The Work of Roddy Piper

A lost obituary: Roddy Piper, 1954-2015

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper

In recent years, I’ve become known for the long and detailed wrestling obituaries I write for the Ringer. These are bravura efforts, sometimes exceeding 7,000 words and featuring interviews with other wrestlers and original research.¹ The reason I got that gig was because David Shoemaker, the editor of the Ringer’s “Fights” section, was familiar with the obituaries I published elsewhere (lesser outlets that included the Outline, Made Man, Men’s Health, and so forth).

This obituary of Roddy Piper was written for Liberty, an attempted “new media”² revival of the general-interest magazine launched in 1924 by McCormick-Patterson and later published by fitness enthusiast/media magnate Bernarr Macfadden.³ Given that a prior 1971 revival of the publication had failed, it’s unclear why the company that acquired this IP thought bringing it back in 2015 — an even worse time for journalism — would be better. No matter. I got $200 a pop for these short essays until the outfit folded, and — at least as far as I know — remain the only writer who was paid in full for my labors.⁴ Since nearly all of this Liberty output has vanished from the web, expect to see a good bit of it reprinted here.