now. And

then it does.

He was so creative.

I think the fire is out, Jeff. Very quick on his feet.

But at the same time, he was very opinionated and wanted someone to listen

his opinion. I listened to a lot of Roddy's ideas, some of which were really

dead on and some of which were, wow, that was out there.

They say you shouldn't blow your own horn, don't they say that? Why not?

You are the most arrogant individual I think we've ever had.

Nick Roddy once described our relationship as a love -hate

We never fought.

There were a couple times when it was very close.

That was the way it was back in those days. A lot of times you settled things

a fistfight. You just did.

Vince and I were two peas in a pod.

I love the ass.

I do.

He's an ass.

Sometimes. So am I.

Roddy Piper was an attraction all to himself.

The fans could no longer boo him anymore.

You came to see Roddy Piper's intensity, you came to hear his big mouth, and you

came to watch that frenzied, kinetic spirit he brought between

the ropes.

Whether he won or whether he was humiliated, he was a draw and he

draw.

Roddy Piper was maturing and it

wasn't all about Roddy and Roddy was proving that, hey, I can make people

too.

I wouldn't lay my shoulders down for anybody.

But when I do, I make somebody, and it means something.

This is a special match.

This is the biggest moment in my life, for sure, up to this point.

Roddy really launched me.

My whole career just started climbing, and Roddy was the one that gave me that

first boost.

This is the first time these two men are meeting for the World Wrestling

Federation Intercontinental title.

I think the last time, I think I did watch this maybe when Roddy died. I

make a point of, like, trying to go back and find some good memories.

I always felt Roddy took a special interest in me.

Roddy was born in Saskatoon, and my dad grew up in Saskatoon. And there was a

possibility that their name, like, they were the same family, or maybe there was

some blood between us.

When I first met him, we joked that we might be cousins.

Like, it was like, hey, cuz.

And I didn't mind. I never minded Roddy being a cousin. I know this guy since

he's been knee -high to a grasshopper. I remember when they were changing your

potty pad.

I think it was a message to the other wrestlers, some of the other superstars,

that weren't in the habit of reaching down to help the next guys. Roddy was

like, here, I'll show you how it's done.

Eye to eye, nose to nose.

But I was relieved to find out that this guy's really pitching for me. He's

actually opening the doors for me.

That match was Roddy's match.

Like, Roddy put that match together.

Roddy was so tuned in to what would work with the fans.

They don't want to blame me with the bell.

Say, no, no, don't do it.

His conscience gets the better of him. He changes his mind here and decides not

to.

By being a nice guy, it cost him.

Over the years, Roddy told me many times that it

was his most favorite match.

And, you know, you never forget that.

There's an old saying that's, you need a license to hunt, you need a license to

fish. Any jerk can have a kid. It takes man to be a dad.

When I look at my childhood, my dad was gone.

almost every day for at least up until I was five.

The first at least 12 years of my life, he was gone for long periods of time. I

think at one point I didn't see him for over a year.

We both made the same choice that the wrestling business took Preston over

anything, even family. So that's a tough choice to look in the mirror and live

with. You were gone at least 300 days a year, every year.

Like me, he was a real strong family man. You know, you commiserate together

you miss your kids' birthday parties and you miss Halloween and you miss all

these little special days all the time. You see pictures, the heartbreak at home

of being gone all the time. You know, it's just a very tough part of your

When Roddy would come home and have to be dad, he was always fun.

He would spoil them rotten.

He would pull them out of school, doesn't matter what was going on.

Christmas, he was always home and always lots of presents.

A lot of cuddle time.

He was trying very hard to create what he didn't have.

He would come home and he would be so exhausted.

you know, while trying to see us.

And then he would want to have fun or just do something that's a family.

And then immediately, like as soon as we were having fun, you could see him

getting antsy about work.

You could see it start to tick like a clock going faster and faster.

And I think he missed it. You know, he missed us when he was gone and he missed

the action when he was home.

He was like a runaway as a kid growing up and spent a lot of time on the road.

in his own mindset, like Roddy against the world.

He was not like any other wrestler.

He was in his own world.

I think that world also meant going away.

I'm going to get 30 minutes with my dad this month.

I just want to hug him, cuddle with him, kiss him, and do whatever I can in that

time because I literally get him on his transfer layover flight.

He wasn't an NFL player that had a season. He went 365.

There you go.

They never liked seeing him go, everyone, including myself.

If you could wish for anything in the whole world, what would you wish for?

For my family to be together all the time.

But it's got to work.

You know, it's hard not to get sad when he's going out the door.

But, um, sorry.

It's hard to live with a man that has constant injuries.

Of course, they varied from bruises to broken bones.

He never let on how bad he was hurting.

I would beg him to sit still and recover from an injury, yes. Yes, I would. But

you cannot make Rod do anything he doesn't want to.

