Roddy Piper and naked Bob Orton get rowdy in Fresno

An eventful evening of heel high jinks, also starring Don Muraco.

With a nickname like Rowdy, Roddy Piper wasn’t one to quietly retire to his hotel room after a night of theatrical violence. Instead of sipping Perrier with colleagues and discussing the works of Tolkien, Hot Rod and his crew preferred a more lively evening, which was evident to the citizens and law enforcement of Fresno, CA, in 1986.

Newspapers.com

In the mid-1980s, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Bob Orton, and Don Muraco formed a formidable triumvirate in WWE, dominating the ring with their combined talent and charisma. On Feb. 12, following a non-televised event at the Selland Arena, the rogue musketeers went out to dinner and drinks after a tough night at work.

After the restaurant closed, wrestling’s triad of terror looked to keep the evening going and found themselves at the Old Fresno Hofbrau just before 2 a.m. However, the group was denied service after the bartender informed them they were closing soon. Piper and Orton, according to what the bartender told The Fresno Bee, began mouthing off.

What followed was wrestling’s answer to The Hangover.

In a 2014 interview, Piper said a construction worker somehow got knocked off a chair as Piper tried to order a beer. Nash Lara, the patron who was knocked from the chair, told the Fresno paper that he was simply minding his own business when he suddenly got lifted from his seat and slammed to the ground. However, the bartender said he saw Piper and Lara exchange words before the rowdy Scotsman pulled Lara off the stool and hurled him to the ground.

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As the three amigos left the establishment, witnesses noted their license plate number and vehicle make before alerting authorities. Police later discovered their rental car abandoned on some railroad tracks near Chinatown, with a broken piece of a crossing arm nearby.

Piper mentioned it was raining and that Muraco, who was driving, lost control of the car while turning a corner. They attempted to move it off the tracks until they heard a train whistle and decided it best to remove themselves from the situation. In 2018, Bob Orton told The Hannibal TV that they caught a cab and returned to their hotel, though Piper said he didn’t know how Orton got there before he and Muraco.

Like any weary traveler, Orton sought to rest after an eventful evening and early morning. But as announcer Jim Ross would say, business was about to pick up.

According to The Fresno Bee, police discovered where the wrestling superstars were staying and greeted Piper and Muraco in the hotel’s lobby. Piper, who refused to answer questions, was arrested without incident on suspicion of public intoxication. Muraco was questioned but denied knowing anything that happened at the bar and was free to go.

As for Orton, he said he was upstairs, asleep in his hotel room when he received a call from the hotel staff notifying him of what was happening. Thinking it was a prank, Orton, who said he usually sleeps in the nude, stepped out of his room, buck-naked, to see what was happening when the door shut behind him. Having locked himself out, Orton began shouting from the hotel’s interior balcony for someone to let him in.

Once more, details of what happened next become murky, but the result was the same: Orton got tased by police.

The way the WWE Hall of Famer explained it, management, with the authorities, arrived to open Orton’s room. Upon his return, police entered as he was putting on his pants. Orton objected to their presence in his quarters when an officer, without explanation, tased him.

“This cop shot me three times with the Taser,” said Orton. “I pulled out the Tasers and threw ‘em back at him and said, ‘I’m gonna throw you over the rail.’”

Orton said the police, whom he described as nice, escorted the allegedly overzealous officer out of his room. Orton added that he wasn’t arrested.

But The Fresno Bee told a different story.

With Piper already in custody, a bareass Orton stood on the fifth-floor balcony at the Holiday Inn Centre Plaza, allegedly challenging officers to a fight and shouting, “It’s going to take more cops than you to take me!”

The paper, according to police, said Orton was tased but that he pulled the probes out and broke them in half before getting shot with another round of Tasers, this time to the chest. Orton, then 35, was arrested on suspicion of being drunk in public, the same as Piper. He was brought to a local hospital and treated for the effects of the stun gun.

Initially, no charges were filed, and the three were free to go. However, Lara later decided to press charges against Piper. That December, Piper was to return to Fresno to face misdemeanor battery charges in court while scheduled to meet “Macho Man” Randy Savage in the ring later that night. But after failing to appear in court, a warrant for his arrest was issued. Officers were prepared to take him into custody at the arena, but Piper also failed to show for his match with Savage.

The Hot Rod would avoid Fresno like the plague for almost four years until his warrant was mysteriously resolved. In January 1990, Piper returned to the scene of the crime, so to speak, defeating “Ravishing” Rick Rude in a steel cage match. Lara, who tried suing Piper and WWE, had his case dismissed in 1993 “for failure to bring the matter to trial within five years.”

Still, the events of that wild night in Fresno in 1986 remain legendary in wrestling history. But Orton, in succinctly capturing his role in the story, may have said it best.

“It’s just shit that happens.”

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If you enjoyed this story, explore these additions in the Real Heel Heat series, which now includes three retroactively added entries (marked with an asterisk):

Ken Patera’s epic 24-hour odyssey from car wreck to riot

The gruesome night Jake Roberts and his cobra attacked Randy Savage

‘You people (?) mean nothing to me!’

The night Ole Anderson got stabbed in the chest

The time Randy Savage punched a 9-year-old (allegedly)*

The 1945 Columbia riot revealed*

Dastardly Deeds and Threats of Deportation: The real heel story of Hans Schmidt*