101 Shocking Wrestling Plans You Won't Believe Almost Happened
30. OJ Simpson At WrestleMania XII
Roddy Piper and Goldust's 'Hollywood Backlot Brawl' was one of the featured bouts at WrestleMania XII. It wasn't as eagerly anticipated as the 60-minute 'Iron Man' match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, but it did a decent job of drawing attention on the undercard. "Drawing attention" would've been the goal had the WWF's first thought come true.
Bruce Prichard lobbied for OJ Simpson to bag a pay-per-view payoff and wrestle Piper at 'Mania. That was before OJ's management told the federation 'no thanks' and before Razor Ramon was pulled from the show. Roddy slid into his place as Goldust's enemy, but the WWF still kept in some of the news camera footage from the Simpson police chase for the hell of it.
That was a sneaky tribute to the cancelled Piper vs. OJ match they wanted to book. This may seem laughable nowadays, but Simpson was huge news back in 1996. The media had covered his murder suspect trial from start to finish, and Prichard told Vince McMahon just how much money they could make if OJ agreed to take on 'Hot Rod' in a celeb vs. wrestler clash for the ages.
Talks between the WWF and Simpson's reps didn't last long. It became evident to Bruce, Vince and everyone on the wrestling side that they were wasting time trying to talk OJ into the ring. Piper got pretty lucky that Razor was absent from the show - he wouldn't have had an opponent otherwise.
Fair play to Roddy and Goldust though. They put some shift in when shooting scenes for the match.