A Look Back At WrestleMania II: Rowdy Roddy Piper vs Mr. T

And not just because he was a homosexual man with an interest in athletic male bodies, though doubtless this would have been a factor. WrestleMania, especially these early ones, was chaotic, open-hearted, and overflowing with all the rich exuberance and primal absurdity of the America that produced it.

Until the 1980s, professional wrestling had been primarily a regional affair. Vince McMahon inherited the New York territory from his father and then had the idea that, by utilizing television and recruiting (or poaching) the best from each territory, he could take the enterprise nationally. McMahon’s manifest destiny hinged on his belief that huge events would result in huge stars, and so in 1985, professional wrestling’s first pay-per-view event premiered – WrestleMania.

WrestleMania proved a success, and a second WrestleMania took place in April 1986. It was a sprawling, expansive thing, so big it took three stadiums to host it. Matches were held in New York, Chicago, and LA and fed into one broadcast. One is tempted to paraphrase Whitman and say that WrestleMania II was large and contains multitudes.

The WWF Taps Mr. T For WrestleMania II

Piper versus Mr. T was the headline event for the Uniondale, NY, portion of the show. A convoluted storyline had unfolded over the course of the previous year to establish bad blood and hard feelings between Mr. T and Roddy Piper. It stemmed from the headline match in WrestleMania I, a tag team match with Hulk Hogan/Mr. T on one side and Roddy Piper/Paul Orndorff on the other. Alongside Hogan, Mr. T was the face, while Piper played the heel.

For the sake of context, we should pause here to recall just what a cultural phenomenon Mr. T had become in the mid-1980s. Mr. T had worked as a successful bouncer and bodyguard with increasingly high-profile clients. An appearance on a televised special of World’s Toughest Bouncers caught the attention of Sylvester Stallone, who cast him as Clubber Lang in 1982’s Rocky III, catapulting Mr. T to fame. A line from that movie even provided the basis of his tagline: “I pity the fool.” Mr. T was then cast in The A-Team, and he became a household figure. By WrestleMania II in 1986, he’d already been featured in his own Scooby Doo-style cartoon and released his motivational video (including the rap “Treat Your Mother Right”). Mr. T was something more than an actor but less than a boxer. He was a sort of living, breathing élan vital, a man whose name and appearance suggested more character than most professional wrestlers. He was simultaneously serious and cartoonish, urgent and masculine and commodifiable, difficult to look away from even if one wasn’t entirely certain what one was looking at.

For his part, Rowdy Roddy Piper was one of the most adept at “mouth fighting,” as trash-talking used to be called. Piper had been busy in the WWE. His ability to improvise and antagonize landed him a popular chat segment called Piper’s Pit, allowing him ample microphone time to develop his heel persona. He was the one who worked the convoluted storyline stemming from the first WrestleMania, which encompassed not only Mr. T and Hulk Hogan but, improbably, popular singer Cyndi Lauper and even Muhammad Ali .

The strange stage was set for this grudge match between Mr. T, an actor who had played a boxer, and Roddy Piper, a wrestler who would soon begin acting (starring in John Carpenter’s 1988 classic They Live).

WrestleMania was all about spectacle, and the cast assembled around the boxing match was bizarre. The match opens with a guest ring announcer: Joan Rivers, endearing as ever but so very out of her element, Rivers announces the guest judges: First, an athlete, Darryl Dawkin, a basketball player famous for shattering backboards while dunking, among other wild behaviors. Then Cab Calloway, the jazz singer known as the Hi-De-Ho man who was pushing 80 years young. And finally, G. Gordon Liddy, a Nixon associate who served serious prison time for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

The author Joyce Carol Oates describes Whitman’s writing as “soaring, ecstatic, just slightly mad,” and his book Leaves of Grass as possessing a spirit that is “indiscriminate, indiscreet, glorying in what might (and did) repel others.” In a generous mood, I might apply these sentiments to WrestleMania II. In a darker mood, though, the event recalls for me that line from Silence of the Lambs, when Hannibal Lecter has looked over the work of a madman & serial killer and suggests the random locations of his killings seem “desperately random.”

