Jim Ross on Roddy Piper, the Ronda Rousey Phenomenon and His One-Man Show

Fred: What’s up, everybody? This is Fred Richani of TSC News, and I have right here on the line a WWE Hall of Famer who’s ready to rock the New York area on SummerSlam weekend: good ol’ J.R., Jim Ross. J.R., how’s it going?

Jim Ross: Couldn’t be better.

Fred: You’ve got a big show coming up at the Gramercy Theatre on Aug. 22, and we’ll talk about that in a bit. You just had a fun weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Legends Fan Fest in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the likes of Lance Storm, Gerry Brisco, Rip Rogers and Les Thatcher.

Jim Ross: It was good, and there will be another Mid-Atlantic Fan Fest next March in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Tickets are already available at NWALegends.com. The event, run by Greg Price, was excellent. A lot of folks were there I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d encourage fans to check it out when their schedule permits, because it’s very casual but organized. I did some live Q&As, kind of like I interview people on my podcast, and I had fun. It had been a long time since I’d been to Charlotte. I was on “The Paul Finebaum Show” on the SEC Network while I was there too, so it was a good trip all the way around.

Fred: If you’re a young wrestler, you should definitely make your way out there. With Rip Rogers, Lance Storm and Nigel McGuinness training people, that’s an all-star team of trainers if you want a real evaluation of where you’re at.

Jim Ross: Add Gerry Brisco to that group, and you’ve got as good talent evaluators as you can assemble. If you’re a young independent wrestler, or you’re thinking about getting into the business and have had a little training, it’s a really good tool to see what others think of your potential. It’s not lip service. They get in the ring, demonstrate things and explain things. It’s not high pressure. It’s a teaching mechanism and an evaluation mechanism, and it works out very well.

Fred: Have you been watching “Tough Enough”?

Jim Ross: I watch it. I’m not a big fan of the format, but I’m a fan of the Tough Enough brand. I’ve always enjoyed the theory behind it, especially in the beginning. Now it’s just another reality show, and there are a lot of them on. I don’t think the turnaround on the votes gives people enough time to think about what they want to do. The voting should go on throughout the week, with the elimination at the beginning of the next show, so people talk about it all week and keep it alive. Once it goes off the air, it seems to be out of people’s minds after a day. But I watch it. I think Miz has done a really nice job replacing Hogan, and I like Billy Gunn, Booker and Lita, all three of whom used to be on my talent roster when I was in charge of talent relations. It’s just the basic format of the voting that loses me a little bit.

Fred: Any advice for the eventual winners of a quarter of a million dollars? They’re definitely going to get some heat and have growing pains.

Jim Ross: It’s a tough deal. It’s got great sizzle and it’s good programming, but the winners will be scrutinized. That’s a lot of money, probably paid out over a few years, I’m assuming. There’s always jealousy in the locker room. It’s no different from an NFL training camp right now, with guys trying to make the 53-man roster. If you think the NFL is different from WWE in that regard, you’re misled.

Fred: Over a week ago we had the unfortunate, tragic death of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and you wrote quite a bit about him for Fox Sports and your own website. For fans who didn’t grow up seeing Piper in his prime, can you share some memories of his greatness?

Jim Ross: He was arguably the best TV wrestling villain of the modern era, including cable television. I have a hard time seeing anyone who surpassed him as a true heel. Flair had his run as a great heel, Shawn Michaels was an absolutely phenomenal heel and Ole Anderson was a natural-born heel, but Roddy was at the top of the list because his personality was so infectious and his interview style was so unique. Back before the curtain was pulled back on the business, the heels carried a lot of heat. They had to be careful where they went and how they conducted their everyday lives, because they were always heels. A lot of them got stabbed and assaulted. Bill Watts told me that when he was a heel in Washington, D.C., and at the Garden working with Bobo Brazil and Bruno Sammartino, he got warm urine thrown in his face out of a cup. Real heels had to be tough guys with no fear, and Roddy fit the bill. He was a child of the streets. He wasn’t formally educated, but he had great street smarts. He understood what it took to be a heel: cheat to win, take cheap advantages, moan a little bit, leave the ring when it got too hot and play the crowd. He was excellent at it.

Watching some of these guys today, they seem to be playing the role of a bad guy when they’re not really bad guys. Roddy Piper was not a bad human being, but if he had to defend himself in a real situation, he had no issues doing that, and that separated him from a lot of his peers then and certainly now. In his later years, when you got him by himself, he was quiet and loved talking about his family. That was his favorite topic. But he was gregarious and had natural charisma and amazing timing. Nobody’s going to replace Roddy Piper. He was an extension of his natural personality, and guys like Piper and Dusty Rhodes, who were extensions of their own personalities, are just not going to be replicated.

