Countdown To Lockdown (42 page)

Sting goes for the cover, but I kick out on one, and in a matter of moments I am back on the offensive, dishing out a little more solid if unspectacular punishment. I know my stuff is limited, but at least it looks good. Nat King Cole’s voice only reached a couple octaves, but he entertained millions by working within his limitations. There you go—kind of hard to refute that kind of evidence.

I attempt to escape once again, and this is where things very nearly
take a real-life serious turn for the worse for me. I’m once again at the second turnbuckle when Sting cuts me off—this time with a Stinger Splash to the backs of my knees. This is a new twist on a patented move, and it’s a creative cutoff spot. But as I fall, my toes become wedged into a hole in the mesh, and my body falls, leaving my ankle and knee torqued at hideous angles. I feel the strain on my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and it feels like it’s about to pop. I literally scream for help, but both Sting and referee Earl Hebner, along with all of the wrestlers backstage, think it’s just ol’ Cactus reaching into his deep bag of tricks. “Wow, how’d he do that?” Boy, are they giving me too much credit.

Finally, Sting realizes that an opponent screaming “Stinger, please help me!” just might be in big trouble, and he and Hebner simultaneously free me from this modified tree of woe.

From this point on, I am really proud of myself. Readers of
The Hardcore Diaries
might remember that I was extremely disappointed in myself following my match with Ric Flair at
SummerSlam 2006
, because I felt like I’d taken the easy way out by passing a couple of important steps in our match as soon as I got a time cue from the referee.

Three years later, I get my time cue from Earl Hebner. Ten minutes until
Lockdown
goes off the air. My knee is hurt, I’m getting tired, and I’m pressed for time. It could have been so easy to start cutting corners, to take the easy way out and start heading home early. No one would have thought less of me. Except me. I still have a lot of things I want to do—and I want to do them well. I’m sticking it out.

Sting and I go back and forth for the next few minutes. I’m doing a good job of selling that knee, and announcers Mike Tenay and Don West are picking up on it well. It’s going to be tough for me to climb. A couple of pin attempts don’t bear any fruit, and Cactus Jack is starting to worry. The poor guy is running out of options. He can barely climb, so escaping over the top is unlikely. He apparently can’t pin the Stinger, not even after a double arm DDT, which ten years earlier
had been my move of choice when vanquishing Stone Cold for my prestigious second run as WWE Champion—a reign that would last for less than a day.

I clearly reach into my front flannel pocket and pull out what appears to be some small object. What could it be? What nefarious act do I hope to accomplish? I place the object in my mouth. Could it be? Yes it is! It’s a Fisherman’s Friend menthol cough drop, a trusted partner in my battle against dry mouth. I’m tired but thankfully still in control, even as Hebner urges me to hurry things up.

So, what’s a guy to do when things seem to be slipping away on him? Looks like cheating time, brother!

I wish, really wish, that I’d had the presence of mind, the energy, and the time to really work the next move, to really manipulate as much emotion and
history
as I could out of it.

To the best of my knowledge, I have never won a single match by submission … ever. Nonetheless, I’m about to try it here, maneuvering Sting into position for my own sloppy version of a Scorpion death lock. This should have worked on so many levels. Not only was I using Sting’s own move against him, but the Scorpion also happened to be Bret Hart’s key move—known in “Hitman” circles as “the Sharpshooter.” This had been the move involved in the most infamous match of all time; the 1997 “Montreal Screwjob”—where Bret Hart had lost his world title to Shawn Michaels. