It is simply impossible to have a conversation with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and fit everything into an 18-inch news hole.

That’s why it’s great that this blog exists.

My story on “Rowdy” Roddy Piper will come out in a few hours in the Poughkeepsie Journal and on . In it, you will read about Piper’s match with A.J. Petruzzi in Poughkeepsie, which he won with one hand tied behind his back, his thoughts on wrestling in Poughkeepsie, his future in the business, missing WrestleMania and Ric Flair’s retirement ceremony, and wrestling in the Royal Rumble at Madison Square Garden.

I will post the article when it published early Thursday morning.For the first time, I did an interview with a wrestler without going through World Wrestling Entertainment.

• First, Piper had one of the best introductory comments ever when he answered the phone in his hotel.

“I’m a box of fluffy ducks, man. How are you?”

• On beating cancer…

“I always like telling the truth. The wrestling fans saved my life. It was Cyber Sunday. Ric Flair was one half of the tag team champions and the fans voted for me. We were in Glasgow, Scotland, ironically enough, and my hips wouldn’t work. Every wrestler’s an amateur chiropractor. Guys are trying to get my hips in and they were like, “Hey Rod, something’s going on.”

The wrestlers went on to Manchester, England and Piper ended up going back home to Portland, Oregon.

“I had a bone chip from a disc [in my back] sawing the nerves to my hips. The doctor told me if you had turned one way or the other, you’d be in a wheelchair.”

Subsequently, they noticed a swollen lymph node, did a biopsy on it and discovered that Piper had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“Sure enough, I had cancer,” Piper said.

After four weeks and five days a week of treatment, Piper was back at work, performing in the movie “Super Sweet 16″ for MTV.

“I’ve been rolling ever since,” Piper said. “I beat the dog out of it.”

• On taping TV at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie in the 1980s.

“You know, in Poughkeepsie that’s where we would do three weeks of TV in one day. This is back in the day, as the saying goes, where there was no catered food. No nothing. We’d be shooting promos at 11 a.m. and the show would start at 5 p.m. By that time, Earthquake and Tugboat have used the facilities, you’d have an odd painting job on the wall and we’d start the three shows. And we’d have Piper’s Pit with three guys who didn’t want anything to do with me.”

• Piper told some fun stories of Poughkeepsie and the roster that WWF had back then.

“One day, Iron Sheik had his rug out to pray on and Adrian Adonis, God bless him, I love him, stepped on the fringe of it. Adrian didn’t even know why he was fighting. We had so many guys who were so schooled and so savvy.”

“It’s like we had 49 different Michael Jordans, who could all dunk from the free-throw line, or whatever it’s called. I’m not a basketball player. Anybody could have handled the job.”

He mentioned that in a way, all the wrestlers who jumped to McMahon’s WWF in the 1980s were contacted in the same way. He broke into this gruff voice, presumably Vince McMahon Sr.’s

“Roddy Piper. We’d like you to come in and you’re the chosen one.”“Paul Orndorff. We’d like you to come in and you’re the chosen one.”“Mr. Fuji. We’d like you to come in and you’re the chosen one.”“Magnificent Muraco. We’d like you to come in and you’re the chosen one.”

“Little did we all know, some bald guy [Hulk Hogan] would come in and get the spot. It was an unbelievable time in my sport. We had the most rebellious guys on any turf.”

• Piper spoke briefly to me about the David Shults/John Stossel incident that occurred on ABC’s 20/20 in 1985. Stossel asked Shults if wrestling was fake and after much needling, Shults slapped Stossel upside the head.

“I was 10 feet away,” Piper said. “Stossel gave one of his cronies the mic. The guy got to Shults and was trying to get around to the inevitable question. Stossel stopped him. We’re in the building. We’re in MSG. There’s Shults. And POW! Does that look fake?”

“One of the things Stossel said after that, was that he heard trains in his ears,” Piper continued. “We’re there at MSG with 240 pound to 400 pound, or in the case of Andre, 550 pound guys and you want to ask a stupid-ass question?”

