Punching Day: Fighting Fit with Rowdy Roddy Piper

As a recent convert to the fighting arts, I approach combat sports with the lunatic zeal of a rich 25-year-old who just discovered Catholicism. Unlike them, I don't claim to know better than the Pope — I still believe that Bas Rutten is the Punch God's representative on earth. I'm now hearing that Bas Rutten is also an adult Catholic convert, and that his conversion was spurred on by conversations by a man named "Chad Ripperger." You could be forgiven for thinking that a man with that name was a professional wrestler rather than an insane exorcist who invented a typology of gay devils that puts the microlabel efforts of Tumblr teens to shame.

It's fine, everyone's got their quirks. Some people don't like broccoli, others believe there are separate demonic generals for butch lesbians and the other kind that haunts the PornHub searches of priests angling to be the Mark Kern of r/CatholicGamers. That's a real subreddit, of course, but I think we've been toiling in the Reddit muck enough lately. Maybe just one little peek?

No.

Anyway, loving the living — UFC Hall of Famer or not — is fraught with danger. At any moment, they could die, Gone Girl you, or decide to start an ill-advised rap career. You know who will never betray you? The dead.

It's been almost exactly ten years since we lost Roddy Piper. Professional wrestling was proscribed in my house growing up, so I didn't know who he was until the news hit that he was gone. I remember that day well. I was staying with a Brooklyn couple I was dating, and they insisted that we watch They Live to celebrate Piper's memory. And before I go any further, look: it was 2015 and polycules didn't have the stink of board games about them yet. I mean, we did play a lot of board games. It was a different time, alright? Chris Fleming's "Polyamorous" was still two years out. I don't think it's fair to judge how we lived back then by today's standards.

In the decade since that day, I've learned that Piper was a generational talent. His ability to cut promos was legendary, he's a contender for best heel of all time, and he made Mr. T look like he could actually wrestle at the first-ever Wrestlemania.

Kids — at least, the ones allowed to watch them — looked up to wrestlers. And Mama McMahon didn't raise no chump. Did Vince McMahon have a mother? It's possible he simply crawled out of some hoary cave in a forgotten land one day, dripping with ichor. Regardless. Some instinctual, preconscious impulse was imparted by the primordial darkness which spawned him. He knew that his wrestling men must at least gesture towards the concept of "good role model." If Hulk Hogan wanted to be the world's Most Racist Man behind the scenes, that was fine, as long as he told children to say their prayers and eat their vitamins. And hey, if those vitamins happened to be official WWF products, then everybody wins.

Even heels got in on the action. But Roddy Piper didn't hawk poisonous chalk tablets stamped into the shape of his face. You know what he did have?

A VHS tape called Fighting Fit with Rowdy Roddy Piper.

It's immediately clear that Piper isn't phoning this in. From the jump, he's screaming giddily at the camera with the demeanor of a man who's about to take on Captain Lou Albano rather than one who's set to babysit several dozen children for an afternoon.

Cut to footage of Roddy taking on Hogan, sprinkled liberally throughout the video and jazzed up with the best video effects the low-budget home video division of a British record label could buy in 1992.

But it's not all gas. Roddy Piper knows how to tell a story, and a fitness video tape purchased to distract children for 45 minutes in the early '90s is nothing if not a medium for a weaver of words. First, you hook 'em with the highlight reel, then you hit 'em with your backstory.

Roddy left home at 13, hitchhiking from town to town with his bagpipes. I assumed this was his fictionalized wrestling persona, but it seems like it was actually pretty close to the truth, which kicks ass. He says he won a Golden Glove title at 15, which is a little more dubious, but I don't care. He's walking around town in a leather jacket and jeans, muttering things like "God takes care of fools and babies" with the cadence of a man who's either half-drunk or fully-concussed. He's who I want to be when I grow up, including ill-advised bridge tomfoolery.

Fade out. Fade in on sad children, black and white, letterboxed.

But then: a sound pierces the silence. The dissonant, skull-ratting honk of a bagpipe. It's a call to action.

The children, drawn to this Pied Piper, break free from their grayscale drudgery, rushing towards Roddy.

Surprise reveal: the children are British.

Roddy promises that he's going to show the kids how to defend themselves. He's going to teach them to dare to dream. And lastly, he's going to make a man out of them. Or — he adds, with a gentle shrug and the most pleasant smile I've ever seen on a professional wrestler — a woman.

But first, a disclaimer. Roddy takes on the persona of Doctor Von Grapple to tell the kids that they need to get their parents' permission to watch the tape. The chyron calls him Doctor McGrapple, but he's clearly doing a German accent. Telstar Video Entertainment doesn't know what they have.

Roddy is wasted on them. He must have needed the cash, or else he really was just that passionate about pediatric health. First, he leads the children through a series of stretches and warm-up exercises. He's especially careful that the kids don't bend or move in such a way that would aggravate their Hogan-inflicted spine and neck injuries. "Don't lean your head back," he tells them, "you'll compress your disks." Roddy rejects the old school slogan of "no pain, no gain." He substitutes it with his own, gentler formulation.

