The heated on-air spat between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Bill Maher
Professional wrestling has a strange relationship with reality. It’s as fake as it is real, and no one summed this bizarre phenomenon better than Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Piper embodied chaos, so much so that no one can really tell whether he was actually a chaotic firebrand with a hair-trigger temper who could fly off the handle at any moment in real life. Or whether he just played one on TV.
He’s still to this day probably the best actor to ever come from the world of professional wrestling (although Dave Bautista is running a close race with him today), even if he never became The Rock in terms of fame. Whether it was real or not, it was convincing and made for some amazing TV.
This went far beyond the wrestling ring as well, as we can tell from Piper’s legendary appearance on Bill Maher’s talk show Politically Incorrect. I’m not kidding, by the way, that was actually what it was called, Maher’s always been lame.
In 1999, pro-wrestling was bigger than it ever had been, thanks to the Monday Night Wars between WCW and the then-WWF. Piper, along with Sting, Madusa, and Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan, was called onto the show to discuss the sport’s popularity.
Maher, in his typical insufferable fashion, began taking shots at the reality of pro-wrestling… Opening up the discussion of WCW’s TV product by saying, “The audience, your audience, they’re in on the joke, right?” – when Piper asked Maher to clarify what he meant, he said he wanted to know if the audience knew that the wrestlers weren’t really beating each other up. Sunrise, sunset, people asking if wrestling fans know whether wrestling, which has featured zombies, demons, possessed kids TV hosts, boogeymen and superheroes, is real or not. Nothing ever really changes.
Sting, sharp man that he is, tries to defuse the situation by saying the reasonable answer. The audience knows that it’s entertainment, but the risks are very real. Then Maher jams his foot right down his throat by saying, “There’s not a bruise on any of you”. Piper then does what he does best. He gets unpredictable. Who could have possibly known that the next thing he’d do is stand up, undo his belt and pull his jeans down on national television?
There’s a good reason for this, too; he gestures to a part of his waist that’s clearly been operated on. “Metal hip!” He yells as the crowd does what it so often does when Hot Rod’s in a mood, and goes wild. He points to his wrist and points out how many times it’s been broken as Maher scrambles to take back control of his own show.
Then Piper does what he has been known to do as well, and takes the whole thing a little too far, “Owen Hart, dead. Why don’t you go tell Mrs Hart what a joke it is, huh? Oh, it’s just a phrase, right? You want me to be truthful with you? Huh, champ?”
Suddenly, the audience is quiet. The previously jovial, if raucous, atmosphere is replaced with one of real tension. Despite professional wrestling being the biggest it had ever been, the death of Owen Hart hangs heavy over all involved with the industry. Hart had died during a tragic accident during the WWF’s Over The Edge pay-per-view event mere months before this interview was aired.
There have been a few moments where wrestling has gotten as “real” ever since, and while the conversation does settle back down afterwards, it’s clear Piper is in a very real mood with Maher. He ends up with the last laugh, though. Maher tries to send a snide quip at Piper later in the episode by saying, “I don’t tend to take my pants down for other men.”
Piper doesn’t miss a beat as he shoots back, “Then how did you get the job?!”
A more convincing knock-out than he ever got in the ring, and one that reminds the world that you never could quite tell where you stood with Piper. Just when you think you had the answers, he changed the questions.