https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taZNKhNQNMY
It could have been one of the most memorable feuds in wrestling history, with two of the best talkers in the business in 1982. But it was not to be.
Jerry Lawler, still riding high from the national publicity of his feud with Andy Kaufman earlier that year, made a few appearances on WTBS’s World Championship Wrestling in fall 1982, shortly after the show’s color commentator, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, turned babyface when he saved co-host Gordon Solie from an irate Magnificent Muraco.
Only weeks earlier, Lawler had come off well on the “Late Night with David Letterman Show," which have inspired booker Ole Anderson to bring in Lawler, who hadn’t appeared much in the Peach State since Jerry Jarrett booked the territory during the Atlanta wrestling war of 1974.
Although in the prime of his babyface run in Memphis in 1982, Lawler had returned to Atlanta as a heel, explaining that fans in his hometown had tired of hearing Piper run his mouth on the SuperStation and had asked the King to go to Atlanta to silence the Rowdy One. At one point, Lawler also refers to his would-be foe as “Roddy the Piper,” 26 years before Santino Marella uttered the same line.
If Piper’s incredible heated reaction to Lawler’s comments is any indication, nationwide audiences would have been treated to months of wildly entertaining back-and-forth promos between the two masters.
However, it was not to be—a week before their first schedule match at the Omni, Piper and Rich reportedly were so intoxicated they were hours late to a show in Chattanooga, which wasn't the first strike on two men who were reputed to rowdiest partiers in the biz—a dubious honor. Depending on who you believe Piper was either fired or quit a fews days before his first bout with Lawler, calling in a favor to Ric Flair to get into JCP.