All of the stretches are given fun and memorable names. Here's my favorite:

Roddy asks, "You remember him, right? Big pizza-eating guy?" Is it possible that he has never seen Star Wars but has seen Spaceballs? I want to believe. If anyone missed the source material but caught the middling Mel Brooks parody, it's Professor Headlock.

"You can be better than me," Roddy insists. "I only had a Grade 8 education. Learn from me. Exceed me." He pleads earnestly with the children of the early '90s, upon whose toned, athletic shoulders he has placed all of his hopes for the future.

More exercises with silly names. Cowabunga Body Twists. Up and Slammin' Down and Jammin' (burpees). Something called "Beat the War Drum." Is it really important for these kids to deaden the nerves in their abs? Maybe Roddy's just a big Houdini fan and doesn't want to see these kids go out the same way he did.

As he leads them in a chant of "we're fighting fit," I realize something odd. Piper was a heel. I'm a little unclear on the moral calculus of professional wrestling, but shouldn't he be telling kids to steal from their parents' wallets and brush their teeth with whiskey?

My confusion only intensifies when we reach the segment where he teaches self-defense for kids. Roddy claims that he hates bullies. Is he in character here? Out of it? Was this VHS tape — possibly produced on the same trip to the UK on which he recorded his single "I'm Your Man" — outside of Vince McMahon's purview somehow? I have so many questions, but Roddy only has one: are you going to use his deadly arts to bully other children?

If so, he's going to track you down and teach you a lesson. But there's a second, subtler threat. "Mom and dad, I can teach you a few things too," he adds, with a lascivious smile. The implication is clear. If you should break the sacred covenant you swear here today, then mark his words: "Rowdy" Roddy Piper will fuck your parents.

Bad news first: kids, you don't stand a chance against an adult, even one whose body has been prematurely ruined by professional wrestling. Anyone who tells you to step on their foot or something like that, that's baloney. What you want to do is shout the same thing I did the first time my mom brought home another man.

Against other kids, though? We can really fuck them up. But first, de-escalation. There's a different mantra when faced with someone of equal stature, and it's exactly what I tell the middle schoolers in my jiu jitsu class when we're rolling.

Next, you can use what Roddy calls the "bully jabber." It is executed by making a fist and poking your thumb between your index and middle fingers, then using it as a sort of prodding weapon to keep someone at a distance. It might not work, but I've seen far worse moves in karate books for adults. And if it fails, you can always slam them into the dirt.

Regardless of what happens in this kid's life moving forward, regardless of the indignities he suffers and the disappointments this world throws at him, he will always have this touchstone to cling to — videotaped evidence of the time he threw Roddy Piper to the mat.

Little does he know that Roddy has now entered his Enraged Mode.

"I'm gonna have more fun than a cookie jar!" He announces. It feels like he was aiming for "kid in a candy store" and stumbled halfway. Maybe it's an old Piper family saying, like that guy at the beginning of Dark Souls who tells you some jazz about the fate of the Undead. In any case, he's about to unleash some bullshit inescapable grab attacks on these tykes.

The kids rush him one after another like doomed ninjas in an '80s action movie, and he executes a bevy of wrestling moves on them in turn. Soon they're screaming and shooting their hands up into the air, begging Roddy to powerbomb them or chokeslam them.

It is a riotous display of grappling prowess, but something is amiss. One child amongst the crowd of frenzied spectators politely requests a suplex.

Her request is denied. Roddy won't do moves on the little girls! A disappointing show of sexism from Mr. Piper. Does not the Fighting Fit ethos embrace all? Is that t-shirt a sham, Roddy? Shame, shame, for shilling a sham shirt. Alas, it was 1992. Women had the vote, but did not yet have the right to take a faux inverted atomic drop from Hot Rod.

Lastly, Roddy brings out "the Gravedigger" and shows the kids how to do clotheslines on it. We've departed completely from the educational portion of the program and are here for what the kids signed up for — fooling around in a wrestling ring with inflatable toys. A dozen or so boys have a go at it, and then, finally, two girls get fed up with waiting for the courts.

As the girl who Roddy told "no" looks on in awe of the movement she's sparked, these two young trailblazers rush towards their swarthy target and deliver a blow for women's rights.

That would be a great shot to go out on. Instead, Roddy and the kids are forced to flee as they are pelted with balls from offscreen. Symbolic of the inevitable backlash to feminist advances, or did Rollerball Rocco and Kendo Nagasaki just need the ring?

One more promo. Don't do drugs and don't do lies, because you're the best generation of youth we've ever had in history, Roddy says. Looking around today… well, I'm sorry, Mr. Piper. We failed you. Somewhere along the way, we lost the Fighting Fit spirit.

But Roddy taught us one last lesson, one more valuable than any calf stretch or bully jabber: alone, we may be as so many grade schoolers tossed about by the impossible might of a legendary grappler. But together?

Together we can topple titans.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Ted H, who wasn't able to get Fighting Fit with Rowdy Roddy Piper, but never misses a day of DDP Yoga.

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