411’s WWE Rivals Report: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper vs. Mr. T

-Here is my review for last night’s LFG and Greatest Moments. Let’s get to it!

-Gabriel Iglesias is at the table this week with Sean Waltman, JBL, Kevin Owens, and Natalya.

-They discuss the idea of celebrities getting involved and how Piper was old school in his approach. Nattie says she feels Piper didn’t feel respected by Mr. T and she can’t see him just hating T. JBL: “I can.” They all laugh.

-KO says he didn’t know Piper well, but met him a few times and always felt he had a chip on his shoulder. Waltman and JBL say absolutely. JBL says Piper just flat out didn’t like Mr. T.

-We get some background on Piper from his wife, Kitty Toombs. Roddy was born in Saskatoon and always felt he was an after thought in his family. Piper interview from 2014 and he notes he was angry and lost when he left home at 13. Piper was lucky enough to have the right people see him at gyms and he found his way into wrestling. Piper said he is so lucky to have wrestling and the way it evolved.

-Mr. T was born in Chicago and grew up dirt poor. Like Piper he had to find his own way. He had to avoid falling into all the bad traps in the city. T says wrestling in high school kept him out of trouble. He was a wrestling champion at Dunbar Vo Tech school and Muhammad Ali visited his school and on the PA System called out he wrestling champion. T was blown away as that was his idol. From there T became a bodyguard and got into boxing. He had a reputation as being a tough bodyguard and bouncer.

-NBC had a contest to find the toughest bouncer in America. Sylvester Stallone was watching and picked Mr. T to be his rival in Rocky III. I love Rocky III so much! Rocky I and II were great movies, but Rocky III was a great ROCKY MOVIE. Here is some irony as we have CM Punk talking about Mr. T and somewhere Moxley is yelling at his screen that Punk has never even seen Rocky.

-Roddy Piper hits the WWF in the mid 80s and is the biggest heel on the planet. Booker says Piper earned everything he got in the business. Hogan says Piper is top 1% of all time in mic skills. Piper himself says at that time, “you couldn’t touch me.” You can see how Punk was influenced by Piper.

-WWF becomes pop culture with Rock N Wrestling and we see Piper beat up David Wolfe and get into a battle with Cyndi Lauper. WWF had crossed over to the main stream and they were looking for celebrities to come play ball.

-Back to Rocky III as Hulk Hogan was in the movie as Thunder Lips. That was the in to Mr. T!

-The War To Settle The Score: It was a show at MSG on MTV that was to blow off the money drawing feud between Hogan and Piper. During the match, Mr. Wonderful gets involved, so Mr. T jumps the railing to help Cyndi Lauper as Mr. Wonderful slapped her hat off.

-JBL notes Mr. T was one of the biggest stars on TV and everyone knew he was a legitimate bad ass. Piper says he wasn’t supposed to, but he slapped Mr. T really hard. That brought police into the ring and it was just chaos. Mr. T laughs thinking back on it and compares it to The Keystone Cops. Hogan gets the win by DQ, but things aren’t settled.

-Commercials!

-The Main Event for WrestleMania is set: Hogan/T vs. Piper/Orndorff. JBL just smiles talking about how much heat Piper had at the time. JBL wishes he could draw the heat that Piper had in the 80s and that’s not a knock on JBL. Piper says he was brought up old school and he was taught to eat the lunch of someone brought from outside the business into the ring. Tom Rinaldi says Mr. T was the definition of a gatecrasher while Piper was raised in the business.

-Piper gets emotional as he says this sport gave him a family he never had. Go watch his Hall of Fame speech and you will hear the same thing. The man loved this business and what it did for him.

-We see Piper interviewing Mr. T and it’s quite heated. Piper questions how T and Lauper can be role models to kids all around the world. They get into a shoving match and T says that wasn’t supposed to happen, but they just went with it.

-Hogan talks about the mindset of Piper and Wonderful in that they just wanted to hurt Mr. T when he was in the ring. T says they didn’t get it at first as they didn’t know he wrestled in high school and knew his stuff.

-We video of the training sessions Hogan and Mr. T had together. T says he was honored to be there and had a deep respect for pro-wrestlers, but that wasn’t what Piper and Wonderful wanted to here.

-JBL notes all the pressure as this was WrestleMania I and if it bombed, there is no WWF. Bret Hart says basically the same thing. Hogan talks about the boots on the ground promotion for the show as Vince was booking Hogan and T everywhere to get the word out. Kitty knows there was some resentment from Piper as T was getting benefits he didn’t get.

-WrestleMania: a news report notes tickets were going for nearly 100 dollars a pop. It’s wild how inflated price are 40 years later. Hogan notes he got a call the morning of the show yelling for him.

-Commercials!

