Countdown To Lockdown (37 page)

Months later, I sat next to her for three hours, signing autographs at the Marty Lyons Foundation Christmas party. Lindsay was just tremendous, posing for photos with every kid—a big smile for every child who’d seen her in
The Parent Trap.
And she was so innocent; sneaking in a call to A.C. on her cell phone, asking yours truly for romantic advice. It was very much a “big brother, little sister” vibe. As the years went by and she’d make big movies and bigger problems for herself, I’d feel sad thinking about the little girl with the freckles—knowing that part of her was still there inside a young woman’s body. To this day, there’s part of me that still thinks I could put a stop to her troubles with a stern talk and a hug.

It sure was a busy day, from my six hours of radio phone interviews to promote
Lockdown
, to my prematch massage with Jessica, to paying my dreaded taxes, to watching my son Hughie cheat his way to another victory in Candy Land. Yes, Hughie cheats at Candy Land. He loads the deck in his favor, picking all the double color cards and all the cool object cards—Queen Frostine, the Green Lollipop—leaving me to do what I can with the Purple Plum and the Candy Cane.

Those taxes stung a little bit. Actually,
stung
might be understating things a little.
Stung
would be like an openhanded Flair chop to
the chest. This was more like a brutal, hands-free, “look at me, I’m early-nineties Cactus Jack, too stupid to put up my hands” chair shot to the head. Yeah, that one’s going to hurt for a little while. I could have sworn I’d kept up with my quarterly payments. But I don’t think I kept up with my book and video game royalties. When my accountant did the math, well, let’s just say I was not emotionally prepared for the enormity of the numbers Uncle Sammy required of me.

I spoke with a guy today who might be able to help me with my long-anticipated charity auction to build a secondary school in rural Sierra Leone. I remember seeing all these children walking so far—many of them barefoot—just to continue their education. Many of the children need to stay with relatives along the way, and some drop out to assist their struggling families, most of whom work all day as subsistence farmers, simply to provide the means for staying alive. These farmers need their children to help in the fields, and the many hours children spend making their way to and from school every day is more than most parents can spare.

I did some rudimentary math in my head, trying to figure out how much collective time and energy could be saved if a new secondary school were built closer to some of the more-remote parts of the village. Some of these kids were walking up to fifteen kilometers a day. The results were enlightening. Four or five saved hours per child, multiplied by hundreds of children, multiplied by a few hundred days a year. That’s a lot of time and energy. Time and energy better spent helping at home or out in the fields, or finding water, or maybe, just maybe, being a kid.

Right now I’m working on meeting the promise I made to build a primary school in the community. That secondary school seems like a far-off dream. Unless, of course, I can find a solution … like selling almost all of my wrestling career memorabilia and raising one hundred thousand dollars. I’m not sure if a bunch of boxes of tights, shirts, action figures, programs, and knickknacks is going to bring in 100 Gs, but I can certainly try, right? I mean, how many old pairs of boots do
I need to remind myself that I used to be a wrestler? Besides, I have a neat trick I do every morning that reminds me of my wrestling past. It’s called getting out of bed. I’ll let you know how the auction works out.

I think the guys at TNA felt bad about dangling that beautiful blue cage in front of me for so long before cruelly pulling it away, leaving that crummy mesh one in its place. Sure, it’s similar in some respects, but it’s just not the same. Like thinking you had a hot date with Christy Canyon, the natural-double-D film icon, and opening the door to see massive mat star Chris Kanyon, of the famed Jersey Triad. Just a few letters off, but oh, what a world of difference. Unless, you know, the lights were way down … and I’d been drinking heavily … and he put on a tape of my favorite D.D.P. matches. By the way, Chris is a friend and won’t mind a sophomoric laugh at his expense.
^*

So they tried to make it up to me. “How about some barbed wire, Mick,” they said.

Hmm, barbed wire, that could work. “How much could I have?” I asked.

“How much do you need?”

So, I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice. Honestly, I was way too busy today to do the slightest bit of thinking about the match. But tomorrow should be easy. I’ve got a lunch appointment with journalist Rita Cosby in New York City, and then I’ll head about two hundred miles north to watch
Impact
with my buddy Tyler, a great kid I met a couple of years ago when
WrestleMania
came to Detroit. Tyler suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and the past few years have been real rough on him. I’m hoping that hanging out and watching our show will be good for him and his dad. I know it will be good for me.

I got a call from J.B. a few hours ago, wondering how I’d feel about a camera crew hanging out at my house the day after
Lockdown.
By “camera crew” I mean J.B. and Vince Russo. Sure, why not, even
though it means driving three hours back to Long Island instead of crashing in style at the Hyatt, ordering room service, hopefully basking in that postmatch glow of accomplishment. I used to bask in that glow quite a bit back in the day, like almost every month. These days? Not so often. Wow, I think I’d have to go back to
One Night Stand
in 2006 for my most recent basking experience, the night I proved absolutely nothing by proving Vince McMahon wrong.

I asked Colette how she’d feel about a camera being around, capturing our every move. I think there is a part of my wife that never quite got over our reality show’s pilot being rejected by A&E, the same people who green-lit
Billy the Exterminator.
So Colette started asking questions: What is the tone? What are we trying to accomplish?

“You know, Colette, it’s just J.B. with a camera. Just be yourself, only a little nicer to me than usual.”

Still, my wife insisted on possible scenarios, poking and prodding until I finally caved in.

