Roderick Roddy George Tumbes, better known by his professional fighting name Roddy Piper, is a Canadian wrestler, movie actor, stunt performer and voice actor. He acted in the ring in the image of a Scotsman and went into battle to the sound of a bagpipe and in a kilt.
Roddy Piper Biography
Roddy was born April 17, 1954 in Saskatoon, the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, and grew up in Winnipeg, the provincial capital of Manitoba. His parents were Eileen, nee Anderson, Thumbes, and Stanley Baird Thumbes, Royal Mounted Police Officer.
As a teenager, he was expelled from school for bringing a blade to classes, after which the actor quarreled with his father and left home. For some time, Roddy Piper wandered around hostels, youth hostels, ready to shelter a teenager, interrupted by casual work and worked in gyms, performing orders from local fighters. Around this time, he learned to play the bagpipe, although the fighter himself has repeatedly stated that he does not remember where he got it.
Personal life
In 1982, Roddy Piper married Kitty Joe Dittrich. Four children were born in the marriage: son Colton Baird Toombs, and daughters actress Ariel Teal, Falon Danika and Anastasia Shee Toombs. Colton followed in his father's footsteps and became a master of mixed martial arts.
In November 2006, a statement appeared on the official website of the wrestling association that Roddy had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a malignant disease of lymphoid tissue. A few months later, the actor underwent radiation therapy. At the age of sixty-one years, as a result of cardiac arrest caused by hypertension, Piper died in a dream in his house in Hollywood.
Wrestler career
Roddy Piper, who looked very impressive in the photo, was the youngest fighter in wrestling history. He first appeared in the ring at the age of sixteen against Larry Enning. After ten seconds, Piper lost and earned only $ 25.
Roddy was a member of the “bad guys” team and earned the nickname “Hooligan,” many consider him the greatest villain of all time in the fight. Over the forty-two years of his career, he won thirty-four titles, but never became a world champion, although he participated in many of the main events of the show. In 2005, he was introduced to the WWE Hall of Fame (a hall for professional wrestlers).
Roddy Piper Movies
During and after his fighting career, Piper starred in dozens of low-budget action movies in the B-category. The most famous film in which the wrestler played is the sci-fi horror film “Aliens Among Us” by the famous director John Carpenter.
The main character, John Nada (played by Roddy Piper), discovered that the ruling class of America are aliens who hide their appearance and manipulate people. At the end of the film, John, of course, “gives the heat” to the aliens, and his phrase: “I came here to chew gum and kick ass. But my chewing gum is over, ”became winged.
Another iconic film where Roddy played the main character was the fantastic action movie Hell Comes to Frogtown. The plot unfolds in a post-apocalyptic desert, in the territory of which most of the population is unable to reproduce due to radioactive fallout.
In 1991, Piper, along with another wrestler, Jesse Ventura, starred in the television movie Team Tag about two police officers who were professional fighters. A year later, another action movie was released with Roddy in the title role - “Immortal Combat” directed by Dan Neir, with the classic script “East Meets West”.
Roddy Piper also participated as a guest star in several television projects: playing a fighter who looked like himself in the episode Crusader of the series “Cool Walker: Texas Justice”, in the Canadian-American TV series “External Limits” and in the television series “Robocop” »About the robot policeman. He was the host of the British Celebrity Struggle program, in which a pair of teams of famous people competed in battle with each other.
In one episode of the ninth and for the entire fifth season of the sitcom, in the black comedy genre called "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", he played a professional wrestler "Maniac" (Da Maniac), which was a parody of Mickey Rourke from the sports drama "Wrestler".
The last paintings in which he worked were: the comedy action movie Black Dynamite, the comedy Vypendrezhnik (Fancy Pants) and the horror film Wrestlers Against Zombies.
After death, the wrestler's body was cremated, and the ashes scattered from his home in Gaston, Oregon.