Dad was injured 90 % of the time.

So when I say I had to lace his boots up because I was eight years old, it's

because it physically hurt him.

He is sorely outnumbered here.

I remember the first time that I really felt like, wow, he is mortal.

Hogan gets a whipping on him.

And really hating Hogan.

The hardest thing as a kid for me was...

knowing your dad's injuries.

And he had just had a hip replacement.

He had a scar from a hip replacement.

Hulk Hogan took a chair and hit my dad.

He's not supposed to be wrestling. We were told he might not even walk again.

I just remember breaking down in tears because for the first time it became

real.

At that point, My parents stopped letting us watch altogether.

When we had the inside and the outside view, it was really rough.

I mean, he was in constant pain and yet could work through it.

As he got older, he had a shoulder.

injury and his arm would just hang like a couple inches lower than the other arm

and he was probably like that for a year or two and it turned out his like they

pulled out something like five or six shattered bones that were just like

floating around his shoulder it was kind of fascinating for me to see him behind

the scenes having a hard time getting out of bed having a hard time walking

two hours later he's in the ring and you'd never know anything was wrong

he loved it and he loved putting on a show.

It really was just two completely different lives.

During the time of 2003, when Dad talked to HBO, it was a dark time for Dad, in

front of camera and at home.

Everybody's dead.

They're all dying early.

And nobody cares about it. What the hell is he doing?

And what the hell is he saying? It's like, really?

They take them and they screw them up so much. And they being the

rash of promoters that I've gone through in the 33 years.

A lot of times you lash out. And that's what Roddy was doing, was lashing out.

A lot of his friends had started passing away.

And it makes you worry and it makes you concerned.

So that's when he started being vocal about it. I know he blamed the company

just about everything in the interviews.

But at that time, he had lost so much. He wasn't wrestling. He was hurt.

Just trying to stand up for his buddies.

But later on, towards the end, Dad had talked to me. And, you know, he said,

it's the business we get into. We know what it is. You know, we don't get in

there thinking we're going to live to 70, 80 years old.

What would you have me do at 49?

When, like, my pension plan, I can't take out until I'm 65.

I'm not going to make 65.

It's just face facts, guys.

When someone says, you know, really rotten things about your company, you

you're not going to welcome them with open arms. You know, you're going to

time for us to say goodbye.

He wasn't expecting the consequences.

He lost a contract. It was pretty bad for our family as far as, like, our well

-being goes.

I think he felt very lost.

Very depressed.

A little bit reckless with his behavior.

Obviously with the HBO interview, that's a good example.

And, you know, I've talked about him having demons, and I think that this was

sort of like the height of his demons coming out was this period of his life.

Yeah, nothing's permanent in this business. And as Piper's been fired,

fired a couple times. You know, but things change, and, you know, the

or...

OJ or somebody will do something that takes precedent over something that we

did. So I think Vince understands that he's dealing with a bunch of high

personalities, but Vince has been pretty forgiving.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, I give you the most gifted entertainer

in the history of professional wrestling.

My man, the hot rod.

I think it was huge for him, you know, because his whole life was wrestling.

Even though wrestling is an exhibition, for us the Hall of Fame is real.

I want to

tell you this.

I love you.

I love you so much, man.

I love you so much, but I guarantee you this.

My name is Rowdy Roddy Piper, and you ain't seen nothing yet.

You can find sympathy in the dictionary between sh** and suicide.

Roddy was definitely depressed off and on during his life.

You know, you're either up 100 % or you're kind of down. And it was always

for him to find the middle spot.

One of the demons was that time in his life as a teenager when he was surviving

on the street.

He never let that go.

I was so young, I had to fight for everything I had.

Oh, man.

He told me some stuff about his childhood and living on the street. He

bad spot and used and abused and just a lot of bad stuff that I had no idea.

Nobody feels sorry for me, man.

You know, he'd pull me from the road and he'd been in his hotel room for three

days with the lights off.

He was depressed. There was things on his mind that went back to his

His mind went to spots that weren't good for him.

He still had that crumbling part inside his soul that he could never mend.

He was so depressed at times. I'm sure that he did think of suicide.

He wouldn't follow through with it because, as he would be the first to

he's not a coward, and that's a coward's way out.

But he was so...

sad at times inside himself that I know that he did think that occasionally, and

that's heartbreaking.

242 pounds, the Hot Rod, Rowdy Roddy Piper.

How you doing, pal?

Yeah, nice.

As he started to wind down wrestling, he really started to have fun going into

acting as well as comedy.

In a weird way, I think it was a therapeutic thing that he realized that

because he couldn't wrestle anymore didn't mean that he couldn't perform.

He put the suntan lotion on.

He enjoyed telling these stories. He enjoyed connecting with his fans. And

was something that he was very passionate about.

May all your dreams come true.

