Countdown To Lockdown (20 page)

It was a good time, but unfortunately, my flight time from Houston to New Orleans was so tight that I had to bail right at three, leaving me no chance to say hello to the rest of the boys in attendance — although I did manage to get a note to former WWE Diva Lita, or Amy, as I should probably refer to her these days.

A quick Southwest flight to New Orleans, a rented Dodge Charger, and a seventy-minute drive later, and I am good to go in Thibodaux, Louisiana, home of Frogman LeBlanc. It’s a good crowd, maybe three thousand, and enthusiastic in their support from opening bell to the 1, 2, 3 of the main event. I even spotted a fan, too young to know better, cheering on Jay Lethal. Look, I like Jay, I think he’s a really good worker, and I find him entertaining as hell. But I’ve got to pick on someone in these books. And I’ve decided that for this particular book, Jay is my man. Sure, I don’t do an awful lot at these house shows, but I did cut a little promo before the Beer Money tag team match, foreshadowing what might be to come with my ominous line, “Just give me a reason.”

So a little later, in the evening’s main event, they got involved, thereby “giving me a reason” to get involved as well, which I did, both helping attain a victory for the forces of good (Jeff Jarrett and A. J. Styles) and setting up the main event for Saturday night — a New Orleans street fight pitting the duo of Jeff Jarrett and myself against that dastardly Beer Money — James Storm and Robert Roode.

This will be my first house show match in a long time, at least three years. I did one for promoter Alex Shane in Coventry, England, sometime in 2005 or 2006, as well as a memorial show to honor my good friend Brian Hildebrand in 2005, and I kind of participated in an impromptu tag team, partnering with Jerry “the King” Lawler against Al Snow and Jonathan Coachman — quite possibly the worst teaming of two individuals this side of the duo of Ben Doon and Phil McCracken (go ahead, say it slowly: Ben Doon and Phil McCracken).

But that’s pretty much it for my house show history over the past ten years. Why New Orleans, especially in front of what looked to be a weak crowd, maybe a thousand people in a big arena — the same one I battled Vader in at
Halloween Havoc
, October 1993? Really, it’s just to shake off some of that ring rust, get me used to being inside the
ring so I don’t feel so absolutely naked at
Lockdown
, a mere two weeks away. Let’s face it, nobody really wants to see me naked out there.

Yet I’ve just cleared standby and am now aboard Delta Flight 4924, getting ready for takeoff, wedged into a seat — 13D — that was never meant for an ass like mine.

A fun family wrestling story.

Look, I know I retired in 2000. I lost a Hell in a Cell to Triple H in Hartford, Connecticut, and even got a royal send-off the next night on
Raw
, courtesy of a tribute video set to Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You,” which had to have cost Vince a decent dollar. It even made Stephanie McMahon cry backstage. In my mind, it was the perfect ending to a career that had exceeded my wildest expectations. A tear in my eye, a little blood on the face, one last wave good-bye as I rode off into the sunset — having wrestled my last match ever at the age of thirty-four.

Until six weeks later, that is, when I wrestled again, for the last time ever — my only
WrestleMania
main event.

Until four years after that, in my big comeback match at
WrestleMania XX
, teaming with the Rock in what, ironically, was likely his last wrestling match ever.

Okay, okay, I think you get the point. And since joining TNA in September 2008, I’ve known that I will wrestle a handful of matches a year. But in January 2008, after completing the six Pay-Per-View
matches over a three-year period that my contract with WWE called for, I really had no idea whether I’d wrestle again. So, in a sense, even though I would never have the audacity to announce another “official” retirement match, any match I wrestled at that time could conceivably be considered my last match ever. For about six months, following my June 2007
Vengeance
Pay-Per View, I at least had the peace of mind of knowing that should I never wrestle again, my last match ever was in a Pay-Per-View main event with four other current or former world champions. Foolishly, in January 2008, I put that peace of mind at risk with the uttering of a few well-intentioned words.

One day earlier, I’d been part of
Raw
in Philadelphia — I think as a judge on “Raw Idol.” I’m not really sure, and to tell you the truth, it doesn’t really matter. Every once in a while I’d get a call from Brian Gewirtz,
Raw
’s lead writer, asking if I wanted to be part of the show. Usually I would, provided it was a decent idea — which it usually was. I always thought Brian was an exceptionally smart guy, full of good ideas. Plus, he probably deserved some kind of an award, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize, for being able to coexist with Vince for so many years.

Look, that whole repackaging thing was a bitter pill to swallow — one that took awhile to fully digest. You know, maybe there’s still just a tiny fragment of that pill still sitting in my gut, a little sliver of bitterness that might take awhile — a year or two, maybe twenty, to fully, completely digest. But for the most part, I accepted that my days as a big deal with WWE were done.

That night, in January 2008, on my way out of the building in Philly, I happened to see Mr. McMahon and mentioned that I was planning on bringing my kids to the
SmackDown
tapings at Nassau Coliseum the following night. This would be the first time that all four Foley kids would be attending a show together. Dewey and Noelle practically grew up at WWE shows; movie buffs may recall them bawling their eyes out during my 1999 “I Quit” match with the
Rock. Mickey and Hughie had been to a handful of shows several months earlier. But as far as simultaneous show situations go, this would be a first.

