Original subtitles

- 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?

Yeah, not anytime soon, though.

You're holding a place for me.

Right next to you at the table, huh?

Great.

No, I...No, I'm just gonna talk about you,

all good things, not to worry about it.

Great.

Thanks, roddy.

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

♪ ♪

- we'll check you down there, guys.

We'll check you down there.

♪ ♪

- rowdy ronda rousey!

[no audible dialogue]

- coming to the wwe, I really wanted to make sure

that every single time that I walked out there,

everyone remembered "rowdy" roddy 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.

Without piper, we could have never launched

into the stratosphere.

- It's as simple as this.

When rp talks, brother, people listen.

- He was the ultimate bad guy.

- How you doing, fatso?

- He sold it. He practiced it.

He was good at what he did.

♪ ♪

- just when they think they got the answers,

I change the questions.

- Even if you had never heard of roddy piper,

you could tell you didn't like this guy.

- Nobody messes with piper!

- He was riveting. - I seen a lot of men buried...

- 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,

real strong family man.

- He kept his family completely out of the business,

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

- Yeah!

- Everything he did from the moment

he walked out in the ring rubbed people wrong.

- You're gonna see something

you never seen in your life before.

- Whatever it was, he went against the grain,

and he just lived in that glory.

♪ ♪

[droning bagpipe music]

♪ ♪

- you know, god takes care of fools and babies.

♪ ♪

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

I was 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

in a place called saskatoon, saskatchewan,

which is one of the coldest 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 a indian reservation for about six months,

and 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.

[somber music]

- 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 10 times.

All of a sudden, you get into a fight,

and 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 on in 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.

[bagpipe music]

- I got into my bagpipes a lot,

and 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 was 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 overtop of my motorcycle.

And he won the fight.

As I found out later, rod told me he was

the light heavyweight boxing champ of 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 the day 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

'cause rod wanted to get rough back,

but 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 was 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, ymcas, anywhere.

Usually back then,

five bucks for the night and 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,

and so played my bagpipes and I'd get quarters

or whatever they give 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

some of these necessities.

I started stealing what I needed

and then got with a group of bad guys.

And all of a sudden, you're carrying a switchblade,

and--you know, and then the fights.

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

which I hated.

- 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 terribly 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.

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."

whew! You know, that was, like, three months' rent.

- He was 15 years old

when he had his first professional fight

against larry "the axe" hennig.

- Larry hennig

coming into the ring at this time...

- 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.

[playing bagpipe music]

I don't know how many wrestlers

can play the bagpipes and has kilt.

And 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 get people pissed off at him,

so they're going to look in the program:

"who is this guy?"

- my nose was broke, you know?

And larry only hit me twice, but he did a good job.

My eye was drooping, and 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,

just wherever he could get a job.

- When wrestling came along, that's why I just boom!

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 to territory.

- I'm so fortunate to have wrestling

and the way it evolved.

If it hadn't, I would've been dead.

There's no doubt about it.

I've got a baby face that looks 12,

in a 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 back.

- I got my first break in los angeles,

and holy cow.

Really, really brutal, brutal days.

- Roddy came into the gym.

I says, "what are you doing?"

"you gonna 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 can be a sadistic bastard."

- we're gonna see things that are different,

that's never been seen before, ever, ever on any film.

♪ ♪

don't practice this without a qualified instructor

right there with you.

- Judo gene--if you don't know, look him up--

was the toughest man in the world,

trained bruce lee, chuck norris,

rowdy ronda rousey.

- Gene lebell I would consider

the most decorated stuntman of all time.

He was in the first-ever televised mma event.

When I was doing judo, he would help me a lot.

And then when I got in to 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 to do on the fly.

- You got to beat them with the dark side of the moon.

Roddy said, "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 the throat. Throat's a great handle.

- [yells]

- 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 and roll for a couple hours."

we worked out hard, no playing games.

He wanted to know how to wrestle.

- The lebell 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 la

for the lebell 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 a singer.

And so, to me, hollywood was like, "whoo!"

marilyn monroe handprints, and the glamour and all of that.

And we get here and he rents a car,

he's like, "all right, kid,

I'm gonna 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 streets.

"a woman got murdered right outside my window,

but I didn't say anything, 'cause 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 they were like,

"did you see this and that?"

I was like, "I think I got the wrestlers' tour."

