Roddy Piper is the first person in the era that Hulk Hogan ruled the WWF as its top wealth earner who challenged Hogan's supremacy as a mainstream icon. Thus, like Randy Savage, it was in Piper inciting crowds worldwide (at a time where WWE's renown was growing) and competing with Hogan for the crowd's interest that Vince McMahon was able to reach untold levels of financial success. Every hero needs a villain. Few villains understand the role like Piper did, meaning that few understand that the key to being a bad guy is to push the bounds of sanity, decency and common sense in a way that they draw attention to your cause to the absolute point that fans believe you're going to win - which puts asses in seats, by the way. Of course, the magic in pro wrestling is that the babyface snatches victory from the jaws of defeat every time...which in the case of Piper is intriguing, because he never was pinned by Hogan in the WWF. In Piper being the one man Hogan could never quite beat, every time they came within an inch of each other, it was a big-time draw. Intriguingly, nearly 15 years after making big money in their primes, when Piper and Hogan wrestled in WCW after their primes, because Hogan had never defeated Piper, it was still a major draw! As well, Piper's role in headlining the first Wrestlemania, as well as being a WWF wrestler and appearing in films like They Live actually significantly aided WWF's mainstream perception, which also aided the growth of Vince McMahon's bottom line.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
