On last week's Roddy Piper focused episode of the critically acclaimed Something To Wrestle with Bruce Prichard, the former WWE producer shockingly revealed that at one time there was plans for Piper to wrestle OJ Simpson at WrestleMania 12.
"OJ Simpson had been cleared of all charges and found not guilty of the murder of his wife. There was a sentiment in the country that he needed to get what was coming to him, he needed some comeuppance . . .the original plan was for OJ Simpson to have a match at WrestleMania against the Hot Rod," Prichard said.
"I remember calling Roddy and pitching the idea, which he was for. We had had preliminary talks with OJ Simpson's people who at that point were looking for anything that had a pay check attached to it. We floated the idea out there . . .Piper was onboard. We were bringing him back in to get involved in everything and if you remember, if you go back to the early time of Piper's reemergence he does make comments about OJ Simpson. He makes comments about right and wrong in America, what's going on and that he's here to make things right in the WWF. The endgame to that was going to be the one-off and have Piper beat the sh*t out of OJ Simpson at Wrestlemania in Anaheim California."
According to Prichard, Piper was particularly in favor of this aspect of the idea, "he wanted to beat the sh*t out him and that's a shoot. The pitch always was 'OJ you're going to get the sh*t beat out of you but you'll make a lot of money." Whilst it seems that the groundwork was being laid though, the unsurprisingly negative response ended up turning the then WWF off of the idea, "once that started getting out beyond the inner circle of OJ Simpson's people and out in Hollywood, the backlash was deafening. People were (saying) 'if you do this you'll never have another sponsor'. Just extremely, extremely negative. So we punted and said 'thank you but no thank you OJ, we're not interested'."
In hindsight, Prichard seems relieved that the plans weren't followed through on, "We thought that in the end game OJ getting the sh*t kicked out him would satisfy some people and as those words come out of my mouth, you realize how ridiculous that is today . . . It was distasteful then and its distasteful now."
In the end Piper would famously wrestle Goldust at WrestleMania 12, replacing Razor Ramon who was uncomfortable with a planned program. Either way, it seems that common sense prevailed on this occasion and thankfully so but it certainly made for an interesting talking point on this fascinating podcast episode that goes into incredible detail on Piper's Hall of Fame career. Listen to this full episode and others here.
