Roddy Piper Memorial
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter is reporting there will be a private memorial held in Hollywood’s famed “The Comedy Store” for “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
The memorial will be on Monday, August 17th, and will be attended by friends, family, coworkers and others in Piper’s life.
It was also noted that Piper’s family (the Toombs family) requested anyone who couldn’t attend should know a moment of silence is planned for him on August 11th; more details can be found by clicking here.
Grantland Remembers Piper
Grantland.com’s The Masked Man recently posted a career retrospective of Roddy Piper, which can be viewed here. The write-up covers all of Piper’s career, and features some rarely seen videos of his promos and matches. You can read an excerpt below:
In the heyday of the early WWF, Piper became Hulk Hogan’s primary antagonist by sheer force of personality. After Schultz was fired, Piper took the reins and never looked back. He was Hogan’s opponent at The War to Settle the Score, at WrestleMania I, and on the Saturday-morning cartoon Hulk Hogan’s Rock ’n’ Wrestling. But it wasn’t simply a matter of Piper having the personality to rival Hogan’s — while Hulkamania was full of growling platitudes, Piper told a story with his inexhaustible aggravation. In some ways, being a talk-show host was more appropriate (and more important) than just being a heel — Piper’s role was to provide narrative connective tissue for the superheroes’ swinging fists. Hogan was the icon, but Piper was the foundation. Even after Piper fell out of the main-event mix, he was still essential — the bulk of the Hogan–Andre the Giant rivalry occurred on “Piper’s Pit,” and between Andre’s nonsensical warbling and Hogan’s wild-eyed mannequin routine, it was left to Piper to sell the rivalry and imbue it with some humanity. He was more central to the product than the name stars. It’s impossible to imagine the biggest moments in WWF history without Roddy Piper. Nothing exists without him.