[laughs]

[upbeat spanish guitar music]

♪ ♪

- I was born and grew up in los angeles,

and some of my earliest memories that I have

are actually about professional wrestling,

being a professional wrestling fan.

I 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 gave him polite 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 his wrestling matches.

♪ ♪

it was like watching a caterpillar

transform into a butterfly,

and you just saw this magic happening before your eyes.

People were booing roddy piper.

They absolutely hated who he 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 were always turning for him as to what can I say,

what can I do next?

'cause you had to keep them interested.

You had to keep them coming back.

- There's no way, piper! - Hey!

- Oh! - Hey! Piper!

- Get up, you think you're so tough!

- 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 noggin, brother.

- 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 of 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 worshiped them.

- You get in that ring, chavo guerrero,

and it's going to be all over for 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 boots drinking 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.

[playing off-key]

- one time, he told everybody

and silenced 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."

[crowd booing]

and all the wonderful hispanic people came in.

I'm in the ring.

And, "please stand for the mexican national anthem."

[whispering] just like this I said to myself,

"I'm gonna die."

I put those bagpipes up, man.

It's too late, right?

- And roddy starts playing his notes,

and it's not the mexican national anthem.

But he starts playing "la cucaracha."

he starts playing a song about a cockroach.

[playing "la cucaracha" on bagpipes]

♪ ♪

♪ la cucaracha, la cucaracha ♪

[hums]

holy cow, chairs that were bolted down in the cement,

here they come.

- And the fans...

♪ ♪

they're just shocked.

- Chairs come up. Things are being thrown.

Stage is being overcome.

- It was like watching... 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 says, "this guy is a natural."

♪ ♪

- 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, when I went to portland,

nobody knew who I was,

so you had to start all over again.

[hopeful music]

♪ ♪

did you find the choke? - Yeah.

- Okay, kick the engine over, leaving the throttle closed.

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

- Yeah.

- I met roddy in 1979.

I was working graveyard shift as a waitress

just southwest side of portland.

- Get you something out there.

- Roderick, you're lucky I had it high enough

that that didn't show. - [laughs]

- he was the funniest human being on the planet.

[snickers] - is that it?

- Oh, the guy...

All the wrinkles on my face are from him making 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. Thought he cute as heck.

But the crowd he was with was so loud, and so I'm like,

"nah, you know. Hey, hi, hi."

so we kind of flirted, but after about a month,

his tag-team partner, killer 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 he's 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.

- You come down here and burn your bra

and think you're something?

You're getting in there with men...

- 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! Get outta here!

Get outta here! That's why!

- For roddy in real life, a woman is on a pedestal.

♪ ♪

he's very old-fashioned.

He would never hit a woman.

He would never insult a woman.

And I decided early on,

I was gonna 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 on 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.

[upbeat rock music]

- 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 promoters 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.

People like yourself...

- 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.

- If they let a bald-headed geek like you in...

- Maybe a little bit more nasty...

- You just stay out of my way, pig face!

- Maybe a little bit more against the fan favorites.

- And you won't have to worry about nothing, man.

- Pig face?

- And they created another way

to get this character over.

- They say stick and stones may break my bones

but words will never hurt me.

Well, some of the words he says about me and my family

have hurt me deeply.

- Sticks and stones may break your bones.

You are right!

And I'm nuts enough to throw sticks and stones!

- Now you've got,

"I'm gonna kick that commentator's butt."

- piper into the ring.

- The commentator was a wrestler and a tough guy.

- As he gets through the ropes, and they go at it!

- Now he comes out with the kilt.

- The wild man, roddy piper.

- 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 gonna come up and shake your 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.

- Piper has hit him with his fist.

He hit him in the jaw with a roll of coins.

- As a kid, he was around some of the roughest people

you can imagine. - It's mine!

- And sometimes I wonder if that's part

of what pieced together that bad guy psychology that he had.

- I am the legend killer.

[pen scratching]

- so my dad did this thing.

There were these yellow legal pads that he would write.

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 on your forehead.

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.

I 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 I'm 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 drinking, which he did,

he also was thinking and writing these things down.

- Like, sometimes people say to me,

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

oh, [bleep] horse[bleep].

[scoffs]

you have no idea how much work went into it.

I seen a lot of men buried wearing a $50 stetson

and carrying a five-buck gun, you geek.

- Whoo-whoo!

