Roddy Piper is one of the biggest legends in wrestling history, on the short list of the greatest wrestlers of all time to never win a win world title and a key figure in the original WrestleMania main event scene. Bad News Brown was a legit judo master who’d been built up as an intimidating heel. Putting these two together for a WrestleMania feud had a lot of potential on paper. Particularly given each man’s brawling acumen and toughness, there was reason to believe they might put together a stiff masterpiece—something like a poor man’s Piper vs. Greg Valentine. However, the feud itself played out poorly and was cut short due to poor creative choices and real life issues behind the scenes.
A Logical Start To The Feud At The Royal Rumble
The basic set up for Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown was sound. They were an upper mid-card babyface and an upper mid-card heel who wound up clashing in the midst of the Royal Rumble. Hot Rod eliminated Brown, only for the latter not to take it well, and climb back in the ring and cause Piper’s elimination. Tensions were high, and the scene was set for them to go to war at WrestleMania a few months later.
Indeed, WWE has used variations on this formula of Rumble beefs leading to major rivalries before and since, and it was actually a relatively logical concept for a feud. That’s especially fitting giving the no-nonsense style of Brown, which didn’t lend itself all that well to elaborate, contrived storylines, but rather was better rooted in angles that were about the sport of wrestling. Brown even had a legitimate case that he might’ve been a contender to win the Rumble had Piper not ousted him, given his resume included winning the battle royal on no lesser stage than WrestleMania 4 less than two years earlier.
Roddy Piper’s Body Paint At WrestleMania
WWE has rarely been all that good at dealing with the nuances of racial politics, but Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown at WrestleMania 6 may have marked the nadir of their explorations of race. Hot Rod wore body paint over half his body that colored him black on one side. The move was ostensibly designed to suggest racial unity—that despite this being a match between a black and a white man, babyface Piper was actually a champion of all people, regardless of the color of their skin.
The visual was a complete misfire. In less socially aware times, Piper simply looked ridiculous to most fans. The image has only aged worse and worse with many thinking Piper was performing in blackface, making his look for the show come across as ignorant, if not downright offensive. It’s on this account that Peacock went so far as to remove the match from their streamable version of WrestleMania 6—a choice more fans might take issue with if it weren’t one of the worst matches of WrestleMania history--a forgettable brawl that ended in a double count out, such that all most fans remember about it is the paint. Accounts vary regarding the exact nature of the accident or rib at hand, but to make matters worse, Piper couldn’t get the paint off of himself after the match, meaning he had to leave the arena and even travel while still painted half black.
Neither Roddy PiperN or Bad News Brown Were Willing To Lose
One of the reasons Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown went so poorly at WrestleMania 6 and why WWE cut the feud short not long after was the difficult interpersonal dynamics to manage between the two of them behind the scenes. Hot Rod was notoriously hesitant to lose, including never putting Hulk Hogan over cleanly so he could keep his heat and credibility. It’s not so surprising, then, that he didn’t want to put over Brown. To complicate matters, Brown not only didn’t want to lose, but stated openly in multiple shoot interviews that he thought Piper was racist and Brown had no interest in jobbing to someone with that worldview.
Piper vehemently denied the allegations of racism. Nonetheless, it’s a shame that two tough guys with big reputations couldn’t get on the same page to put together a memorable string of matches that might have amounted to a memorable feud. On the contrary, their issue is remembered for its lack of closure and uncomfortable racial undertones.
Despite a good beginning, Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown suffered from the participants’ discontent in working together and unwillingness to put each other over, which was pushed over the top by the ill-conceived body paint the Rowdy one wore into their match at WrestleMania 6. What might have been a good mid-card feud became an embarrassment for WWE, a black eye on Piper’s Hall of Fame resume, and one of the final landmarks on the road to Brown leaving the company, dissatisfied with how he’d been used, later that year.