A line can, and perhaps should, be drawn from his inclusion of G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate figure, to McMahon’s support of Donald Trump. It suggests a cynical, dystopian realpolitik that assumes the worst in people to justify their shortcomings, dysfunctions, and general mediocrity. McMahon’s abysmal treatment of wrestlers, his anti-union efforts, and the numerous lawsuits brought against him serve to validate this position.

Roddy Piper vs. Mr. T

One assumes the dizzying array of seemingly random pop culture figures was meant to feel light-hearted and eclectic, but the effect is more frustration and bafflement. By the time Piper and Mr. T finally walk out, one’s head is swimming at the absurdity of the situation. But even their walkouts reveal another unexpected development. Both fighters have real-life boxing mentors to second them in their corners. Mr. T has Smokin’ Joe Frazier (for whom Mr. T had once been a bodyguard). And in Rowdy Roddy Piper’s corner, famed trainer Lou Duva.

I don’t know what they got paid, but God love ‘em both; it couldn’t have been enough. They both play it straight as if they’re cornering any average fight night. Duva seems so serious and focused on his craft that it is easy to wonder if he fully understood the circus unfolding around him. The two supposed fighters, Mr. T and Roddy Piper, finally enter the ring. They wear traditional boxing robes and are outfitted with boxing gloves. The referee for the night, a WWE regular named Jack Lotz, delivers conventional boxing instructions to the two men before the bell rings for the first round.

Tension is high, and the match immediately strains our credulity. The presence of the real-life trainers, the robes, and the seriousness of everyone involved give the match an antic disposition. We forget ourselves for minutes or moments. Our overstimulated minds blur the boundary between Mr. T and Clubber Lang. We see Joe Frazier, who calls to mind Muhammad Ali, who was a guest at the first WrestleMania, and for a stunned second, we’re left agape with our wonderment.

Before the bell, we’re not wondering about who will win. Nor are we wondering about the stakes of the grudge match. We wonder: Will these two men really box each other? The bell rings, calling to mind religious services, and we experience a moment of elation as our sense of wonder steps over the precipice of fulfillment, an exaltation, a revelation.

The Two Men Come Out Boxing

Mr. T shows he had some boxing knowledge, moving his head off the line and rolling. Piper, to say it charitably, lacked the subtleties of the sweet science, but he did have abundant experience in selling the action. Piper adopts an aggressive stance, while Mr. T was the more defensive of the two. They played it more or less straight for the entire three minutes, with some showboating of punching off the break. If the guest judges were actually bothering to score, one supposes they would have called the first round a draw. At the bell, the two refuse to stop, and a minor melee breaks out, with both corners flooding the ring to return their fighters reluctantly to their stools.

In round two, Piper’s aggressive advances seem to pay off. He pushes Mr. T into a corner, and Piper drops him with a volley of cartoonishly telegraphed shots. Mr. T survives the count and holds his own through the round but is dropped again just before the bell. Joe Frazier practically carries Mr. T back to his corner. It is so melodramatic one might almostthink this was a scripted fight.

In the third stanza, Mr. T seems to have recuperated, almost as if those shots from Piper weren’t really as effective as they appeared. Piper seems confident but less aggressive, and Mr. T backs him into a corner. At this point, it is easy to feel sympathy for Roddy Piper, the professional who has spent years honing his stagecraft and is being asked to carry this charismatic novice on the biggest stage of his career. Sure, Piper’s straight right hands and left hooks look ridiculous to the severe eyes of boxing purists, but they could easily pass as entertaining to the wrestling fans the event was geared towards. By contrast, Mr. T’s punches rarely pass muster, nowhere more evident than in the third round, with Roddy Piper wilting in the corner, pouring his heart out in an Oscar-worthy performance, forced to compensate for another man’s lack of experience. It is like watching lifelong Shakespearean actors trying to perform around the shrill niece of a big arts donor who has been gifted an undeserved role.