[dramatic music]

- there was a guy named ric flair on the east coast.

- The greatest wrestling in the whole entire wide world

comes right out of the mid-atlantic area,

and roddy piper and I are glad to be here, brother.

- Ric and I were so different.

You know, I wear a kilt. Ric doesn't.

He's blond. 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.

- He's got a belt.

- Well, I knew-- yeah, I'd heard his name,

but I didn't know anything about him.

He came in the studio,

and I knew right away I was gonna like him.

He was full of himself, and, man, I mean, talent.

- Ric flair, roddy piper!

That's what it's all about!

That's what it's all about!

- God, he was entertaining.

It was so good that it made everybody mad.

- You're gonna find it's a whole lot easier to jump on

than it is to jump off.

- Whoo!

- I had moved over there to the east coast with roddy,

and we were expecting our first child.

It was very rowdy times.

Roddy and ric and the other wrestlers,

they lived on a planet that was theirs.

They were a wild, wild pair of men,

lots of drinking and hotels getting damaged and such.

- Next thing I remember,

I'm in my bed, my clothes are on,

the door's knocked off the hinges.

I didn't know what happened,

but I got the hell out of there.

- 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?

- A little woman? - And everywhere we go,

we do it better, longer, harder than anybody else!

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 the, you know, 99 kamikazes.

You know, here I'm, like-- whoa, you know?

I'm pretty hard core man. Pretty hard core.

I'm drinking mine,

and I'd be the one always be getting 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're all taking a leak on the side of the road.

And all of a sudden, roddy ran to the car.

And I remember it's like we ran after him,

'cause we knew that roddy was in

one of those kind of states of mind

where he was gonna take the car.

We pretty much tackled roddy

while he was trying to drive off in the car.

- He was a... 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.

Got him to the airports.

- You go out there and wrestle for 45 minutes,

and you come back, take a shower.

You're wide frigging 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,

'cause I work in an hour and 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.

[chuckles]

- [laughter]

- 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,

you become desensitized.

- Say merry christmas.

All: Merry christmas.

- One thing that roddy did,

he kept his family completely out of the business

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

He wanted them to grow up

and be beautiful and 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.

I'd like to know where mine is.

- [laughs] to barnacle bill.

♪ ♪

- he almost had to do a transition mentally

when he came from the road to home,

because he didn't want to bring that character home.

He had such a hot temper as 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 put towards rod.

[crowd cheering]

- he had been a villain in the deep south

and fighting fans and, you know,

getting assault charges.

I mean, I can think of a few situations

with roddy with fans trying to run us off the road

and chasing us in cities like detroit.

- People would throw thumbtacks in the ring,

hit with beer bottles.

In asheville, north carolina,

they threw a rattlesnake in the ring one night.

Guy ran down to the ringside with a gunnysack

and threw a rattlesnake.

[bell dings] [crowd booing]

- there was a lot of crazy fans back then,

and being a bad guy could be a very dangerous living.

- 'cause I'm going to shove it down your throat!

- There's certainly times when I'd seen him

say or do something on tv where I'm like,

"oh, my gosh, we're in for it now.

This is gonna get worse before it gets better."

but I never asked him to curtail or tone it down

because that would hinder his creativity.

- People wanted to kill me.

- I remember there was a gentleman.

I wasn't really paying much attention,

but roddy went taking off down this hallway.

And the next thing, I see them having some words

and the police got involved in it.

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

So finally the officer said, "mr. Piper, we've got him.

He's going to jail."

he 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 the blood started squirting in the officer's face

at every heartbeat.

- It was going tsst-tsst, tsst-tsst.

- And I went, "oh!"

- sergeant slaughter took me to the hospital

and held the... Held the wound.

- Doctor said, "if that would've went

one more 1/2 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 everywhere.

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 stab-proof

because he had 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'd probably wrestled each other for a year.

[crowd cheering]

we just walloped each other.

♪ ♪

I took piper's head and rammed it into the turnbuckle.

♪ ♪

every time I'd go out there,

I'd beat on his ear.

♪ ♪

blam!

♪ ♪

so I end 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 zbyszko

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 gonna 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 chain. I want you to check it out.

You're gonna see something

you never seen in your life before.

- Well, 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 a dog collar.

What? 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. [laughs]

- you're talking about the biggest thing

that's ever gonna happen in the history of wrestling.

