When “Rowdy” Roddy Piper died Friday at age 61, his massive legacy wasn’t limited to the world of professional wrestling.

For those raised watching him maraud through rings and all-but-maul microphones in the promotion of his matches, the kilt-wearing, bagpipes-playing Piper (given name: Roderick George Toombs) was a cultural icon, an internationally recognized anti-hero who predated the likes of fellow wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Deadwood’s Al Swearengen and Breaking Bad’s Walter White as the rogue you couldn’t help but root for.

In character, the Saskatoon-born, Winnipeg-raised Piper was anything but your stereotypically polite-and-quiet Canadian. He was a bottomless pit of bravado. He had an internal GPS system telling him exactly where the audience’s buttons were and he relished pushing them.

Because of his talents as a master of psychology, he was the main villain (opposite legendary good guys Hulk Hogan and Mr. T) in the very first WrestleMania pay-per-view event.

Indeed, he was the mania in WrestleMania: where Hogan was bleach-blond cornball caricature imploring kids to say their prayers and take their vitamins, Piper wasn’t an overstuffed weightlifter spouting lame clichés. Instead, he embodied an incandescent defiance of authority and a relentless drive to win. He didn’t give a tinker’s damn what kids did with their prayers or vitamins. He never promised anything other than a vicious fight and he always delivered.

But Piper was more than just the bulging eyes, furious fists and seething ambition that pulled him out of Canadian youth hostels and pushed him to the top of his profession. He also had a whip-smart sense of humour that set him apart from wrestling heels — so much so that when he eventually became a good guy in the ring, he never changed anything about his approach.

He’d still jab his thumb in the eye of an opponent and bash them across the back with a chair; he’d still trash-talk both his foes and the cities in which they’d battle. But Piper’s cult of personality was the tractor beam that pulled in millions of fans from all walks of life — including Hollywood director John Carpenter, who cast him as the lead in his 1988 cult classic movie They Live — and endeared him to them.

With due respect to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, They Live (which co-starred Keith David and Meg Foster) remains the best movie ever to star a pro wrestler. Politically subversive and eerily prescient in regard to our modern-day surveillance society of mindless consumerism, They Live played to Piper’s strengths as a no-nonsense reluctant tough guy. It featured his immortal line, “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass . . . and I’m all out of bubble gum,” and cast him as the film’s conscience.

He wasn’t Marlon Brando at his zenith, but in a genre movie requiring a star with a clear moral compass, Piper was perfect.

The success of They Live was an astonishing achievement for Piper, who went from being one of the most loathed characters in pop culture to a silver screen good guy in less than a half-decade. His WrestleMania foil, Hogan — the biggest star in the history of the business — couldn’t do that.

Other than his brief cameo in Rocky III, Hogan’s movie exploits were an abject failure. But that’s because Hogan never was cool. He was promoted and saleable, sure, but cool? No, that was Piper’s territory. He was selfish, wicked and underhanded, the rebel with the black leather jacket and bad attitude. And his audience adored him for it.

In more than a decade covering Toronto’s big-league sports, I’ve still never heard a building as loud as the one I heard in September 1987, when Piper had just made the jump from wrestling villain to good guy and was partnering with Hulk Hogan for a tag team match at Maple Leaf Gardens.

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He had the entire arena in the palm of his hand and when the two stars finally acknowledged each other at the end of the bout, the building practically exploded with joy. But that wasn’t because Hogan made Piper better. It was the reverse. Without Piper, there was no Hogan.

On that night, it was clear the people of Toronto loved the badness of Roddy Piper. His passing ensures the world won’t be near as much fun without it.

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