Fred: What amazes me is his mental toughness and how he stuck to his guns. This week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter talked about how he wouldn’t work in the Portland area, even when working for Vince, because he was loyal to Don Owen, and he wouldn’t work some parts of the Carolinas out of loyalty to Mr. Crockett. That takes a hell of a set to go to Vince and say, “I’m not doing this.”

Jim Ross: He didn’t do it to be obstinate or to have an attitude. He did it because, in his mind’s eye, he had a very good reason based on loyalty, and there isn’t an overabundance of loyalty in pro wrestling. There never has been. The guys who were very loyal to their bookers or owners stand out, and they’re still topics of conversation. It’s a lot like big-time sports. Free agency destroyed loyalty. It’s all about the money, and any player who says it’s not about the money is really telling you it’s all about the money. Maybe free agency is good for the players and the game, I don’t know. But when I was a kid, I could tell you the starters on virtually every major league baseball team, and I’d be dumber than a third grader trying to do that now. As a result, I stopped being an MLB fan during the regular season. Piper had a strong loyalty to those who helped him. When you’re having matches at 15, trying to make enough money to buy food and keep a roof over your head in a one-room apartment, loyalty is a big deal. He was raised in a different society, in a different time, with different values, and loyalty was one of the prominent ones.

Fred: Speaking of free agency, you’ve done some work for the OKC Thunder, and you’re a Thunder fan. What’s the mood in Oklahoma? Are fans worried Kevin Durant will leave?

Jim Ross: I don’t think anybody’s saying KD is definitely going to leave, and I don’t think KD would say that at all. Oklahoma City can offer him more money than anybody else because of the collective bargaining agreement, but I think the Thunder need to make a playoff run this year to ensure he stays. I can see him being a lifer here. His mother loves it here, his family loves it here, he’s not bothered or harassed, and in the offseason he has plenty of time and money to go to any hot spot in the world. The city loves him dearly. But with Billy Donovan as the new coach, they need to make a run in a loaded Western Conference, and they can’t have what happened last year, a litany of injuries with Westbrook and Durant both out for significant lengths of time. If they stay healthy, I like their chances. The West is by far the stronger conference, and I don’t think it’s close. Whoever wins the West should win the NBA title.

Fred: Speaking of great runs, Ronda Rousey has launched herself into the stratosphere of superstardom, and her fight with Bethe Correia is said to have done well above expectations. You signed a lot of big draws in your day, like Steve Austin, The Rock and Ric Flair. Have you ever seen anything like the Ronda Rousey phenomenon?

Jim Ross: Not really. I’ve been a big fan of hers since she was fighting for Strikeforce on Showtime, called by my good buddy Mauro Ranallo. She was one of those people you couldn’t take your eyes off, whether it was her athleticism, her look, her smile or her scowl. I had her on my podcast, “The Ross Report,” early on. She’s a big wrestling fan who watched Monday Night Raw and, I’d literally say, followed my work over the years. She was an outstanding guest, and we talked about her days as a bartender. The point is that she can communicate with virtually anyone. She can identify with normal people, but she has extraordinary skills and a magnificent work ethic. I don’t think she’ll ever be content with her game. Steve Austin would tell you he never had his greatest match, and she’s a lot like that. She’s a perfectionist. She’s the biggest star in MMA without question, and I like what the UFC is doing to help build the persona of Conor McGregor. Hopefully some of their other fighters will smarten up and learn to market themselves in an organic way, not a phony way.

I made it back from Charlotte Saturday night and ran up to my neighbor’s house, the offensive line coach at Oral Roberts University, to see the last four fights on the pay-per-view. My wife and I had decided on the airplane that we love Ronda’s fights so much we were going to pay just to watch her fight. She’s got the “it” factor, and it’s only going to get better. I think WWE would be smart to work out something where she’s involved at WrestleMania in Texas in a controlled environment. You’d have Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey, two of the most proven pay-per-view sellers of all time, on the same show, and maybe a role for Austin, not wrestling but something significant. Who knows, maybe it’s The Rock and Ronda Rousey against Triple H and Stephanie. I just know that using Ronda Rousey at WrestleMania 32 would be a smart move.

Fred: The UFC looks like geniuses with how they’ve marketed Rousey and McGregor, but those two have delivered in the Octagon and outside it with their media appearances and promos. Can young wrestlers learn from how they market themselves?

