One of the more memorable appearances at a WrestleMania was Rowdy Roddy Piper coming out with half his body painted black at WrestleMania VI at Toronto’s SkyDome.
 Rowdy Roddy Piper at WrestleMania VI. |
Piper was facing Bad News Brown that night, and wore the black paint to further provoke his opponent. Though the match ended in a double countout, according to Piper, the real fun happened afterwards.
“They had a special concoction made for me that when you sweat, it won’t rub off,” Piper explained to SLAM! Wrestling.
“They had a solvent to take it off. Then Andre The Giant, that dog — I can say that now because he’s dead, God bless him — and Arnold Skaaland took the clear solution out and put water in it. So I finish the fight, I go back to the makeup lady. I spend 10 minutes [scrubbing]. ‘Excuse me, I’m starting to bleed!'”
That night, Piper tips “a few Molsons” with his friends and goes to bed still half black.
Resolved to the fact that the black paint wasn’t going to come off, Piper set off towards his Oregon home. One of the presents that he was dragging back to his son was a four-foot high Mickey Mouse stuffed toy.
“Now I’m pretty P-O’d. I’m half-black, I’m in Toronto going to Portland, Oregon via Chicago. So, I’m not in the best of moods anyway,” he said.
“Next morning, I’m getting up to catch my plane. You have to imagine this scene, I’m half-black, I have Mickey [under my arm] and I’m coming to Customs. I put down my passport, and the guy just looks at me, and stamps my passport. I get on the plane.
‘Sir, you’ll have to check Mickey.’
‘I ain’t checking Mickey.’
‘You’ve got to check Mickey.’
‘How much is a seat?’
I buy Mickey a first-class seat.
“I get to Chicago, whole thing over again.”
In all, it took Piper three weeks going to the sauna and rubbing the concoction off to be clean.
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