Takin it old school.....

I'm probably dating myself but I grew up watching wrestling. And not just ANY wrestling...I grew up in the hayday of the best wrestling ever...the 80's. I grew up watching Ricky Steamboat and Gorilla Monsoon and Bob Orton and the Undertaker when he was still young and Ric Flair when it was still concievable that he was the nature boy. My walls were covered with posters of the Iron Shiek and Sgt. Slaughter and Jake the Snake and Andre the Giant.

These guys told me to look both ways while crossing the street and take my vitamins and be nice to other people. Fuck...Sgt. Slaughter was a freakin GIJOE!

But of course as anyone who grew up in the 80's knows...there were two men who completely ruled WWE merchadising....Hulk Hogan (when he wasn't a bright scary orange and just mearly kinda tanned)... and the legendary Rowdy Roddy Piper. Say what you will about wrestling but I'll bet you talk to anyone who grew up in that time frame and those are the two names that get repeated over and over. These two men were the faces of wrestling...and polar opposides as well. Where Hulk was the epitome of good behavior and telling kids to eat their veggies, piper was always causeing trouble. Brash....loudmouthed....and controversial....he was what kids who were trying to look past the goody-two exterior of Hogan wanted in their wrestler...a man who could talk shit and could back it up.

I won't lie....I was a Hulkamaniac. I had Hulk sheets, Hulk slippers (you guys know the ones...the ones with the hard pastic heads that you could beat someone to death with), Hulk dolls, Hulk puzzles and even a Hulk lunchbox...BUT....and to this day I will still say this to anyone...I was a Piper fan. Hulk was cool...but Piper was AWESOME. A badass who could back his words with a fight that didn't consist of the same three moves each time. I'm writing this only cause I just got the Piper box set today and even just holding it in the store I got a little misty eyed at the countess hours I spent watching Piper fight and boxtops cut out just to get that plastic cheap-ass Piper memorabilia from the cereal box.

I'm not saying much just this.....Hogan was cool....but Piper was the man....