Eric Bischoff has revealed the origins of the infamous ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper WCW training segment which was just one in a long line of confusing promos cut by the star during his time with the company.
Upon his entry into World Championship Wrestling, Roddy Piper waged a war with then WCW World Heavyweight Champion ‘Hollywood’ Hulk Hogan and the nWo which included a series of very confusing promos and segments. While one of the most famous was held inside a prison cell in Alcatraz, another aired live on WCW Nitro which became famous for Piper’s bemusing promo.
Advertising for partners to take on the black and white faction, Piper began to veer from the script and talk about how his family lived on a mountain and how Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were monkeys that had been cloned.
Now, Eric Bischoff has taken to his 83 Weeks podcast to discuss the origins of the promo and just how bad the segment came across on television:
“This was Roddy’s idea and in the meeting with Roddy and in the discussion with Roddy it sounded pretty good; on paper it looked pretty good. In execution, I couldn’t wait to leave the arena, it was baaaaad. Here’s a guy, Roddy Piper, the promo was marginal at best, especially by Roddy Piper’s standards but it was a marginal at best promo. I wouldn’t even say marginal, it was a really poor promo. The concept, although it was interesting and looked good on paper, was really really bad. But it didn’t define Roddy Piper. Roddy Piper’s character was bigger than a mistake like this. It didn’t even nick Roddy in terms of his value to the company or what he was about to do.
It was unfortunate, it wasn’t the best television I ever produced. […] Nevertheless it was what it was and we still love Piper more today than we did yesterday, so no big deal. […] Everybody pretty much knew it sucked. You couldn’t even go ‘hey, nice match’. Sometimes you can look at a match that’s not really that great of a match, and you know the guys have put forth the effort, at least they tried and you could muster up a ‘hey, good match man’. And you could say it in a way that the person you’re saying it to knows that you know that it wasn’t their best work and hey live to fight another day, but sometimes they stink so bad that you have to leave the room. You don’t want to have to fake it because you can’t. This was one of those.”
Unfortunatley, Roddy Piper’s WCW run could not live up to the hype the preceded it thanks to mother nature and the time the storyline existed in. Despite defeating Hogan in a non-title match at Starrcade 1996, Piper fell to his old nemesis at SuperBrawl VII and dropped into the mid-card where he teamed with the Four Horsemen against various members of the group.
However, after Ric Flair and his stable turned on the ‘Rowdy’ one and the two legends clashed at the 1997 Bash at the Beach – a match won by Piper – the star was crowned Commissioner of the promotion following a short hiatus.
Credit for the interview: 83 Weeks