[bell dings] - 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.

[bell dings]

- two men linked together like this in mortal combat.

- This is a strategy.

This is what piper talked to me about.

And then, see, I'm the first one to get nailed.

- Used exactly as a whip as we had talked about.

- You could use it to batter the guy.

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

I had to go to the dentist the next day.

- 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.

- Look at valentine pounding on him now.

♪ ♪

- it was a ridiculously hard match.

It was the toughest match, probably, I've ever been in,

especially with valentine.

- Used as a whip.

Valentine on his knees.

Hard blow to the top of the head.

- No, I'm not just selling; I'm hurt.

But it's all for you wrestling fans.

Giving you our love in a strange way.

[laughs]

♪ ♪

this is the end of it, right there.

He hog-tied me.

- He got the count.

- I think he was the greatest of all time...

♪ ♪

a really good-hearted guy

but a really tough son of a bitch.

- Valentine, you say--

you say your strategy was to take away all my hearing.

You see, what you forgot is, you got one more ear to go.

♪ ♪

- when you look for, you know, attributes of a bad guy,

you have to be fearless;

you have to have the gift of gab;

you can say anything that you want,

even though you know it's gonna be controversial;

you have to be able to communicate with the audience;

and you have to a certain attitude about you.

And roddy had all those attributes and more.

♪ ♪

- vince mcmahon has 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 them all to wwe.

And vince mcmahon wants it all.

- I got a call from roddy. He says, "mr. Mcmahon called."

I said, "yeah, are you coming up?"

he goes, "yeah, he wants me to come up."

I said, "come on up."

roddy was coming to new york city.

- Let me tell you how to be roddy piper.

[laughs] have a nice [bleep] day.

Go [bleep] yourself.

Gimme the microphone and get out of the way.

Bowlegged, big, fat, ugly penguin.

You know what? You both stink!

It's as simple as this:

When rp talks, brother, people listen.

- And new york,

new york is big guys,

at least 250-pounders, 6-foot whatever.

That's what I was.

You know, piper, later on,

I guess he gained weight.

But when he first came in, he was smaller.

- So if roddy's not the greatest physical specimen

in the world, then don't let him do that.

Do what roddy does best. Let him 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 roddy 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 a simple as that.

- I might be a lousy wrestler, but I'm still in there,

and I'm not afraid of nobody--

- it was "the tonight show"

where the host could end up beating up the guest.

It was just the most off-the-walls, unpredictable,

amazing idea that ever happened in television,

in my opinion. I'm biased, but whatever.

[laughs]

- is he supposed to scare me?

- You had to be ready.

He was witty, smart.

He was like the fastest gun in the west.

- Hello, peasants.

- Don't call my father stupid.

- Wait, wait, wait...

How you doing, fatso?

- He could take some guys and make them look

like heroes and superstars,

or he could kind of like, if he wanted to,

he could chop you down to size pretty quick.

- I could slam you myself! I don't care.

You're saying john studd did at 520...

[crowd cheering]

- the most famous one, of course,

is the interview with jimmy snuka.

- There you go.

- There were a couple of coconuts,

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.

[indistinct shouting]

- nothing was scripted on "piper's pit."

- there, you sucker!

- It was all off of the top of dad's head

or something that he'd maybe written down in a note before.

And that's where the magic happens.

- Just 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 arms were

or anything like that.

He was just an incredible talker

and a guy that was taking wrestling

and telling a different story.

- You do not throw rocks at a man who's got a machine gun!

[cyndi lauper's "girls just want to have fun"]

- ladies and gentlemen,

I want to introduce to you

the female entertainer of the year,

miss cyndi lauper!

[crowd cheers] [laughs]

- wrestling began to work with mtv,

which was absolutely red-hot.

- You look wonderful, cyndi.

- Captain lou albano and cyndi lauper were friends,

and cyndi lauper had put lou albano

in her "girls want to have fun" video.

- I said, "vince, I got this guy named dave wolff

"that manages cyndi lauper,

"and they just did a video with albano

but now they wanna get involved in the wrestling business."

and vince was like, "hmm, hmm."

- dave thought it was going to be good for cyndi'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 cyndi lauper!

[crowd cheering]

- so now there's all this attention, suddenly, to wwe.

People who were fashionable,

people who were in the rock and roll world,

they're gonna start watching wwe.

So they had this ceremony in madison square garden.

