My favorite wrestler when I was a kid was a man by the name of Rowdy Roddy Piper. I knew him first as a bad guy, and the Wrestling Gods and the Hulkamania machine tried to make me dislike him. For some reason, though, I fought past it. I was the only kid in the third grade rooting for the Rowdy Scot in his boxing match against Mr. T at Wrestlemania II. He retired in a match against "Adorable" Adrian Adonais at Wrestlemania III, but has since made more comebacks that Michael Jordan.

Here's why I'm called Big Stupid Tommy.

A little bit of wintry weather hit the Nashville area on Wednesday night. My friendly neighborhood weatherman at channel 4 said that roads would be getting treacherous after dark, due to quickly falling temperatures and the high amount of rain we'd had over the course of the day.

Wednesday, all you wrasslin' fans know, is the night NWA-TNA holds its shows at the Shed, at the Nashville Fairgrounds. My intrepid roommate and I have hit nearly every show up in Nashville. It's a nice quality of technical wrestling and minimal talking--mostly--it's a trend that's reversed itself in recent weeks.

Upon consultation with Bill, we decided to stay in and watch the wrasslin sumbitch show on the Television.

And we've settled in. Eating pizza. Being guys.

The show comes on.

Whose music starts upon the show's opening?

Rowdy always had bagpipes. In WCW and part of his time in the WWF, he used Scotland the Brave as his theme music. The sound on the NWA telecast is not great. It may have been "Scotland the Brave" they used, but it sounded just like generic bagpipes. See, later in his WWF days, they had some copyrighted Piper music that WWF musicians wrote themselves. It was similar to "Scotland the Brave" but different enough to be unique. NWATNA may have opted for something different....but I digress.

Roddy Piper comes to the ring. A ring, mind you, that we would have been sitting 5 feet away from had Bill and I gone out like good wrestling fans.

Dammit!!!!!!!! I missed being 5 feet away from Rowdy Roddy Piper.

If I had been there, he would have seen me, recognized my devotion and loyalty, and he would have made me one of his knights against evil. He'd have given me his coat, his shirt and his kilt.

But noooooo. I'm a wussy and am afeard of the ice. Which didn't really hit that hard, by the way.

Big Stupid Tommy. Big Stupid Dumb Ignorant Ill-advised Tommy.

He spoke for about 15 minutes. He railed against Vince Russo (who's fast become the best heel the promotion's had in its six months). He was pretty good. Not great Piper. But good Piper.

And I missed him.

There's a moral here, Boys and Girls.

If there's wrasslin' nearby, go to it. Do NOT miss it.

I missed Rowdy Roddy Piper. I cannot believe it.

Stupid Big Stupid Tommy.