God bless you.

How cool is that?

Roddy, Roddy Piper.

January of 2009, his manager reached out and said, would you have any interest

in helping Roddy?

cultivate a stand -up comedy act? And I was like, absolutely.

But here's the thing. When you watch Pro Wrestling with Brothers, that wasn't

even a TV show. That was an instruction guide on how to hurt each other. That's

all it was.

I grew up in the middle of three boys in suburban Philadelphia in really the

golden age of modern professional wrestling.

I remember being a kid when he showed up.

He was the worst. I remember being a chubby 11 -year -old kid buying a T

that said, I hate Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Like, he could get you to yell at a television set.

And meeting Roddy was like meeting somebody out of a comic book.

That began a really cool relationship where I would just listen to stories and

try to help him craft that into some sort of cohesive act.

As a comedian, I have an unbelievable amount of respect for somebody

that can connect with audiences on such a deep level.

That was his mutant ability.

I got to go through Roddy's life with him on a comedic journey, but hearing

life experience was just so...

Roddy's darkness is one of the things that drew him to stand -up comedy.

You can turn pain into joy.

And making people laugh meant a lot to him.

He is the WWE Hall of Famer.

And one of the all -time greats, Rowdy Roddy Piper. When he would get off the

road, he would be tired or hurt, and he'd recover.

But there was never a time that he did an interview where he got on camera and

he couldn't turn it on.

What was the question?

This time it was different.

He had this interviewer, and he gets on and he's like, can't put his thoughts

together. No, but what I don't think is on our honor.

Let me try to do this.

It's one of those things that as a family member, when you know someone

and you're like, they're being odd. I went into La... Excuse me. I went into a

Mexican restaurant with my youngest daughter who's in... It was

because that was not the man I knew. There was obvious a problem he was

I just think that it's a little... It was like the moment the world knew

something was wrong.

And a few days later, Roddy was home.

He was very tired that night.

We were going to go see his doctor the next day. We decided to do that.

And we went to bed, and he passed away in his sleep.

His heart failed.

As far as the specifics as to what was causing it, it probably was a

of his entire life.

I am so grateful that he was home

Even at that age, so many days of the year, he was gone away from home and he

could have been alone.

Sorry.

And I'm just very grateful that he was home with me when he passed.

You know, the news came that he passed away, you know.

And I felt like I got shot in the chest with a cannon, you know. And it kind of

like... knocked me off track for a couple of days.

And then all of a sudden I get this voice message. It was really weird

either my phone was messed up. Sometimes you'll get a text message at that night

when it was sent to you in the morning.

I saw the light.

I'm walking with Jesus today, my brother.

Walking with Jesus, loving you and praying for you.

It really spooked me out. Like, hmm, alien thing, you know, like close

encounters. It's crazy to get a voice message.

from somebody after they passed away. And especially for him to say, I'm

you and walking with Jesus, my brother.

Just loving you and walking with Jesus. I was like, wow.

Totally screwed me up.

So good to see you. Oh, my God.

When I first started doing MMA, I was trying to think of a fight name. And, of

course, the first thing that everybody thought of, I was like, what do you

of the fight name? Well, Rowdy, Rowdy, Rowdy, Rowdy. Like, I know, but it's

Rowdy, Rowdy, Piper. He has that. I didn't want to steal it until...

happened to be the original rowdy one and uh god is blessing and yeah he was

very sweet about it like yeah sure kid no problem better do the name proud or

something like that i don't know thank you

so much for everything thank you for trusting me absolutely

absolutely

Roddy would dig that you have such continued success, you know, and he

be prouder, I'm sure, of your representation of the Rowdiness.

No one can do it better.

Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. He was a loner and a wolf, and he

often misunderstood.

I was so wild.

Scary wild.

But he was always 100 % in your face.

You do not go rock at a man who's got a machine gun. This is what you get. I am

who I am.

What you got here is all man.

He didn't change for anybody.

We are the most popular wrestlers in the entire world. I haven't found anyone

that has what Roddy had.

Love life lived it to its max.

He came in.

Spitting fire and crapping thunder.

I am the legend killer.

He started with so little and ended with so much and had every hardship thrown

at him along the way.

That's my dad's legacy. I hope it is one that gives people strength.

I still hear new stories about him all the time. And I realize how lucky I am

have a father that has impacted so many people in the world.

Best part of my job?

When you come with your daddy and your mummy and you're all excited.

He could put a smile on a little boy's face.

That's the greatest reward a guy could ever have in his life.

Thank you.

I love you too.

I have come here to chew bubblegum. Come here to chew bubblegum and kick butt.

And I'm all out of bubblegum. And I'm all out of bubblegum. Just when they

they have the answers. Just when they think they have the answers.

I change the question.

I change the question.

You do not throw rocks. You do not throw rocks at a man with a machine

gun, brother.