Lou albano was one of the primary forces

responsible for the rock 'n' wrestling connection,

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 performer of all?

- There is roddy piper.

- This is beautiful, cyndi.

- Maybe they have some kind of presentation to make.

- I want to present you with this.

- Oh! Look out!

Captain lou albano clobbered!

- Roddy piper shockingly kicks the biggest pop star in america,

a female pop star, in the head.

- David wolff trying to come to the rescue,

but he's no match!

Oh, he pile-drived him 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'm thinking, "I hope you never manage me."

you know?

But when they saw that,

uh, saddam hussein got nothing on me.

- Look out!

The hulkster's hitting the ring!

- Cyndi 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 and he loved it.

All heels do.

- What a disgraceful display.

Cyndi, look 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 gonna get his.

- She expects me to sit there and do nothing about her,

so I kick her 12 yards across the field.

- But she's a woman. She's a woman.

- Just imagine it.

In about a four-month period,

I had the kicked cyndi lauper in the head.

I don't know how many guys on piper's pit I had,

whatever I had done, all in this very short time.

It was 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 the musicians

brings it to a whole nother level,

so he was onboard for that.

- All right, let me just step out this way a tad.

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

and he tried best he could to cooperate.

It was never easy.

- And the last one is, "mtv stinks"?

- Once we got hooked up with mtv,

it took us to mainstream.

- Mtv...

[laughs]

music to vomit by.

- Tonight, ladies and gentlemen,

the war to settle the score,

the hottest ticket in town.

- The rock 'n' wrestling connection

helped us change the look of the business

to where we get 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

against the ultimate hero.

- It was the biggest thing ever.

It was hogan and piper going at it.

- We have got action.

Oh! They're at it! [bell dings]

it's under way.

Look at this, back and forth.

Oh, raking the eyes of roddy piper.

- When I ran into piper,

he's the one that made everything else possible.

- Oh! Dropped the big elbow on him.

- I had to have an opponent,

and nobody had the air, the arrogance, the attitude

to go to toe-to-toe with me and not back down.

Without piper, we could have never,

never launched into the stratosphere.

- Oh!

- Piper has two confederates:

Cowboy bob orton, jr., and paul "mr. Wonderful" orndorff.

- Orndorff going up to the top rope!

- Oh, please. - Look out!

- They interfere in the match.

- Cyndi lauper up on the apron.

Orndorff going around the side rope now at cyndi lauper.

- What? Wait a minute. Hold on!

- Mr. T over the railing!

- Oh, no!

- Here comes mr. T, ladies and gentlemen...

- Who was going to save the day?

Well, mr. T, the biggest tv star in the united states.

Everybody in the country knows mr. T.

- They're inviting him inside the ring.

- 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, now, I knew how to wrestle, you know,

and I wasn't no fluff.

So I stepped into the ring, and piper snuck up behind me.

- Piper nailed him from behind.

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

If I'd knew it'd go down like that,

I would've have did something else.

So therefore I was so...

I guess I can say pissed.

- All hell has broken loose.

- Roddy was the ultimate bad guy.

He sold it. He practiced it. He was good at what he did.

- We've got a madhouse here.

- Security holding everyone back.

- And it just went--it just went berserk, you know?

It was-- [laughs]

I laugh at it now 'cause it's so old,

I think about it, you know.

It reminded me of the keystone cops

'cause 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 mode was,

"oh, don't tell anybody anything."

let's just get their natural reaction.

- All of a sudden, some policemen

came in the ring on me.

There's a cop with a gun, and here the rest of 'em come.

- Piper was fighting the cops and everything.

It was just insanity.

- Hulk hogan was the biggest hero.

♪ ♪

roddy piper was the most detested villain.

And now we are ready to start our road

to the first wrestlemania.

- Okay, ariel, let's go. Whoo, whoo, whoo!

Come on, ariel.

- She's tired.

There's the 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 and ariel.

- He felt guilty, like he was some way a bad parent

because his career was, in some way,

affecting our lives.

[laughter and indistinct chatter]

- 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.

'cause he never felt like he had a home.

We chose to live in the country...

- [laughing]

- 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,

and we really kept to just that ranch.

- Good-bye. With any kind of luck,

she'll keep going and we won't have to feed her.

[laughs]

- we wanted to be isolated

because we had actual stalkers who would come

and try and break into our house or be on our property.