-We see the crowd outside MSG as they are waiting to get inside the building. Back to Hogan who says the call was someone telling him that Mr. T was downstairs and wanting to leave. Hogan ran down to the garage and saw T and his posse getting into a limo. Piper calls T out and says he wasn’t surprised. “Eat my shorts.” Hogan says T had cold feet and was looking for a way out of the match. Hogan got him back in the building and sat in a room with him for 3 hours to make sure he wasn’t trying to leave again. T says there was a lot of distractions and he was trying to concentrate on everything he had to do. He had the pressure and didn’t want to mess anything up.

-Piper says there was no game plan as there had never been a WrestleMania before this. T marks out over the other celebrities there, including Muhammad Ali. We get the famous stare down and then slaps from Mr. T and Piper. T notes Piper told him not to hold anything back. Piper says he heard that T had an amateur background so he wanted to work that with him. They put over Piper being a true pro out there. In the end Hulk Hogan and Mr. T get the victory. Prichard says the fans still wanted to see more from Piper vs. Mr. T.

-We jump ahead a year as Roddy Piper has an open contract for any wrestler to box his bodyguard, Bob Orton. Hulk Hogan shows up on Piper’s Pit and puts Mr. T’s name on the contract. The reaction from Piper is tremendous as he nearly doubles over. Great little touch there as Piper made the challenge to anyone who ever put on wrestling tights.

-Commercials!

-Saturday Night’s Main Event: Boxing Match: Mr. T vs. Bob Orton! March 1, 1986! I need to go watch that show. Orton cheats as he lands a knee behind the ref’s back. T decks Piper and then sends Orton over the top rope with a right hand gets the KO. Piper wants some and distracts T long enough to get a two on one advantage. They leave T laying and he tells Gene he wants Piper. Simple enough!

-WrestleMania II: Boxing Match: Piper vs. Mr. T! Mania II was the 3 cards in 3 cities deal and Mr. T vs. Piper was the Main Event in New York. Piper gets trained Lou Duva, legendary boxing trainer, and T gets Joe Frazier, former World Champion.

-Piper was taking personal shots in the build including ragging on T for The A-Team being canceled. Piper says there was so much bad blood he wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

-Commercials!

-Before the match Piper says he will quit boxing, wrestling, and dating women if gets knocked out. Booker remembers Piper throwing the jab as he always good with his hands. Tom Rinaldi says the notion that anything can be completely scripted is false. Piper says he refused one spot as he didn’t want to take a dive to the floor off a left hook. He relented and did what he was asked to do. What killed Piper though is that T missed the left hook. He would have rather T knock his teeth down his throat than hit him with a popcorn punch. “You idiot.” Piper says he knew he would be the one to take the heat as he was the only wrestler in there. It was more serious that people would think. He was trying to see what was happening and nobody is telling him anything. He says the whole thing became a serious point of contention. The table talks about getting lost and having the deer in the headlights look. Piper wanted to know what they wanted him to do and decided, “what if I just take him out?”

-Commercials!

-Back with Round 3 starting and Piper chucks his wooden corner stool at T. Piper says he is carrying the business on his shoulders and to “snake him,” is just as bad. They started trading haymakers as Kitty says Piper never wanted to be beaten by an actor. Piper knocks the ref down and slams T to get disqualified. Piper says it is one of the matches he is most ashamed of and he should have taken him out.

-JBL notes you can’t have a good working boxing match no matter who is out there. Punk says it is history and who cares if it was a great match. People are still talking about it.

-The irony is that Piper ends up going Hollywood. He took a part in They Live and we get the memorable quote about bubblegum. Rinaldi doubts that Piper ever sat down and wrote T a thank you letter.

-We jump to WrestleMania XXX weekend where Mr T gets inducted into the Hall of Fame. Renee Young asks Piper about the speech he wants to hear the most, and he says T’s. He is happy T is being inducted into the CELEBRITY wing of the Hall of Fame. We heart some of T’s speech and that man loved his mom on that night more than a man has ever loved a mom.

-The next night there is a backstage skit at Mania XXX where Mr. T and Piper shake hands and hug with Piper and Wonderful watching. That was a pretty fantastic moment to celebrate 30 years of Mania.

-They show highlights of the celebrities that have followed and give a lot of credit to Mr. T. JBL says the business owes a lot to that rivarly. KO says even if you don’t get along with someone, being paired at WrestleMania is a big deal. Piper says it was competitive and there was a whole lot of animosity. “Just another day in the WWE.”

-Nostalgia as always and I love it! I wasn’t sure about this one when I saw it was up next, but I found this enjoyable and captivating. It helps that Piper is great at telling stories and man, does we miss having him around today. T was good as well as he tried to explain that he was taking the deal serious, and he had great respect for the wrestling industry. As always, the table doesn’t add all that much, but they are good for some one liners here and there. I would call this worth the watch. Thanks for reading!