8 WWE Hall Of Famers Who Couldn't Stay Retired

5. 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper

Roddy Piper UK Tour 1991
WWE.com

Wrestling fans my age may have a slightly strange relationship with 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper. I started watching wrestling when I was four or five years old, around WrestleMania VI, where Piper was entrenched as one of the biggest babyfaces in the game. Only as I got older did I realise Piper was once the most despised heel in the business.

It was even more of a shock to find out that Hot Rod had actually retired from in-ring competition three years earlier at WrestleMania III. On that night Piper defeated Adrian Adonis in a Hair vs. Hair match. This was billed as Piper's last match, before he headed off to Hollywood to become an acting megastar.

Two years later he was back, feuding with 'Ravishing' Rick Rude and Bobby 'The Brain' Heenan. Piper's career would wind down in painfully slow fashion over the next 20 years; he even had a brief WWE Tag Team Championship reign in 2010 with none other than Ric Flair.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.