Countdown To Lockdown (39 page)

“Shut your mouth!” Cactus punches Mick above the eye, right around the eyebrow. It’s not a particularly good punch, even though it’s a real one. In truth, if not for the sound of fist meeting bone, I don’t think it would have seemed real at all. Then I threw a flurry of them, each of them real, each of them eyebrow shots, each of them designed to “hardway” the eye.

The rapid punches are a tactical mistake. They come in such quick succession that not one of them has the impact it should. Each one should have been followed by a several-second pause, a way to let the viewers digest what was being done on-screen. Instead, that great entrée was just wolfed down, like a Big Mac at a stoplight.

Up until the moment I threw that first punch, I was sure I was going to go under the eye, create a little swelling, irrefutable evidence in the whole fake-versus-real debate. No way to claim the punches weren’t real if you actually see the swelling—which, in a best-case scenario, will actually get more pronounced as the promo goes along.

In the end, I let my weakness/fondness for the hardway get to me. Oddly, when it came to
The Hardcore Diaries
my description of a hardway was the only thing Vince objected to. He didn’t even care about things that would have seemed far more objectionable from his personal standpoint. But he really didn’t want me talking about hardways. “But Vince,” I’d said, “books from our other guys talk about cutting up razor blades and using them to get blood in matches. If anything, this adds a little legitimacy.”

But Vince was not to be swayed. He wasn’t comfortable with the hardway exposé. So we compromised—I called it a hardway but never defined it. So, for the sake of deliberately disobeying Vince McMahon, I will define
hardway
in this book as “the act of deliberately splitting open an eyebrow with hard bare-knuckle punches.” I believe it’s called a hardway because the “easy way” would presumably be going the razor blade route. Hey, it’s kind of tough to deny the existence of the blade in the business when so many guys talk about it so openly, and when Randy “the Ram” practically gave an arts-and-crafts how-to demonstration in
The Wrestler.

Hardways aren’t done too much anymore. They’ve kind of gone the way of eight-track tapes. Blading is kind of like the phonograph album: almost obsolete, but still played from time to time and talked about reverently by its old-school practitioners.

Anyway, one of those punches must have found its mark, thank
goodness, for as Sting’s music plays, signaling the obligatory interruption of a wrestling promo (every wrestling promo of the past decade, maybe more, has been interrupted this way—the Latins referred to it as “promus interruptus”), I am deeply relieved to feel the tiniest rivulet of blood charting a solitary course down the cheek.

Sting steps into the ring and walks a small circle around me. I make the decision to stay seated and follow Sting with my eyes, as he begins his final pitch for
Lockdown.

“Mick, you are turning a twenty-year friendship into an out-of-control three-ring circus. I can’t believe what I just saw, but you know the scary thing, Mick?
I
believe that
you
believe what you just did.”

I love that line, and I love the way Sting is pacing behind me, allowing the camera to catch both our mannerisms simultaneously. Believe me, I want that hard-earned hardway blood on camera as much as possible.

The Stinger sits down next to me, taking advantage of that extra director’s chair. “Have you lost your mind, Mick?” he asks, as I smile intently. I look a little deranged, which is a good thing. A close-up reveals that the blood has already dried; the little gash over my right eyebrow is like a tiny maple tree that has simply given all the sap it can.

“Is this an act, Mick? No, I really believe that you’re convinced by what you just did, Mick!” Some idiot keeps yelling out “Sting, you think you’re the Joker,” but we have to both ignore it, remembering we’re playing to a television audience of a couple million in the United States alone, not just the live crowd.

“But I don’t want you to think I’m going to be intimidated, Mick,” the Stinger continues. “Because steel cage, ladders, tables, chairs, barbed wire, bats … lions and tigers and bears, oh my … it doesn’t really matter to me, Mick.” I love, just love that lines from a 1939 children’s movie are being used to promote pro-wrestling matches over seventy years after its filming. But it’s time for me to cut the Stinger off, state my final case, tempt our viewing audience to get excited
enough to make a thirty-dollar investment during the worst economic crisis of our generation.

“That’s … the Sting … I want to see,” I/Cactus says, getting up from the chair, throwing it to the canvas. Cactus starts to pace before stopping just behind Sting to make his point. I’m feeling good about this promo, watching that ball sail into the horizon, pretty sure it’s going to clear that metaphorical fence. “That’s the Sting I want to see, because you were never … intimidated by me. Even so many years ago, when everyone else had the good sense to run in fear, when J.R. would say things like ‘Ron Santo has a family and Cactus Jack doesn’t care.’ [Actually, I was looking for the name of Larry Santo, the longtime preliminary wrestler with the worst tights in the business, not
Ron
Santo, the great Cubs third baseman from the seventies.] He was right, Sting, I didn’t care about human life, but you were never afraid. But there was one time, all those years ago—among all the little Stingers—you know it, Sting, in Philadelphia. The first remnants of a Cactus Jack chant.”

Damn! I know that
remnants
was wrong the moment I said it. A remnant isn’t associated with beginnings but endings, like a carpet remnant, a leftover. As I wrote earlier, it’s no wonder politicians are so scripted these days. A mistake like the one I just made would be cable news fodder for a week if the president had said it. Fortunately, this promo is going so well that it doesn’t even matter. This promo is going to clear the wall—the only question is how deep this thing is going to go.