Jim Ross: Of course they can, and they can learn from their predecessors. What Rousey and McGregor are doing isn’t new. It’s just new to the MMA world. A lot of MMA guys try to be tough guys to sell fights, go over the top and become disingenuous. You can’t see through Ronda Rousey or Conor McGregor. They’re allowing their natural personalities to be amplified and utilized, which is what great wrestlers did back before promos became scripted. You found real personalities with stellar verbal skills, and promoters got rich off them. If I’m a female wrestler in WWE, I want to watch every move Ronda Rousey makes, because I want to navigate my career to her level of success and market myself in film, print and everything else. Success follows success, and money follows money. Ignoring her would be a lack of marketing expertise.

Fred: Daniel Cormier defends his light heavyweight title against Alexander Gustafsson, Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit don’t talk trash but have violent fights that sell themselves, and we’re probably getting Aldo-McGregor and maybe Rousey-Tate 3. But in between, Demetrious Johnson faces John Dodson. He’s spectacular and dominant, yet arguably the least over champion in the promotion. If you had Dana White’s and Lorenzo Fertitta’s job and had to market Mighty Mouse into a pay-per-view draw, what would you do?

Jim Ross: I’d put a camera crew with Demetrious every waking hour to find the compelling things in his normal life that let him relate to the ticket-buying, pay-per-view-buying public. I’d show that he’s a family man. You play to his natural strengths and don’t try to manufacture something that isn’t there. I don’t think he’s the kind of athlete you bring into a studio and say, “Today we’re going to do your pre-fight videos.” I want to see him go to the grocery store, do his roadwork, work out, clothe his child and interact with his parents, in-laws and neighbors. He’s a little guy, so you’ve got to find something big about his personality and his real life. Then the extraordinary things he does in camp, his jumping rope, his agility, his stamina, his diet, you add to that. I’d have a camera crew and an astute producer basically living with him. Once he sees how well it works, he should be smart enough to take the ball and run with it. All these guys have a short shelf life. Cormier knows there’s a sense of urgency. A lot of people tell me Daniel can’t beat Gustafsson because of his striking and reach, and I don’t know if that’s true. I’m a DC fan and hope he wins, but I think he has to destroy the vertical base of a bigger, taller guy, take him down and beat his ass.

Fred: We’ve got some fan questions. From JGeorge: What was harder the first time: podcasting, your one-man show or commentary?

Jim Ross: Probably the one-man show. With commentary, I had Bill Watts as a great mentor, and I’d been preparing my entire life to be a sportscaster. That was my goal as a little kid, listening on my transistor radio to Jack Buck and Harry Caray. I was born in an area where I could listen to Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel, Curt Gowdy and Ray Scott, great role models. So play-by-play felt natural, and Bill Watts was so good at helping me know what to say and, more importantly, what not to say, and which descriptors to use for a babyface or a heel, all the science of broadcasting. The podcast was an extension of that. I’ve done Atlanta Falcons radio and college football radio and been a guest on hundreds of radio shows. But in front of a live audience, you don’t have a net. You’re doing humor, and sometimes they don’t laugh, and that can take you out of your game. You have to figure out which stories are money and which aren’t. So the one-man show was the hardest, and now it’s the most fun thing I do, for the same reason it was so challenging. It connects me to the fan base, which has supported me in all my projects.

I’ve got one date in New York City all year, at the Gramercy Theater, and I look forward to it for months. For a guy like me to still go play New York City is a big deal. It never gets old, like broadcasting in the Garden never got old. We picked what we thought would be a busy, wrestling-centric weekend, and WWE, to their credit, booked the NXT show against us on the Saturday night before SummerSlam. I’d have done the same thing. I’m not angry about it, but it has affected our business. It hasn’t affected my enthusiasm. I’m doing my show in Washington, D.C., at the DC Improv on Wednesday, the 19th, and we’ve sold out of VIP tickets with 45 tickets remaining, so I’ll have a sellout under my belt. We tried to move the New York show to the afternoon so fans could see our show and then go to NXT, but Live Nation, my promoter, didn’t feel comfortable moving it, and they’re paying me. Once NXT sells out, hopefully people will consider coming to the Gramercy for some laughs. That’s the challenge of touring, but it won’t lessen my effort, and the people who do come will be telling people they should have gone.

Fred: I went in January, when I first met you in person, and it was a very personable experience. You had a very special guest in Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, you took every question and didn’t shy away from anything, and you even went long. I believe your exact words to your producer on stage were, “Are we going long? Well, I don’t give a…” and you kept going for another 15 minutes.

