Rotting Rowdy Piper

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In the Next Piper's Pit

‪

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They Don't

(Props to Peter)

 

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Piper Down

(Kudos to Don)

 

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They Die

(Can I Get a Whoop Whoop for JQ?)

Rowdy Roddy Piper is all out of bubble gum, dying of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 61. The Canadian turned fake Scottish wrestler was one of the most interesting personalities to inhabit the wobbly squared circle. He held 34 belts in his career, which given the legitimacy of the WWF/WCW and WWE is about as impressive as doing the same thing at a Target. Outside the ring, the kilted menace badgered other wrestlers on his show-within-the show Piper’s Pit, once hitting Jimmy Superfly Snuka with a coconut, and on another occasion insulting Bruno Sammartino, leading to a steel cage match that Piper lost despite Bruno being 20 years older. Such antics helped Piper earn the title of Worst Villain in WWE history. Away from wrestling, he dabbled in acting, starring in the cult classic They Live, and playing Sam Hell in Hell Comes to Frogtown, one of the lone fertile men left in a post-apocalyptic world where mutant amphibians have captured women to use as sex slaves, with Hell out to rescue the girls and then set to repopulating the planet. But it’s not porn.

Take Him Home, Dusty Rhodes

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Rhodes Cooler

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Ashes to Ashes, Dusty to Dust

(Props to Steve)

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American Dream Deferred

(Kudos to Peter)

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Rhodes Kill

Virgil Riley Runnels Jr., call name Dusty Rhodes, has died of stomach cancer at the age of 69. Rhodes took the nickname "The American Dream," apparently assuming the American dream involved being obese and steroid addled and rolling around with half naked men. Rhodes was a three-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and won a range of other titles in Jim Crockett Promotions and regional organizations. He is one of six men inducted into each of the WWE, WCW, Professional Wrestling, and Wrestling Observer Newsletter Halls of Fame. 

Sleeper, Cold

(Props to Greg)

Vern Gagne, a champion in the ring and Vince McMahon’s bitch outside it, has died at the age of 89. Gagne had been a standout at the University of Minnesota in wrestling and football and was drafted by the Chicago Bears in 1947, but opted for the more lucrative world of professional wrestling instead. He became one of the most well-known stars of wrestling’s Golden Age, hailed for his technical skill rather than histrionics. He was also one of its most well-paid, raking in more than $100,000 a year during the 1950s so that by 1960, he was able to break off and start the American Wrestling Association. Though he cut back on his wrestling to build the organization, he was its biggest star and soon one of its first champions. He was intermittently a champion 9 different times, and held the belt well into his 50s. Gagne was old school, and championed wrestlers with technical skill, while the (then-)WWF preferred steroid-gobbling, oiled-up personalities. Among them Hulk Hogan, who had been fired by the WWF, became a star with the AWA (though Gagne hated him as a showboat rather than a wrestler), and then headed back to the WWF. But not before Gagne offered the Iron Sheik a bribe to injure Hogan. When the WWF decided to nationalize what had been a “sport” of regional organizations, Gagne tried to match the effort, even securing a contract with ESPN. But ESPN treated the AWA like a second-class citizen, pre-empting their timeslots for live events and tractor pull previews. Like it now does with baseball. With a steady flow of its stars heading to the WWF, the AWA was bankrupt by 1991. All told, Gagne was a 16-time World Heavyweight Champion, holds the record for the longest combined reign as a world champion and is one of six men inducted into each of the WWE, WCW, Professional Wrestling and Wrestling Observer Newsletter halls of fame. His legacy endured for decades through the wrestlers Gagne trained, including Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Bob Backlund, and Ken Patera.

Moody’s Blue

(Props to Monty, our connoisseur of the squared circle)

William Moody, aka Percival Pringle III, aka Paul Bearer, the owner of the Funeral Parlor, is in need of his own services, after his death at the age of 59 of gall bladder complications related to gastric bypass surgery. After originally appearing as Percival Pringle III, a fat dandy in a bow tie, with limited interest or success, Moody returned to the WWE in 1991 as the manager of The Undertaker, paralleling his real world experiences of obtaining a degree in mortuary science and earning certification as a funeral director and embalmer. Made up to look like a Saturday night horror host’s idea of a funeral director and with a cremation urn perpetually under his arm, hosted the talk segments, which came to be known as The Funeral Parlor.

Snapped into His LAST Slim Jim!!!