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

I must've gotten 30 fights in one year,

just because people wanted

to test their moxie against me.

[dog barks]

♪ ♪

- and 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 a super bowl, you know.

There's a world series."

there's this, there's that.

It was really common sense.

So why not have one of your own?

Call it wrestlemania.

We would not have wrestlemania I

had it not been for roddy because you have to have,

again, a strong antagonist to go 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 of that.

So I knew I had roddy, I knew I had hogan and mr. T.

It was like, that was gonna work.

- How does it feel to be portraying someone like myself?

- Well, you ain't nothing, man.

- Oh, oh, why?

Oh, because I don't have a chair with my name on it?

- Roddy piper really did not like mr. T.

- Don't look at-- - hey, hey, hey.

[overlapping shouting]

- 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'd 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 will...

- "he's an actor. He's not into wrestling.

We're just gonna break his legs."

I said, "guys, please."

- how can I say it without sounding cocky?

They didn't understand that bringing me in

would broaden they thing

because, basically, you know, vince,

being the pioneer that he is, he said,

"wow, we gonna broaden, bring it to the world."

- you come on down, t.

We'll put an x where the 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 this real edgy attitude.

You know, he's always talking in the third person.

"mr. T don't put up with that."

- mr. T ain't no powder puff,

you had to understand, you know.

- They didn't want to lose to mr. T

because he's not a "real wrestler."

[no audible dialogue]

- 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,

and 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 gonna get it. - Get what?

- Get his butt kicked.

♪ ♪

- what do you do to show the world what this product is

and what it will be, you know, in a really big way?

Liberace, how the hell doe he fit into any of this?

He doesn't. 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 a big way.

Everything I had was on the line.

[playing spirited bagpipe music]

- there he is.

[crowd booing]

- rowdy roddy piper...

- Here 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.

[bell dings]

- there goes the bell. Look at the bell by liberace.

- Fans are chanting t, t, t.

And they're going nose-to-nose.

- Lookit, nose-to-nose.

- Mr. T and rowdy roddy piper, nose-to-nose...

- Roddy was smart enough to know,

"yeah, I'm gonna do business,

and I'm gonna make it look right.

You don't have to like it.

- They're exchanging--oh!

Piper now goes behind quickly, takes him down to the canvas.

- At a certain point, roddy piper instructs mr. T,

"pick me up in a fireman's carry."

- oh, nice fireman's carry.

- 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.

♪ ♪

- what's he gonna do with him?

Oh, drops him like yesterday's newspaper.

- You need to make mr. T the hero.

This is what this is all about.

- Mr. T now in the wrong corner.

Here comes the hulk.

- Mr. T should have beaten one of those guys

right in the middle of the ring,

preferably piper.

- As piper was about to lower--

look out!

- But instead, they had to have orton

jump off the top rope with a cast.

It hits orndorff on the head just so we 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,

and 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, piper and I got to be real good friends.

I said, "you screwed up, man.

"you could've 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 would've 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 guy.

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 have something else after wrestling.

"what are you gonna do after that?"

and 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,

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

- You, you're okay.

This one? Real [bleep] ugly.

- The character of john nada is really based a lot on roddy

and his past and what he'd been through,

and he added a lot of color to that.

He gave me a notebook.

Now, 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 bubble gum and kick ass,

and I'm all out of bubble gum."

I went, "that's a great line. I could use that."

- I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass,

and I'm all out of bubble gum.

- Oh, [bleep]! [gunshot]

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

- I've never felt safer in my life

than fighting with roddy piper.

[both grunting]

I believe that fight scene

lasts literally about seven minutes onscreen.

[both grunting and shouting]

- we really, you know,

choreographed the [bleep] out 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 it was--and I'd be like, "oh, [bleep]. Oh, [bleep]."

and he's like, "come on, man. Don't worry.

"come on, snap out of it. 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.

- [laughs]

a year and a half we were in los angeles

while he was filming those movies.

He brought the scripts home,

and we'd go over them.

He was always leaving to go to acting classes.

I mean, it was--it was a whole nother lifestyle.

- It was not like it was today,

where it's a lot more flexible

for wrestlers to also do acting.

Back then, it was, 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 for us to make that transition

'cause 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 can understand me

are other wrestlers.

♪ ♪

I needed to come back to the wwe...

♪ ♪

and walk back in the front door.