“It’s always the guy with the least amount of anything that likes to pick the fight. I’m not a big fan of Shults and I wouldn’t have done what he did, but I loved it. And I was literally 10 feet away.”

• On the Land of 1,000 Dances video

“It wasn’t the time to piss anybody on the stage off. That was just another day in Poughkeepsie.”

• He spoke of his movie career. His IMDB profile lists 37 different movies on his resumé.

His latest film, which he finished working on this week, is entitled “Clear Lake” was shot in Winnipeg and surrounding locations. His synopsis of the film is a boy who fell through a frozen lake in a mild winter and his dad goes to save him, but while saving him, the boy’s mother dies. Piper’s character eventually becomes a paraplegic. The boy stays home to take care of his dad and forsakes his own interests.

“It’s so deep,” Piper said. “It shows me in a completely different light. I’m so proud of it. I go to places I cannot normally go.”

• Piper mentioned that his 18-year-old son, Colt Toombs, is training in mixed martial arts under Matt Lindland and Team Quest.

• He mentioned a project he is working on with Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four and X-Men and his business partner, Gil Champion. He did not specify what the project was.

• Piper said he attended a reunion of his 1988 movie “They Live.” He said he had not seen co-star Keith David since the movie.

“He’s such a wonderful man and a great actor,” Piper said. “That movie keeps growing and growing.”

• On the fraternity of wrestling…

“I went from having nothing to having 100 fathers,” Piper said of his wrestling family. “Rough fathers. It was tough love. It made me live or die. Walking in with a kilt and bagpipes made it tough too.”

• On WrestleMania III…

His little wrestling-ring shaped cart at WrestleMania III malfunctioned before his hair vs. hair match against Adrian Adonis. Vince McMahon kept trying to stop him from running the long distance from the entrance to the ring at Pontiac Silverdome.

“I said, ‘If I can’t run, how am I supposed to wrestle?’ Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura were doing commentary and they could not hear each other. That was the first time that I looked at the fans and recognized the gratitude. The way I conducted myself, I concentrated on what was going on in the ring.”

“Those people erupted,” Piper said. “I couldn’t help but realize how lucky I was.”

• On MMA integrating with pro wrestling…

“I’ve heard of a survey. WWE, you can’t knock them because they listen to the fans. The fans are saying, we like the old school better. As opposed to the great athletes they have, it’s like every once in a while, when guys tee off, they’re like — try to fool us.”

“Hitting Jimmy [Snuka] with a coconut. The fans were like ‘oh, that wasn’t supposed to happen.’ And it wasn’t. Those surprises are what made our industry.”

Piper mentioned that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has invited him to appear on television for HDNet Fights, an MMA group he promotes.

I brought up his work under Judo Gene Lebell when he worked in California.

“Judo Gene Lebell only gave out 22 black belts. He trained Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. He’s my dad. That’s why I am so absent-minded, because I was choked out so many times by him. After spending time with him, you don’t fear anyone. Except him, that is.”

• On whether the industry has changed itself for the better after the passings of Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero. Piper wrote extensively of what he termed “The Sickness” — something that makes wrestlers live to excess to tragic levels in his autobiography.

“I think that the WWE — they looked at it as a joke. Sometimes, when you hear the truth, humor is a great weapon. I’ve heard that I was fired for doing that HBO piece of work*

* Piper appeared on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, interviewed by Armen Keteyian, expressing his displeasure over the darker side of the business, namely the deaths of his friends.

“All of a sudden, I was a representative. I believe, there was nobody else that would take a stand. Because I did, they have done everything they have. They have masseures for the boys now, they take care of these boys. Double meals.”

“I think they work them four days on and three days off. It’s still a rugged lifestyle. I once had to fight 90 days in a row in 90 different places. You’re not human after that. I believe that WWE has realized what’s going on. It was like the Wild West. But now they’ve become very corporate and structured. They don’t want the reputation.”