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I never liked him really, other than when he pulled that coconut stunt. Shame to see another wrestler from a great period die at a relatively young age though.
You guys are lucky to have the WWE network to see just how great Piper was. I was fortunate enough to see all the stuff Piper did early on in my wrestling fandom and by god he was a pure evil genius. You can argue that without Piper, Hulkamania wouldn't have exploded as Piper was the ultimate heel to Hogans ultimate face, Hogan needed Piper more than Piper needed Hogan that's for sure.
Piper is arguably one of the greatest talkers of all time and is quite possibly the greatest heel in the history of the business. From smashing a coconut over Jimmy Snukas head, to blasting a fire extinguisher at Morton Downey Jnr, to arguably his best match ever with Bret Hart at WM8, to battling cancer, to his HOF induction speech, to his podcasts, to his death, Roddy Piper was a true legend.
A friend a mine quoted this by someone on twitter, and it says it all about Hot Rod "Death came to get Roddy in his sleep because if he would've been awake, Death wouldn't have gotten a chance."
I met Piper at Axxess, queued for nearly 2 hours to see him and Dibiase. It actually got the to stage where it was past 12, so the thing was supposed to be closed, but Piper and Dibiase still stuck around to meet people who had been in line for so long. And when me and my brother finally got to meet them, they didn't seem pissed off about having to still be stuck there in the slightest. We weren't allowed to take a proper photo with them, but my brother got the whole encounter on video, which I checked out earlier today. I obviously only got to speak with the guy for about 20-30 seconds, but he seemed a decent chap.
But yeah, it's just odd to think that was only about 4 months ago, and now he's gone. We bought a Wrestlemania 31 shirt and got all of the wrestlers to sign it... his signature on that shirt sticks out a little more than the rest now.
Its another tough one for me really............I am losing all the stars that got me into wrestling....Bossman, Rick Rude, Mr Perfect, dusty Rhodes, Macho Man, Warrior, Andre etc, etc you can just about sadly do a 1988-1990 PPV full of deceased Wrestlers from them periods.
I can understand stevens view as such because Piper actually never did a mass amount, he built himself up as the perfect midcard/upper midcarder who would usually end up losing his feud on the whole.
but some cracking moments still in the time I watched, I loved his retirement match Vs Adrian Adonis for the crowd reaction, and his intercontinental win vs the Mountie to that superb match vs Bret hart.
and of course while it never had a main match on a PPV the Flair Vs Piper stuff in 1991-1992 was entertaining as anything through Survivor Series, Battle Royal at Royal Albert Hall and Royal Rumble.....a shame they never had a match at Summerslam 1992 which may have took that to best summerslam ever.
I have always said that because you have watched these guys week upon week for years and years, it is almost like they are part of your family. Hot Rod was definitely one of the best, used to pop when he made a surprise appearance at Wrestlemanias. He will be in heaven now and hopefully he has got more bubblegum
Its another tough one for me really............I am losing all the stars that got me into wrestling....Bossman, Rick Rude, Mr Perfect, dusty Rhodes, Macho Man, Warrior, Andre etc, etc you can just about sadly do a 1988-1990 PPV full of deceased Wrestlers from them periods.
Agree with this bit. It isn't as tough as hearing about the death of someone in their prime much like Eddie & Benoit were, but it's still tough when guys, well to put it bluntly, were either the ones you wanted to see get beat up and guys you wanted to beat the bad guys up, pass on, especially when there's little news of bad health etc.
In slightly ironic news, Jimmy 'Superfly' Snuka is also battling cancer now.
