Theres no retirement like your first retirement, at least it seems that way in professional wrestling. Ask Mick Foley if he should have stayed retired longer than he initially did. When Rowdy Roddy Piper decided to step away from wrestling in 1987, he did it in grand style, going out in a hair versus hair match against Adorable Adrian Adonis at WrestleMania III. Piper was a massively popular babyface at this point, and his destruction of Adonis Flower Shop (after Adonis and his cohorts assaulted Hot Rod) only made things hotter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzLjqFXPS2g If you saw the match even once, you know exactly what happened: Adonis locked in the sleeper hold but released early, allowing Brutus Beefcake to revive Piper. Roddy then slapped on his own sleeper hold, winning his retirement match and saving his locks. The match sent Piper off to a 20-month retirement on the grandest stage of all, turned Beefcake face and gave fans a moment theyd never forget.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