Jim Ross: It’s invigorating that people have questions, and those questions are uncensored. If you pay to see me, and tickets for the Gramercy start at 25 bucks, so you don’t have to break the bank, you should be able to ask whatever you want on any topic, and I don’t shy away from anything. It’s reconnected me with the live audience. The Rock and I talk from time to time, and the reason he comes back to WWE isn’t for a payday. He loves the adrenaline rush and the closeness to the live audience, which is so different from filming movies with multiple takes. You can’t replicate how great it feels to be around your fans and friends who have supported you. And like Austin and Ronda, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I’ve never thought, “That was a perfect show.” It’s always a work in progress.

Fred: SummerSlam has taken place in the New York area multiple times, at the old Continental Airlines Arena and at MSG. What SummerSlam memories come to mind, like Undertaker against Austin?

Jim Ross: In general, the New York audience is always emotionally invested, and if they don’t like something, they let you know, which I like. Austin and The Undertaker had a lot of matches, but they never had the greatest chemistry. It was just a clash of styles. They liked the hell out of each other and have immense respect for each other, but styles make fights, and their styles never resonated together to the degree they did with other people. It wasn’t personal. The yin and yang didn’t quite connect, in my view. Did they have stinkers? Of course not. But the expectations for an Austin-Undertaker knock-down, drag-out were so high that I don’t know if they or anybody else could have lived up to them. This year, with SummerSlam leaving L.A., WWE is doing all it can to make it a massive summertime WrestleMania, with the NXT show selling out Barclays Center, SummerSlam selling out in minutes, Raw on Monday and autograph sessions. And I don’t want to offend any New Yorkers by saying Brooklyn isn’t New York. For us laypeople who live outside the boroughs, Brooklyn is New York. They’re treating New York City as the special place it should be, and if I were in their position, I’d have booked an NXT show on that Saturday night too. If I can’t sell another couple hundred tickets in the Big Apple, shame on me.

Fred: Last question, from Ben Oscar, and an appropriate one: J.R., how do you see your Sooners looking this football season?

Jim Ross: Hopefully we’ll exceed our eight-win total from last year, and a lot of it will hinge on two things: quarterback play, because there’s a competition for the position, and injuries, because it’s a young team with depth issues. Youth will play a role. Coach Stoops has always said that if you’re good enough to play your first year on campus, you’ll play, and he’s kept his word. We have a 31-year-old offensive coordinator from the Mike Leach school of coaching, and we also have a 245-pound running back, Samaje Perine, who is extraordinary, an Adrian Peterson clone. He set the single-game rushing record last year, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Leach philosophy interfaces with a 245-pound block of granite and muscle. TCU and Baylor are the preseason picks at the top, Texas is on the uptick with Charlie Strong, and Oklahoma State has a lot of good players back. Eight wins is not a good year at Oklahoma, and it would make the natives uneasy. Win, lose or draw, I’m a Sooner. I’m going to every home game, and I’m going to Neyland Stadium on Sept. 12, when they play Tennessee. I’m doing my “Ringside with Jim Ross” show in Knoxville on Thursday night, Sept. 10, so I’m coordinating my show with football week.

If you’re really a fan, you’ve got to be a fan of your team whether they win or lose, and it’s the same with wrestling. There’s so much information on the internet now that people are so critical of the creative and the execution, and I critique things too, but I’ve never lost my love for the product. I am very worried about the fundamentals of wrestling and bell-to-bell work being discounted, and I think that’s counterproductive to the long-term success of the business. But just like with football, when my team wins I’m very happy, and when it loses I hurt for them, but I don’t jump off the wagon. When you back a Youngstown, Ohio, boy like Bob Stoops into a corner, he’s going to come out swinging. It’s us against the world, and that philosophy has worked very well at Oklahoma.

Fred: Definitely looking forward to the season, and most importantly to “An Evening With Jim Ross” on Aug. 22 at the Gramercy Theater in New York City at 8 p.m. Eastern. Get your tickets at LiveNation.com, and follow J.R. at @JRsBBQ on Twitter and at JRsBarBQ.com. Anything else, J.R.?

Jim Ross: Tickets for the Gramercy are on sale at the box office and Ticketmaster, and there are VIP tickets remaining. Those generally sell out the fastest. With VIP you get a private one-on-one meet-and-greet, a photo-op and I’ll sign your swag, so that’s the way to go for the full experience in my view. But if you just want to come to the show, that’s cool too, 25 bucks on Ticketmaster. Hopefully we’ll see some of the folks listening at the Gramercy on Saturday night, the 22nd. Just remember, it’s the night before SummerSlam. Can’t miss it.

Fred: Mark your calendars. J.R., always a pleasure, man. Thanks so much.

Jim Ross: OK, Fred. Be well. Thank you.