(Props to Terrence Walsh)

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Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
Rando “Macho Man” Savage, who led the 1974 Tampa Tarpons with 9 home runs and 66 RBI, has died at the age of 58 after suffering a heart attack while driving that caused him to lose control of his car. Rather than the Jaws of Life, rescuers were able to free him from the wreck using a Slim Jim. Strutting into the ring with Technicolor cowboy hats, outlandish sunglasses that would make Italian men cringe, fringed jackets, oiled muscles and a bandana to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” Savage was perfectly cast as a wrestler who shared his nom de ring with a song by the Village People. He emerged as one of the biggest stars of the homoerotic soap opera that is professional wrestling, starting as a heel, until a feud with The Honky Tonk Man ended up with Savage’s wife/manager Miss Elizabeth begging Hulk Hogan to save Savage and he switched sides to form the Mega Powers with Hogan, but then Hogan accidentally eliminated Savage during a Royal Rumble. Jealous of Hogan, who had now taken Miss Elizabeth as his manager, Savage turned heel on Hogan, abandoning him in a tag team match against the Twin Towers and then challenging him for heavyweight and tag team titles. Other story lines, er, phases of his personal development, included a snit fit when the Ultimate Warrior wouldn’t grant him a shot at the title after his title bout with Sgt. Slaughter, before Savage and Warrior later teamed as heroes, and a romantic rekindling after Elizabeth left the audience to rescue Savage who was getting abused by Sensational Queen Sherri. Non ring roles included stretching to play wrestler Bone Saw McGraw in Spider-Man and voicing Space Ghost’s grandfather on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Oh Captain, Bye Captain

“Captain” Lou Albano, star of the comedy classic Wiseguys, has died at the age of 76. The WWF (as in World Wrestling Federation - yeah, suck it panda lovers) Hall of Famer was known for managing such evil-doers as The Iron Shiek, Nikolai Volkoff, Andre the Giant and the British Bulldogs, to 15 tag team and 4 individual championship titles in a “sport” far more organized, and only slightly more orchestrated, than the alphabet soup of professional boxing, all the while taunting audiences and opponents alike. All, only slightly homoerotic. With a long unruly beard, loud outfits and rubber bands dangling from his face, Albano was like a living cartoon, making him the perfect actor to take on the role of a lifetime – Mario in the Super Mario Brothers Super Show! He was adopted by another cartoon-like figure from the 1980s, appearing in videos for Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun, She Bop, Time After Time and The Goonies theme song.

Killer Be Killed

Wrestling icon Walter (Killer) Kowalski has died of complications from a power suplex at the age of 81. In the simpler 1950s, grown men in tight shorts slapping each other made for nightly entertainment on the old Victrola, and the 6-foot-7, 275-pound Kowalski cut a commanding figure as one the most hated villains in the pseudosport. Unlike the modern iteration, things were a little more real back in the day when Kowalski earned his nickname by accidentally severing the ear of Yukon Eric, then cackling at his bandaged head in the hospital. Kowalski later opened a School of Professional Wrestling in Malden, Massachusetts, turning out Triple H and Chyna.

Lord of the Flies

Lord Alfred Hayes, the greatest wrestler ever to come out of the United Kingdom and a fixture as a U.S. broadcaster in the 1980s and ‘90s, has died at the age of 77. Hayes added an incongruous somewhat refined accent to the sounds of fat man slapping. Wrestling in the 1960s and 1970s as “Judo” Al Hayes, he was a notable villain and then a baddie manager of such talents as Nikolai Volkoff, Billy Robinson, Chris Markoff, Masked Superstar and Sgt. Slaughter. He then signed on with Vince McMahon and the WWF and upped the Britishyness of his act. He was the straight man in a number of skits on various WWF programs, appearing in a tuxedo and wannabe Alistair Cooke diction while surrounded by a parade of feather-boaed, masked and painted fat men. And at the end of every episode, you'd hear the snooty royalist tones of Lord Alfred say...

PROMOTIONAL CONSIDERATION PAID FOR BY THE FOLLOWING!

Then Lord Alfred would list the sponsors for this week's program, all of them inappropriate in his proper British accent...

Wrestlemania 64...from Ah-KLAIM!

Coty Wild Musk...the ESSENCE...of an-EEE-mal....ATTRACTION!

Coty Wild Musk...easy to WEAH...haaaahd to ree-SIST!

(Partially stolen shamelessly from James, who alerted us to the vacant Lordship)

Labors Completed

Former WWF wrestler Raymond Fernandez, aka, Hercules Hernandez, died, apparently of a heart attack, in his sleep Saturday at the age of 46. His death was first reported at the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame banquet Sunday night and confirmed by Wrasslin.com, as fake deaths are apparently routinely reported at wrestling get-togethers. According to Wrasslin.com, his career highlights include wrestling Ricky Steamboat at Wrestlemania II and his days as half of the tag team titan Jurassic Powers, a dominant force in the glory days of New Japan Pro Wrestling.
(Direct queries to why this one was included to noted aficionado of the squared circle Wrasslin' Scott Monty.)

Casket Freddie Blassie

Ol' time wrasslin' superstar Classy Freddy Blassie got pinned by the Grim Reaper, dying Monday of a heart attack at the age of 85. One of the first wrestling stars of the television age, his name might also ring a bell with some as an evil manager of such WWF villains as Nikolai Volkoff or the Iron Sheik in the 1980s. Not one to be pinned down to a certain genre, he also recorded the novelty hit "Pencil-Necked Geek" and parodied "My Dinner with Andre" with "My Breakfast with Blassie." Given that we've spent the first half of the year with our backs to the mat, it's not surprising that no one had Blassie, so the Dead Pool is far from being slammed shut. As it stands, Greg, Kirsti and I are all tied with one lonely cadaver each.