10 Most Unforgettable Exhibition Matches In Wrestling History
7. 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper Vs. Mr. T
Take a very similar situation and remove all semblance of cooperation, and that’s what happened twenty-two years earlier between ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper and Mr. T in their boxing match at WrestleMania II.
Mr. T had a reputation running back a decade as one of the toughest men in America. He’d been a hardman bouncer, a renowned bodyguard and a winner of two televised ‘tough man’ competitions even before his turn as ‘Clubber’ Lang in Rocky III in 1982; and everyone knew that the ‘B.A’ In B.A. Baracus, his powerhouse character in ABC’s The A-Team, stood for Bad Attitude. He was exactly the kind of egotistical, arrogant outsider that old school guys like Piper were wary of.
Old school to the hilt, Piper was committed to protecting the business: in the dying days of kayfabe, it was still considered the most important thing in professional wrestling. Mr. T wasn’t just an outsider - he was an outsider who Piper considered could expose the business and damage it on a one of the biggest stages in all of wrestling.
From all reports, T didn’t train for the match - he knew it was going to be worked, and he was worried that his rep would suffer if he was seen to be preparing for it. Piper, on the other hand, actually did train for it, determined that he wouldn’t be the one to expose the business come April 2nd, 1986.
Neither approach worked: the situation was impossible. Neither man knew how to work a faked boxing match - there’s a case to be made that it can’t be done. The worked punches were terrible, and the unfolding action bizarre: it looked very little like a real boxing match, but certainly nothing at all like a wrestling match.
Piper did his best to work with what he had, bringing his gift for heelishness to bear, even throwing a stool at T at one point… but there was no way to build heat with a match structured into three-minute rounds, and with no actual wrestling allowed. The finish - a body slam to T against the rules, earning him a DQ - was as lame as the action throughout.