Remember Jesse Ventura & Roddy Piper’s Buddy Cop TV Show?


As fun as watching a wrestling match can be, a show can’t succeed if there’s not more going on. This is done not just with the moves in the ring but through the storytelling of commentary, promos, and backstage interviews. In the late 80s and early 90s, there were few wrestlers who could tell a better story than WWE stars Jesse Ventura and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Although Ventura’s wrestling career was cut short, he became one of the best heel commentators of all-time. Roddy Piper had a much longer life inside the squared circle, and his talk show, Piper’s Pit, has often been copied over the years. So it was perfect that the two would join forces to star in a buddy cop TV show called Tagteam. Sadly, it never got beyond the pilot stage.

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Roddy Piper And Jesse Ventura Were Already Both Actors

‘Predator’ And ‘They Live’ Are Classics

  • Ventura and Piper were both in big Hollywood films and given some now classic lines.
  • Wrestlers like Hulk Hogan were made fun of for their lack of acting talent.
  • The Rock, John Cena, and Dave Bautista are now serious actors.

Jesse Ventura’s life outside of wrestling is just as fascinating as the one he lived in it. The guy did become the governor of Minnesota after all. He also had a pretty good acting career, most notably starring in 1987’s Predator with another future governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, where he gives the famous line, “I ain’t got time to bleed.”

Like Ventura, Piper was such a good communicator that he too became an actor, most famously starring in John Carpenter’s They Live in 1998. Just like Predator, the film is regarded as a classic all these years later, and similar to Ventura, Piper will live on in film history forever with his iconic line of, “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum.”

Until recently, with the likes of The Rock, John Cena, and Dave Bautista, wrestlers who transitioned into acting were seen as a joke (have you ever watched a Hulk Hogan movie?!), but Jesse Ventura and Roddy Piper were legit. Who wouldn’t want to put them together to star in their own show?

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‘Tagteam’ Was About Two Ex-Wrestlers Who Become Cops

  • ‘Tagteam’ was co-produced by Disney and Carolco Pictures.
  • Piper asked Ventura if he could audition and be on the show with him.
  • A lawsuit between the co-producers led to ‘Tagteam’ being put on hold.

In 2014, on Jesse Ventura’s We the People podcast, he and Roddy Piper spoke about the time the two starred in the buddy cop series Tagteam (formatted all in one word instead of two). In the show, Piper and Ventura play two wrestlers named “Tricky” Rick MacDonald and Billy “The Body” Youngblood. When the pair refuse to take a dive during a match, as requested by the wife of their promoter, they are fired and blackballed from the sport. Not knowing what to do next, they try to find a new job together, failing until they, of course, become cops.

On the podcast, Piper joked that they held the record for being the closest to almost getting a series on television. Ventura was already signed on for the show, to be distributed by Disney and Carolco Pictures, but he needed another wrestler to join him. Roddy wanted in and Jesse was thrilled, so he told him to audition. The two auditioned for the TV executives together, showing off their chemistry, which led to Tagteam being greenlit.

This was going to be a serious effort too, with 13 episodes ordered and some of the writers from Magnum P.I. being brought in. Things were going so well that Piper was even told he could live in the house they were filming in. However, no sooner did they shoot the pilot than they learned that Tagteam had been put on hold. As it turns out, Disney and Carolco Pictures were on opposite sides of an impending lawsuit and couldn’t work together. Tagteam had nothing to do with the trouble but got caught in the legal battle between the co-producers.

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A Six-Year-Old Boy Came Up With The Idea For ‘Tagteam’

Jesse Ventura Doesn’t Think He Would Have Been A Governor If ‘Tagteam’ Was Picked Up

  • ‘Tagteam’ was going to be a non-serious family show like ‘The A-Team’.
  • The son of a TV writer came up with the idea while watching wrestling.
  • If the show had lasted, Jesse Ventura’s political ambitions would have been put aside.

Tagteam only has a pilot to show for itself, which you can find on YouTube, but is it any good? Well, that depends on what you’re expecting. Jesse Ventura compared it to The A-Team, saying that it was going to be on at 7 pm, and would be a show for the whole family that didn’t take itself seriously. To prove that, “The Body” claims that the idea for Tagteam came from the six-year-old son of a TV writer. The boy was watching wrestling and told his dad he thought it would be neat if two wrestlers became cops. Just like that, the show was born. Ventura added:

“If they’d have flown with that, I believe our lives would have changed, because I, to this day, believe Tagteam would have been a huge hit
 Had Tagteam went, I probably would have never been governor.”

Piper agreed, saying that it would have opened up more opportunities not just for them but for other wrestlers. It wasn’t meant to be, but if you have an hour, give the Tagteam pilot a watch. It’s not the greatest TV you’ll ever see, but it’s a fun time with two of wrestling’s greats.



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