Piper finally drops, and referee Jack Lotz begins a suspiciously long count, which Piper manages to beat. Mr. T looks winded but doesn’t appear to be acting as he gulps down a lungful of air. He lunges into Roddy Piper with a slow left hook that connects with Piper’s noticeably undefended chin. Piper drops like a rock, bounces upon the canvas, and rolls out of the ring, nearly unconscious. Forget the Oscar; give this man a Tony!

Between rounds, Joe Frazier seems legitimately concerned about Mr. T’s lack of stamina. In the other corner, Lou Duva seems to be giving Piper one helluva pep talk. But if Duva was delivering sound boxing advice, it doesn’t stick. At the start of the fourth round, Piper earns his “Rowdy” moniker and hurls his stool across the ring at Mr. T. So much for the Marquis of Queensbury. The referee holds a wary distance as the two men dispense with the sweet science in favor of a tit-for-tat slugfest, trading one shot for another in the center of the ring like it was City Lights. Just as it seems that Piper cannot take any more, and possibly Mr. T has no more to give, Rowdy Roddy shoves the ref to the canvas and grabs his opponent. He lifts Mr. T briefly overhead and bodyslams him to the canvas below.

A full-blown melee ensues, of course. Given that the bodyslam violates the spirit of the boxing match (not to mention the stool), Rowdy Roddy Piper is disqualified. Mr. T is declared the default winner. While the ring fills with its furious free-for-all, boxing fans who can peel their eyes away from the main attractions can glory in the unlikely spectacle of Joe Frazier grappling with Lou Duva.

Pipper vs. Mr. T Was A Work of Art

Piper versus Mr. T is an incongruous experience, one that seems to evade meaning even as it suggests it. There are moments of fleeting metaphor but no consistent allegory. Like speaking the word silence, the fight breaks what it evokes.

Wrestling, like theater, expresses the interior and emotional content through an exterior and physical form. That form is kayfabe, the audience’s unspoken agreement to suspend disbelief. It’s the same suspension of disbelief that allows us to see Duncan “murdered” during a presentation of Macbeth. By its close, the fight has collapsed in on itself. It ends in chaos, mirroring the chaotic feeling of the endless celebrity introductions. There’s some sort of relief in that, but not catharsis. These feelings are hard to parse hard to make meaning from.

I can’t say the fight between Mr. T vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper rises to the level of Shakespeare, but then – what is Shakespeare? The play is only as good as its actors, and Mr. T was one of the most easily watchable figures of the 1980s. And Rowdy Roddy Piper was a captivating wrestler who could carry even tenuous storylines with an unanticipated emotional vigor.

In boxing, there is no kayfabe, at least not in the ring. Sure, sometimes PR campaigns are concocted, feuds and bad blood overstated in the build-up for a fight. But once the fighters cross the ropes, every punch they throw is the real deal. There is no question there. A hurt fighter is a hurt fighter; a victorious fighter is a victorious fighter. It is that difference, the difference between professional wrestling and professional boxing, that lends the boxing match gimmick its weight. The boxing match is a mirror held up to a wrestling match. It forces certain questions of honesty, authenticity, and reality – none of which are mutually exclusive or belonging whole cloth to one sport or the other. There is plenty of honesty in acting plenty of reality in fiction.

Battles are lost, wrote Whitman, in the same spirit in which they are won. Vivas to those who have fail’d! And to those whose war vessels sank in the sea!

WrestleMania is a modern ode, a recurring, dizzying affair that gestures beyond its own boundaries. Its embrace, like Whitman’s, is wide. It isn’t so much the outcome but the attitude – the spirit – that is celebrated. There in Uniondale, NY, in 1986, it wasn’t exactly about who won or who lost the boxing match. It was the fact that it was happening and that we were watching this spectacle of a show, this broad American dream, a preposterous and uncanny journey into violence.