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[1991-12-28-WWF-Superstars] Funeral Parlor: Roddy Piper


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  • 4 months later...

Piper tries his hat as a motivational speaker, telling kids not to listen to Paul Bearer's dark message and to DREAM! He quotes Martin Luther King and talks about his childhood. He talks about his beginnings in wrestling and how life has been tough wearing a kilt. This is all to hype the Royal Rumble and his chance to finally win a championship. He closes this out by throwing Paul Bearer in the coffin on the set. Awesome promo from him, and I want Roddy Piper at TED talks.

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  • 1 month later...

Great little story from Piper about getting the kilt and the bagpipes. Piper is dreaming about the WWF Title. He probably hasn’t been involved with challenging for that belt since 85 so it’s nice to see him want to be champion. Rumble shot gives so many unlikely guys a shot at the WWF Title. Paul Bearer doesn’t want Piper to overlook his Undertaker so Roddy puts him in one of the caskets.

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This promo has me suspecting that Piper's IC title win was already booked at this point. When Piper was 5 he wanted to be big and tough--he got a kilt. When he was 10 he wanted to be like the Beatles--he got bagpipes. And at 15 he wanted to be a professional wrestler. Great, passionate interview from Piper.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...

Maybe the best babyface promo I've ever heard from Piper, and the best part is that he keeps going even as he's locking Percy in the casket! Only a verbal master could handle something like that.

 

I thought for a second that he was going to say, "At fifteen I wanted to be a professional wrestler, and they gave me Perfect's father Larry 'The Ax' Hennig. Squashed me in ten seconds flat like the punk I was then. Not exactly what I had in mind........." (According to legend, Larry was Piper's first opponent. They wrestled in Winnipeg, and Piper really was squashed in ten seconds. Too bad that in Vince's world, the Mr. Perfect character has no father worth mentioning.)

 

I kind of hate to keep picking on Percy, but this was another rotten performance from him. His mugging and eye-rolling took Piper's serious (for wrestling, anyway) message and made it seem like the usual promotional bunk. Yes, it hyped the Rumble, but it was a stirring message completely on its own as well. Again, the fault isn't with Percy Pringle (or Bill Moody, if you prefer) the man, it's with the concept of Paul Bearer the character. He could have been just as legitimately scary and creepy as Taker, but it's almost like Vince wanted to take the sting out of Taker a bit, so he made Bearer goofier and more kid-accessible.

 

Everyone in the audience who's at least heard of The Addams Family knows exactly who Percy's trying (and failing) to imitate, and at this point I'm sorry that John Astin's just a little too old to come to the WWF and show the world how the character of Gomez Addams is supposed to be done. Odds are that he'd actually add more to the Taker character than Paul Bearer has so far.

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  • 2 years later...
  • GSR changed the title to [1991-12-28-WWF-Superstars] Funeral Parlor: Roddy Piper

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