How OJ Simpson And Roddy Piper Almost Had A Match At WrestleMania XII

We all remember Goldust and Roddy Piper’s amazing Hollywood Backlot Brawl at WrestleMania XII. It was a great time had by all, except for the Bizarre One because Rowdy really beat him to death during some of those spots. Bruce Prichard revealed on a recent episode of his podcast, Something To Wrestle With on the MLW Radio Network that Roddy Piper was actually WWE’s second choice for Goldust because they initially wanted Razor Ramon in the spot, but he refused to do it.

Prichard also revealed Goldust was actually Roddy Piper’s second choice for an opponent as well because they had plans for a much more infamous dance partner for Rowdy at the show of shows in Anaheim.

“The original plan was for OJ Simpson to have a match at WrestleMania against The Hot Rod” Bruce said, “This is real, and I remember calling Roddy and pitching Roddy the idea, which he was for. We had preliminary talks with OJ Simpson’s people who at that point were looking for anything that had a paycheck attached to it.”

“We floated the idea out there, we did talk to OJ’s people, I talked to Piper about it. Piper was on board. We were bringing him back in to get involved and everything […] if you remember, and you go back in the early time of Piper’s reemergence, he does make comments about OJ Simpson. And he makes comments about you know, the right and wrong in America and what’s going on and that he’s here to make things right in WWF.”

“The endgame to that was going to be a one-off and have Piper beat the s— out of OJ Simpson at WrestleMania in Anaheim, California. Once that started getting out beyond the inner circle of OJ Simpson’s people and out in Hollywood the backlash was deafening. People were, ‘if you do this you’ll never have another sponsor.’ Just extremely, extremely negative.”

“So we punted and said ‘thank you but no thank you OJ, we’re not interested’ […] We thought the endgame of OJ getting the s— kicked out of him would satisfy some people and as those words come out of my mouth you realize how ridiculous that is today. But, you always have to try something on, even if it sounds ridiculous but it was like, ‘godd— Piper’s gonna beat the s— out of him in the fourth match on the card. Everyone will be happy then.’ And then you sit back and you put yourself in the Goldman’s position or Nicole Brown-Simpson’s family’s position and say, ‘f— that, short of being dead or in prison nothing’s gonna satisfy anybody. […] It was distasteful then, it was distasteful now. But we did a lot of distasteful things sometimes.”

So, there you have it. If you ever hated the way the Hollywood Backlot Brawl ended with the OJ Simpson Bronco chase parody and Goldust in lingerie, just think to yourself that it could have been much worse.