During his appearance on WINCLY, Mr. T shot down the long-accepted notion that he and Rowdy Piper had real heat. Here’s what he had to say:
He was the ultimate professional. Later on, people threw out we had a beef or whatnot, but no, we were trying to promote something else so I had to come out and say, ‘Yeah, I don’t like Piper. I’m gonna get him,’ and this and that. Something was gonna happen but it didn’t happen. We were setting the stage because we were trying to sell tickets. I learned from Muhammad Ali. You got to promote it. You got to sell it, and that’s the whole thing. You don’t want to give people too much. You want to give them enough.
You want to make them excited, make them believe, ‘Hey, I want to see that.’ He was a professional. He was good. He was a scholar. He wrote stuff down and prepared. You’ll notice that when he got into the camera to say stuff, he had it together. Some wrestlers, they can’t really sell it that good. Well, he could sell it. That’s what Ali was. He was a promoter. He could sell it. He was an entertainer, and that’s what Piper was. He was an entertainer, and he was tough. He knew the business. He knew his toughness.
I was just honored to be with the guy, I told other wrestlers, ‘Hey man, I’m coming to add to it. I’m not coming to take away. If I can’t help you, I don’t want to be a part of it.’ And the guys later say that I was sincere, saw that I was for real after WrestleMania. Then there was WrestleMania II. They knew I wasn’t joking, that I wasn’t trying to make fun of wrestling. Then we got respect for each other.
You can listen HERE.
Credit: WINCLY.