“I’ve got it,” I said. “What if I come back home after the big match just to surprise you?”

“Yeah,” my wife said, obviously interested.

“And I find you in the arms of another man.”

“You mean like one of the wrestlers?”

With that, my son Dewey managed to pry his eyes away from the Mets game. “Yeah, Dad,” he said. “It could be Sabin and Shelley, the Machine Guns!”

“Both of them,” Colette said, laughing.

“Yeah, both of them,” Dewey confirmed. But he wasn’t laughing. He was dead serious. This seemed like a good story line to him.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m going to put the brakes on that one. An Alex Shelley faux hawk? Okay, what the heck. A birthday card with their likenesses on it? Sure, why not? But wanting both Guns to double-team his mom? Probably just a little more support than the guys really need. But hey, you gotta admire that type of enthusiasm.

April 17, 2009

Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania

1:36 p.m.

I met Tyler Zielinski in Detroit in 2007, after hearing of the unfortunate predicament he found himself in at
WrestleMania
weekend. Let me make it clear that the following story is in no way supposed to be a shot at WWE, which for over twenty years has done an amazing job at fulfilling the wishes of children battling life-threatening conditions.
After leaving WWE, I even called Sue Aitchison, the company’s director of community relations, and thanked her for all the great work WWE had allowed me to be part of during my time with the company. And you and I can blast Vince all we want for certain things (i.e., the necrophilia story line, the “Vince is dead” story line, making fun of J.R.’s colon surgery, etc., etc.), but when it comes to supporting the Make-A-Wish Foundation and groups like them, Vince and the WWE sure have made a lot of kids happy.

But, as I wrote earlier,
WrestleMania
is kind of like the Super Bowl—it’s a tough ticket. And so many kids out there want to make ’
Mania
their wish that requests have to be made months, even a year, in advance.

Well, Tyler wanted
WrestleMania
to be his wish, too, but unfortunately his request had been made too late, prompting a well-meaning member of the TV production team to try to make it happen. And it did. Kind of. Tyler and his dad did get
WrestleMania
tickets. But there was no hotel reservation—no room at the inn, so to speak. No meal vouchers, no Hall of Fame tickets, no “Bagels, Brunch, and Biceps” luncheon.

I heard about his plight from my wonderful little friend Danielle Ruffino, fifteen, who I’d met on Long Island several years ago at a fund-raiser. Danielle, who was also having her wish fulfilled at ’
Mania
, told me about a boy she’d seen in tears at the hotel, a weekend he’d hoped would be his greatest having turned into his worst.

I don’t want to say I leapt into action, but I did move pretty quickly. I’d met a few of the Detroit Tigers an hour or so earlier—they had stopped by Ford Field to say hello before making their way down the block to Comerica Park for a little batting practice. Their home opener was the next day.

I called Sean Casey, the Tigers first baseman about whom a sports-writer had once written, “There is no argument, there has never been an argument, there will never be an argument. Sean Casey is the nicest player in baseball. Ever.” Wow, that’s quite an accolade. Maybe I can one day be thought of as the Sean Casey of Wrestling, which
might be difficult as long as Bobby Eaton and the Ultimate Warrior are still around. Okay, maybe Warrior’s name doesn’t belong there.

I explained the deal to Sean Casey, and within an hour I was watching batting practice with Tyler and his dad, also named Shawn, but better known in biker circles as the Medicine Man. A bunch of Tigers came by: Casey, Pudge Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Ray Ordonez, Joel Zumaya, even manager Jim Leyland—signing baseballs, talking shop, basically making Tyler feel like he was the most important kid in the world.

Then it was off to Ford Field, where I hoped to introduce Tyler to some of his favorite wrestlers: John Cena, Batista, the Undertaker, Jimmy Wayne Yang. All right, maybe he never specifically mentioned Yang.

There was only one problem: Tyler and the Medicine Man didn’t have proper credentials. So we sat in a golf cart for ten minutes, maybe longer, waiting for the proper credentials. It was several hours before bell time, but a few thousand fans had already made their way to the building, milling about, hoping to make the big day last as long as possible. There in that parking lot, sitting in a golf cart, waving to ’
Mania
fans, I had a sudden recollection of a conversation I’d had several months earlier. I had asked Anne Gordon, of WWE talent relations, a veteran of some twenty years at Titan Towers, if I might be able to arrange a little meet-and-greet for my buddy Justin Tsimbidis, a wonderful little guy that I’d also met at the Marty Lyons Foundation Christmas Party. Justin suffers from progeria, the rare aging disease, so he looks a little different, but he is truly one of my favorite people.

“You know,” Anne said, “you’re Mick Foley. You can do anything you want around here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

“Go ahead,” I told the driver. “I’m not going to wait any longer.”

“But what about the passes?” the driver said.

“Sir, I’m Mick Foley and I can do anything I want around here. Let’s go.”

Go ahead, admit it, that line gave you goose bumps.

So we rode down that long ramp, parking the vehicle right outside the lunch room, setting up shop and catching a photo and an autograph from every Superstar and Diva who passed through. Jimmy Wayne Yang, too.

I was talking to Kane, the most politically well-informed monster wrestler to ever record commercials for Libertarian congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul. Kane and I don’t agree on everything, but we do have some cool discussions.

WWE Diva Melina came walking up and gladly posed with Tyler for a photo. “Mick, can I ask you an important question?” she said.