♪ ♪

- rowdy roddy piper!

- When I came back into wrestling from hollywood,

bringing that credibility back 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 didn't matter what you want.

You give the audience what they want.

They want roddy to come back, well, let's give them roddy.

- Standing ovation here for rowdy 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.

- Morton downey, jr., was a talk show host.

You know, he was 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.

- Ya-ha!

[laughs]

- he was so creative.

- I think the fire is out, jess.

- Very quick on his feet.

♪ ♪

but at the same time, he was very opinionated

and wanted someone to listen to his opinion.

I listened to a lot of roddy's ideas,

some of which were really dead on

and some of which were, whew, 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.

- I believe roddy once described our relationship

as a love-hate relationship.

We never fought.

There were a couple times when it was very close,

but that was the way it was back in those days.

A lot of times, you settled things in a fistfight.

You just did.

- Vince and I were two peas in a pod.

I love the ass[bleep].

I do.

He's an ass[bleep] sometimes.

So am I.

[crowd chanting "roddy"]

- roddy piper was an attraction all to himself.

The fans could no longer boo him.

♪ ♪

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.

- Rowdy roddy piper!

- Whether he won or whether he was humiliated,

he was a draw, and he remained a draw.

- We have a new intercontinental champion:

Hot rod rowdy roddy piper.

- 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 going to be something!

- This was a special match.

This is the biggest moment in my life,

for sure, up to this point.

Roddy really launched me.

Like, my whole career just starting climbing,

and it was roddy was the one that gave me that first boost.

- This is the first time these two men are meeting

for the world wrestling entertainment

intercontinental title.

- I think the last time--I think I did watch this, maybe,

when roddy died.

I always 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 in the same family.

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'd been knee-high to a grasshopper.

I remember when they were changing your potty pants.

- 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.

- Now rowdy roddy...

Oh, bulldog!

- Roddy put that match together.

- Wide open!

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

- He's got the bell.

Piper's gonna ring his bell.

- They don't want him to brain me with the bell.

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

- he's having second thoughts.

- His conscience gets the better of him,

and he changes his mind here and decides not to.

- Oh, look at that move

off the turnbuckle!

It's over! [crowd cheers]

- see that? Being a nice guy, it cost him.

Idiot.

[laughs]

♪ ♪

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 a man to be a dad."

♪ ♪

oh, man.

- 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 precedent 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.

Roddy was--like me, was a real strong family man.

You know, you-- you commiserate together,

and you're missing 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 this very tough part of your life.

- When roddy would come home and have to be dad,

he was always fun.

[kids chattering excitedly]

he would spoil them rotten.

He would pull them out of school,

didn't matter what was going on.

[girls screaming]

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

- Hey, you! - 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 as 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 mind-set.

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 gonna 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.

- [plays note] - 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.

You know, it's hard not to get sad

when he's going out the door, but...

Sorry. [clears throat]

[exhales]

♪ ♪

[whispers] I need a minute.

♪ ♪

- 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

since 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 gives a whuppin' on him.

- And truly hating hogan.

[crowd cheering]

- they can't hold him down!

- The hardest thing as a kid, for me,

was knowing your dad's injuries.

- And he had just had a hip replacement.

- Showing that scar there. You can see it.

- He had a scar from the hip replacement.

Hulk hogan took a chair and hit my dad.

- Oh, no! No!

- 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.

- Roddy! Roddy! Roddy!

- So 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 just 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.

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,

and two hours later, he's in the ring

and you'd never know anything was wrong

because he loved it.

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 the 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.

- And a lot of times you lash out, you know,

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,

and so that's when he started being vocal about it.

- I know he blamed the company

for just about everything in the interviews,

but at that time, he had lost so much.

He wasn't wrestling. He was hurt.

He was 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 gonna 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 gonna make 65. Let's just face facts, guys.

- When someone says really rotten thing about your company,

you know, you're not gonna welcome them with open arms.

You know, you're gonna say, "time for us to say good-bye."

♪ ♪

- 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,

I've been fired a couple times.

You know, but things change

and, you know, the president 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, intense personalities.

But vince has been pretty forgiving.

- Whoo! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you--

I give you the most gifted entertainer

in the history of professional wrestling:

My man, the hot rod.

[playing bagpipe music]

- I think it was huge for him,

you know, 'cause his whole life was wrestling.