The following afternoon, I received a call from WWE. “Vince has something for you on the show,” I was told. What did he have? They didn’t really know.

So I powered up the Chevy Venture and headed out to the coliseum — a forty-minute ride — to find out what Vince might have for me.

“How about a match?” Vince said when I arrived.

“A match? But Vince, I’m in horrible shape,” I said, just in case Vince couldn’t grasp the obvious.

“Don’t worry, Mick,” he said. “This one will be easy.”

And so, it came to pass that I wrestled announcer Jonathan Coach-man (the Coach) with a leprechaun (Hornswoggle) serving as the guest referee. True to Vince’s word, it had been an easy match, just some harmless shenanigans to entertain my hometown fans. Still, as I traveled home along the Northern State Parkway, I couldn’t stop thinking that the whole idea had been a huge mistake. The Coach? A leprechaun as guest referee? Yeah, I’d say the whole thing qualified as a huge mistake. I started thinking about some other comeback match I might have left — in me — one last great gasp to erase that Coach-man stain on my legacy.

I looked at my children in the rearview mirror. Dewey and Noelle in the third row, listening to their iPods. Like most teenagers they found the thought of traveling forty minutes without some kind of personal entertainment device to be unthinkable. Mickey and Hughie were sound asleep in the second row — their childhood innocence shattered forever by the image of their dad in a black warm-up suit doing battle with the Coach. Forget about those eleven chair shots at the ’99
Rumble
my older kids witnessed — this was real childhood trauma.

Then, I thought about the way the kids had looked when I made
my grand entrance for the big match. I quickly spotted them in the second row as I approached the ring; a huge “Did you hear that, Pop,” Road Warriors–type reaction accompanying me for this rare
SmackDown
appearance. At the time, I was almost exclusively a
Raw
guy, having made just one appearance, in December 2005, on
SmackDown
since leaving full-time wrestling in 2000. Dewey was stoic but proud, holding little Hughie on his lap, who seemed amazed and slightly confused by the fact that fifteen thousand people would care about his dad at all, let alone make loud, appreciative noises at the very sight of him. Noelle was beaming, a big smile on her beautiful face — a far cry (literally) from the little girl with the tears streaming down her face in
Beyond the Mat.
It’s funny, because in a way that film has kind of made time stand still. My wife and I (except for the gray in my beard) look largely the same. But for many of the wrestlers and fans, Noelle Foley will always be the five-year-old girl in the little red dress, with the curious choice in favorite words.

And then there was Mickey. How exactly did Mickey greet his beloved dad? With a big thumbs-down, and a hearty “Boo, boo, you’re a stinky wrestler.”

I broke into a big smile and had to fight to suppress a laugh — a fight I ultimately lost. That image of all my children together at the match for the first time was one I could live with gladly for the rest of my life. If I never wrestled again, this match would be a perfect way to go out. The Coach? A leprechaun? My own son booing me? Absolutely perfect.

The beginning of the end of my WWE days.

I sometimes wonder how this whole thing would have played out had I just gone home. I was running late, Colette was out of town, my mom was watching the kids and didn’t particularly like playing babysitter after midnight. Still, even as I saw my parking garage approach a couple blocks from the Tribeca Cinemas, I couldn’t shake the feeling that just bailing out, avoiding the movie premiere’s after-party, would seem somehow … rude, and a little offensive to the McMahons, whose daughter-in-law Marissa had produced the movie.

I had been called about
Anamorph
a couple of years earlier, by Vince himself, who thought I would be perfect in the lead heel role in a movie with a smart, cool script. So I read the script, did indeed find it smart and cool, but didn’t see myself in the roll of a heel who can both slip unnoticed into crowds and participate in a chase scene on top of a speeding train. I did mention that I thought there were a few smaller roles I might be effective in. So a few weeks later, I was asked to play a pawnshop owner, no auditioning necessary, just a simple day’s work. Sure, why not, I said, then looked over the script
again, just to remember my scene. Wow, I’d be doing the scene with Willem Dafoe.

So I showed up around 10:00 a.m., did about twenty takes with one of the best actors in the business, and was on my way home before rush hour. Dafoe was cool, no big-star attitude, and he did a mean Marlon Brando when the talk turned to movies after lunch. I offered up my opinion that
Last Tango in Paris
was the worst movie I’d ever seen, was angry with myself for wasting two hours of my life to watch it, and asked Dafoe if Brando’s star had been so big that he was allowed to just make up dialogue as he went along.

“You mean the pig scene,” Dafoe said, before breaking into the exact dialogue (in pitch-perfect Brando) I’d been thinking of:

“And I want the pig to vomit in your face and I want you to swallow the vomit. You gonna do that for me? … And then you have to go behind and I want you to smell the dying farts of the pig. You gonna do all that for me?”

I’d been a little nervous about meeting Dafoe, simply because I didn’t want to show up, say hello, and ask him about playing the Green Goblin in
Spider-Man
, especially given the wealth of diverse work he’d put forth on the screen over the course of his career.