Roddy Piper, RIP

What can you say about Roddy Piper? A fantastic performer. How many people can be seventy pounds lighter than their babyface opponent (Hulk Hogan, now erased from history, it seems) and still come off as the menacing heel and legitimate threat? Who can so it just a year or so after this sort of babyface angle down south?



Who could possibly be booked in a match like this, even in a squash? Perhaps a 400-pound "monster heel"/wildman.



A few days later McGraw coincidentally died, and many kids were sure somehow this match caused it.

As an actor, he wasn't much of one, but what 1980s action star could have made this scene work?



In the 1990s, he made a comeback, as lots of wrestlers did. In the 2000s, he made a comeback, as most wrestlers shouldn't have. Just a few months ago, he was put to work on a fun angle with Rusev. Strange, given that Piper was always booked as being from Glasgow and was actually Canadian, that he was eager to make the "Bulgarian brute" embrace the United States, but somehow it worked.

Also...Celebrity Wife Swap.



Pipe was 61. Though never huge, he did use steroids and painkillers as did many wrestlers when the promotions went national and play-to-get-paid was the norm. He had cancer about ten years ago and reportedly died of a heart attack, which can certainly happen to former athletes whose bodies have been through a lot. But this wrestler death feels a bit less like a tragedy than many. Piper did it all, almost. (No world title push.) He'll be remembered for a very long time.

RIP.