Even though wrestling is an exhibition,

for us, the hall of fame is real.

[crowd chanting "roddy"]

roddy! Roddy! Roddy! Roddy!

♪ ♪

- I want to tell you this.

I love you s...

[chuckles]

[laughter]

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.

[solemn music]

♪ ♪

[pen scratching]

- you can find sympathy in the dictionary

between [bleep] 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 hard 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 was in a bad spot and used and abused

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

♪ ♪

- nobody--you know, nobody feel sorry for me, man.

- You know, he had phoned 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 childhood.

♪ ♪

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 say,

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.

- At 242 pounds,

the hot rod, rowdy roddy piper.

[playing jaunty piano music]

- hey, buddy! - How you doing, pal?

Yeah. Nice. - Good to see you!

- Good to see you too. Been in jail.

- As he started to wind down wrestling,

he really started to have fun

going into acting as well as comedy.

[laughter]

- in a weird way, I think it was a nice,

therapeutic thing that he realized

that just because he couldn't wrestle anymore

didn't mean that he couldn't perform.

[laughter]

- he enjoyed telling these stories,

he enjoyed connecting with his fans,

and that was something that he was very passionate about.

- May all your dreams come true. God bless you.

[applause] - how cool is that?

Rowdy 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."

because 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 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.

[laughs] like, I remember being

a chubby 11-year-old kid buying a t-shirt 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 a unbelievable amount of respect

for somebody that can connect with audiences

on such a deep level.

That was his mutant ability.

- Like that power walking...

[laughter]

- I got to go through roddy's life with him

on a comedic journey,

but hearing his life experience was just so amazing.

- Roddy's darkness is one of the things

that drew him to stand-up comedy.

[playing harmonica]

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

or he got on camera and he couldn't turn it on.

- What was the question? [laughs]

- this time was different.

He had this interview.

And he gets on and he's, like,

can't put his thoughts together.

- Nah, but--but what I don't think is an honor...

Uh... Let me--let me try to do this.

- It's one of those things that, as a family member,

when you know someone close and you're like,

"they're being odd."

- I went into a-- excuse me.

I went into a mexican... Uh, restaurant

with my youngest daughter, who's, uh...

- It was heartbreaking

because that was not the man I knew.

There was obvious problem he was having.

- I just think that...

- 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 gonna 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 combination of his entire life.

♪ ♪

- I am so grateful that he was home because,

even at that age,

so many days of the year, he was gone away from home,

and he could have been alone.

Sorry. [clears throat]

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.

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 days,

and now all of a sudden, I get this voice message.

It was really weird because 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.

- That really spooked me out.

Like, hmm, alien thing, you know, like "close encounters."

it was just crazy to get a voice message from somebody

after they passed away, and especially for him to say,

"I'm loving you and walking with jesus, my brother.

Just loving you and walking with jesus."

I was like, "wow."

totally screwed me up.

[wistful music]

♪ ♪

- all right, guys.

[overlapping chatter]

- it is.

- Hey, nice to see you again. How are you?

- 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

was like, "what do you think as a fight name?"

"well, rowdy. Rowdy ronda rousey."

like, I know, but it's like rowdy roddy piper.

And he has that. I don't want to steal it

until I happened to see the original rowdy one

and got his blessing

and, yeah, he was very sweet about it.

He was like, "yeah, sure, kid. No problem.

Better do the name proud." or something like that.

I don't know. [laughs]

- and then kitty, my mom. - Hi.

♪ ♪

no one can do it better.

- [laughs] thank you so much.

Thank you so, so much.

- He was a loner and a wolf,

and he was often misunderstood.

- I was so wild,

scary wild.

- But he was always 100% in your face.

- You do not throw rocks 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.

Loved life.

Lived it to its max.

- Ya-ha!

- He came in spitting fire and crapping thunder.

- I'm not afraid of nobody--

♪ ♪

- 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 to 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 mommy,

and you're all excited and...

We can put a smile on a little boy's face.

That's the greatest reward

a guy can ever have in his life.

Thank you.

I love you too.

♪ ♪

- I have come here

to chew bubble gum.

- I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick butt.

- And I'm all out of bubble gum.

- And I'm all out of bubble gum.

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

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

- I change the questions.

- I change the questions.

- You do not throw rocks...

- You do not throw rocks

at a man with a machine gun, brother.