One of my favorite Pit segments had Piper interviewing himself.  Then one week, his guest was a jobber named Frankie Williams.  Now Williams, was not just a jobber, he the jobber to lose to all other jobbers.  I mean I NEVER saw this guy win a match in my entire life.  When Vince McMahon announced the guest that week, I even remember him saying Williams had a “spotted career, to say the least.”  This time, Frankie, of all people took some exception to Piper’s constant babbling and stood up to argue, but when Piper held the mic in front of him, he would turn it on and off so you couldn’t hear a word he was saying (Jerry Lawler did the same thing while interviewing Stu Hart on RAW years later).  When Williams was trying to leave, Piper sucker punched him.  He turned to the camera, but Williams came back with an attack that looked completely unplanned.  Piper whaled away with a series of rights and got rid of him again, then said his new catch phrase, “Because you see, whenever they think they know the answers, I change the questions.”  This got Piper over as a real loose cannon, a character type that works so well in wrestling, but is hardly used at all anymore (with the exception of the late Brian Pillman a few years ago).  And I have to say, that with all due respect to Mr. Pillman, Piper was the best loose cannon I ever saw.  But the incident with Frankie was not over yet.  It led to two firsts.  The first time Piper got a television match was also the first time Frankie got a TV main event.  Williams teamed up with the late Eddie Gilbert (before the famous “Hot Stuff” gimmick) to meet Roddy Piper and David Schultz (it could have been Orndorff, but I’m pretty sure it was Schultz).  Piper had Schultz do most of the work, only coming in when the babyfaces were down, and tagging as soon as they came back (you know, the usual manager wrestling shtick).  Finally, Piper came back at the end to win with a sleeper hold on Williams. 

Other Piper’s Pit segments had heels as the guests, and they would laugh and joke about what they had done to other babyfaces.  Piper would also find ways to justify anything a heel did, no matter how dastardly, like the Iron Sheik’s spitting at America routine.  One manager whom Piper had a particularly good rapport with was Captain Lou Albano.  Albano was another loose cannon heel at the time, so they really saw eye to eye on a lot of things.  But one episode that I should note had the guests Albano and his then protégé Greg “The Hammer” Valentine.  Nobody spoke a word because the bloody feud between Valentine and Piper in Mid-Atlantic was still fresh in everyone’s mind.  Finally, Albano spoke up and convinced the two men to shake hands and make up, which they did.  Albano and Piper spent a lot of time together in the hotter than white heat angle with The Rock N Wrestling Connection, which I’ll cover next month. 

Also around this time, the WWF had a new show emerging on cable called TNT (Tuesday Night Titans).  It featured few matches and a lot of talk segments in a format that I despised with a passion (especially since it replaced Special Wrestling Events which featured full cards from Madison Square Garden, Capital Centre and other large arenas).  Anyway, on one such episode of TNT, Lord Alfred Hayes made a comment Piper took exception to, and in his usual loose cannon way, Piper snapped and slapped Hayes across the face.  McMahon said Piper would never again be allowed on TNT because of the incident, but of course he was. 

The next interesting episode of Piper’s Pit had “Soul Man” Rocky Johnson as the guest.  Johnson was a guest before along with Tony Atlas, and Piper made some borderline racial statements that the then WWF tag team champions took didn’t care for.  This time Johnson was no longer a tag champ, and told Piper not make any more off color remarks or he’d be sorry.  As usual, Piper couldn’t help but make another borderline racial statement, and Johnson got up to slap Piper, who fell back in his chair.  Several wrestlers rushed out of the back to stop Johnson, and Piper yelled out “You son-of-a- (bleep),” (the bleep was the local TV station’s) and lay in a couple of good shots to Johnson while the others held him.  Swearing was not anything of a commonplace on wrestling back then, so if you heard it, you figured it had to be a real segment, and this angle was so well done, all of my friends were convinced it was a real incident (which it wasn’t).  I think that just shows that if you use something like swearing sparingly it can be far more effective.  Piper now had an opponent to meet all around the country in Johnson, who was top 10 material at this time.  I can’t express how surprised I was when Piper was able to beat Rocky in nearly every meeting they had.  However, Piper did cheat to gain those wins, by hitting Johnson with a foreign object, then putting his feet on the ropes for the pin. 

The feud with Johnson changed two things about the Piper’s Pit segment: number one, after that, anytime a guest of Piper’s stood up, he stood up too to avoid being caught off guard (which also added a sense of realism to the attack).  And number two, the WWF must have received a lot of hate mail over the incident, because after that whenever McMahon introduced the segment he added a waiver, “The views and opinions expressed on the Piper’s Pit show are exclusively the views of ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper and do not necessarily express the views and opinions of the World Wrestling Federation.” 