“You may not have been scared, Sting, but it threw you off your game. You may not have been intimidated, but you sure as hell were concerned. So let me ask you a little question, Stinger. What’s it going to be like for you when you’re trapped inside a steel cage—locked inside—and those chants aren’t faint remnants but seven or eight thousand fans, all of them,
all
of them, Stinger, chanting my name! Cactus Jack, Cactus Jack, Cactus Jack.”

The Main Event Mafia’s music plays, interrupting Sting’s
interruption, and I have a moment to think of how many verbal mistakes I’ve made in the last couple of sentences. I had said
remnants
again, even though I knew it was wrong, just because it was already out there, and for the life of me, I can’t think of a more appropriate correct word. Maybe I should have packed a mini-thesaurus with me. Also, I’d said
seven or eight thousand
, which is likely to be an exaggeration, instead of saying
thousands
, which nobody would dispute. Plus, if this were anyplace other than the Impact Zone, home of the jaded, a “Cactus Jack” chant would have been a cinch. But it’s tough to induce an interactive baby in that place, no matter how much figurative Pitocin you crank up.

Sting turns to greet his MEM cohorts, but they never do make it. Instead, I blast the Stinger from behind, knocking him down, before proceeding to rain down a few quality forearms to his head as he struggles to get up. I’m very pleased with what I’m seeing. The forearms look good. That tired old man decided not to show up at the Impact Zone, after all.

“Don’t you get it, Sting?” I yell into the microphone. “There’s no Main Event Mafia coming to help!” I blast him with a couple of decent boots to the head. Decent, not great. Technically, they’re not
boots
to the head, either, but Otomix athletic shoes. But they will be boots in Philadelphia, leopard-skin boots.

“I can hit anybody’s music I want, Sting, because I—I—I—”I drop to my knees to deliver a cool-looking forearm and conclude my sentence while I’m down there. “I run this place!” I’ve also managed to get a little verbal jab in at Jeff Jarrett for future reference.

“Go ahead, play me a little … Curry Man!” The recently departed Curry’s music plays, complete with entrance, video, and lighting. Nice. Very, very nice! I drop a nice elbow, personally painful from the Stinger’s perspective, and yell “Spicy!” I’m really in the zone now, enjoying this thing.

“Give me some Shark Boy,” I say, and the familiar refrain of “Give me a shell yeah” rocks the Zone (the Impact Zone, not the mental
zone I just made reference to). What the hell, why not one last sneaker to the head of the fallen Stinger?
Bam
, there it is.

“Last but not least, cue up a little Sting,” I say. As the lights flash and the music plays, I step outside the ring, reach under the ring apron, and produce my weapon of choice—the barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat. Without the benefit of that special cage to work with, I’m going to need this bad boy in Philly. Really really need it.

Man, Sting is still trying to get up. I remember being a little frustrated at the time, wondering if the Stinger had morphed into Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees behind that paint. But as I watch it, I’m thankful for his resilience, for it not only keeps him from looking like a dead fish, but it allows me to get in some fairly formidable stuff while working the microphone. It looks very effective.

“Don’t you get it, Sting?” I reiterate, looking down on him, the bat in close proximity to his face. “I run this place and I can do any damn thing I
want.
And at
Lockdown
, I
want
to tear you apart.”

I raise the bat in the air and watch that metaphoric ball land way, way up in the upper deck. I mean I really crushed this promo. If I hadn’t made a couple of those little mistakes—
remnants
,
seven or eight thousand
, stumbled on
banana split
a little—it might have gone clean out of the stadium.

The other wrestlers actually cheered me when I came through the curtain. Actually cheered a promo. Some of them even stood. I’m talking about seasoned stars like Booker. A standing O for a promo. It happens all the time for matches. But promos? Not that I can recall.

Sting told me it was the best promo he’d ever heard. High praise indeed, given some of the guys he’s been out there with and how long he’s been around.

I might stink up Philadelphia, but for tonight at least, I’m the King of Orlando. Or at least the backstage area of a sound studio that is part of a huge amusement park complex that is located in Orlando. Yes, if that couple-hundred-square-foot area was a country, then for one night, at least, I’d be its ruler.

April 18, 2009

Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania

1:15 a.m.

Just one day. Hard to believe. Just one day until
Lockdown
, and I have no idea what to expect—from the fans, from the match, from Sting, from myself. I’m fairly sure that I can pull off a pretty good match, although for a match of this magnitude I’d feel more comfortable without those words
fairly
and
pretty.
Let’s try it again. I’m sure I can
pull off a good match. Yes, that’s better. Much more confident. Except it’s not true. I’m not
sure.
I’m
fairly
sure. About pulling off a
pretty
good match.

But all that driving has been good for me. Driving and listening. I think those tunes I picked are really making a difference, allowing me to
see
the new picture,
think
it, eventually
be
it. And you know what picture I saw more clearly than any other? Margaret Hamilton, the
Wizard of Oz
’s Wicked Witch of the West, taunting Dorothy and her pals with the flaming broom. “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?” the witch cackles, moments before meeting her own doom at the hands of Dorothy and that cursed bucket of water.

An aversion to water? Seems kind of silly.
Soap
and water? That I can understand.

Maybe all this seems kind of pointless—loading up the minivan when a new rental would have been paid for, picking out so many road-tested tunes—unless you substitute Cactus Jack for the witch and a barbed-wire bat for the broom.

That’s
the picture I kept
seeing.
Kept
thinking.
The picture I hope to
be
tomorrow night at
Lockdown.
I’ve even got a way to introduce the bat into the match that is likely to be well received. Go ahead and read my lips when you watch this match back and look for “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?”