Then there was Piper’s crowning moment, and an incident I said I would talk about later.  It started out with “Mean” Gene Okerlund on camera in front of the Piper’s Pit set in an empty arena in Allentown, PA.  He said he couldn’t believe what had just happened here earlier this week in this very spot, and he went on about how brutally violent it was, and warned parents not to let their kids see it if the kids were too young.  He must have went on for five minutes, which only drew more attention to the segment.  Then a parent’s warning came on the screen stating that what they were about to see was extremely violent in a graphic nature. Finally the segment started.  I mentioned that Snuka (like Johnson) had an earlier appearance on the Pit, and as usual Piper wouldn’t allow his guest to get one word in.  When Snuka made his second appearance on the Pit, Piper started out saying that he’s had some complaints that many of his guests weren’t allowed to say anything on the show, so this time he was going all out to cater to his guest.  He had a brown burlap bag and said just for his guest he brought several items.  He pulled out a bunch of bananas.  Snuka was intense without ever saying a word.  His looks said it all, and he was a bit of a loose cannon himself.  So he stood up, and Piper stood up with him, so not to be taken off guard if his guest should strike.  “Wait, wait,” said Piper as Snuka walked around the table on the set, so Piper moved over to the other side.  “I brought you something else.  I want you to feel to right at home on this show so I brought you some coconuts.”  Then in his famous Piper voice, “There’s one coconut, two coconuts, three coconuts.” as he dropped each coconut on the table.  “The only thing I didn’t get for you was a tree so you climb up and down, up and down.  So now what do you have to say on the Pit?”  Piper stuck the microphone in Snuka’s face and waited, but heard nothing.  Finally Snuka asked, “Are you making fun of me?” and began taking off his wristbands, which he did before every match, while Piper replied, “Am I making fun of you?  Am I making fun of you?  Oh no.” and then CRACK!  Out of nowhere Piper snaps again and busts a coconut over Snuka’s head sending him crashing into the set, and taking it down.  Piper, still jawing at his guest, began taking off his belt and whipped Snuka across the back with it repeatedly.  The he tossed a few bananas at him and said, “You wanted bananas?  Here have a banana!” and he peeled a banana to smear it into Snuka’s face.  Piper continued jawing at Snuka and the fans.  Then he placed his thumb against his nostril to blow his nose at everyone, and did the same with the other nostril (which he did regularly as a show of disrespect), just as Snuka finally stood up screaming bloody murder.  Piper rushed behind a door, locking it just before Snuka got there, and “Superfly” went insane throwing himself up against the door repeatedly to get at Piper.  The locker room emptied to pull Snuka away from the door, as he continued screaming bloody murder. 

The ensuing feud between Piper and Snuka was the best I’ve ever seen then or since.  Again, people were fooled into thinking what they saw on WWF TV was real, not a work, and Piper was over huge as a loose cannon who would just as soon slap you in the face as he would look at you.  When Snuka and Piper met in arenas, almost every encounter ended in a disqualification or count-out.  I remember one time at the Erie Civic Center, one fan was so worked up over this feud he brought a coconut to the arena and waited for Piper to show up so he could gain some revenge for Snuka.  Then they had one epic encounter in Madison Square Garden.  Snuka had Piper going, and busted him open.  Then Snuka climbed the ropes for his famous Superfly leap, but Piper was close to the ropes and when he caught Snuka, he was able to dump the Fijian over to the outside, where Snuka was counted out.  But Piper wasn’t finished there.  He went out and grabbed a chair and proceeded to drive the end of that chair into Snuka’s neck time and time again.  Snuka was taken out on a stretcher.  Later it was announced that he suffered a broken neck.  Piper felt that he had won the war, but it was not yet to be.  On another Pit segment he was interviewing a huge new masked man named The Executioner, when who comes out but The Tonga Kid.  The Tonga Kid was in the WWF about a year earlier, but was used as mainly a glorified jobber.  Now he came out to say Snuka was his cousin (actually Tonga, a.k.a. Tama, and Samoan Savage, but not Fatu, is the son of one of the Samoans) and he was mad at what Piper did to him and wanted revenge.  Piper said he would not give Kid a match unless he proved himself.  So next week Kid had to defeat The Executioner, a test I thought he would fail for sure since, as I said, this guy was huge.  Well next week, Tonga wiped the mat with this masked man because basically Vince Jr. has never had any respect for masked wrestlers.  Executioner barely got any offense, and Tonga kept yelling, “I want Piper” during the whole match.  At least Tonga finally shook off that jobber stigmatism he previously had. 

In the arenas, Tonga got his long awaited matches with Piper, and in his corner was none other than “Superfly” wearing a neck brace.  Piper won nearly all his matches with Tonga by disqualification when he goaded Snuka into running in.  Finally, Piper figured he needed a henchman to even the odds, so with all these men after him, he employed himself a bodyguard in “Cowboy” “Ace” Bob Orton (it seems Orton was adding new nicknames on a weekly basis at this time).  One of Orton’s first appearances had him on the Pit with guest, another jobber named Aldo Marino, who said Piper was a coward for needing a bodyguard.  Piper sent Orton to the back to talk with Marino one-on-one, but then Orton came back from behind with a right hand to lay out Aldo.   

When Snuka came back to main event matches around the country it was in Texas Death tag team Matches pitting Snuka and Tonga against Piper and Orton.  Basically, adding Orton gave the Island team someone to pin in their no-DQ matches (which is what Texas Death apparently means in the WWF, because they were really no-DQ matches).  However, Tonga soon left the Federation, so Snuka scrambled for a new partner for a while before finally settling on another newcomer, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat in a team that would be known as the SPCs (South Pacific Connection). 

Now that we have so much on Piper, we’ll see him again...

NEXT MONTH:

I'll look at the angle that changed the face of wrestling forever, The Rock N Wrestling Connection.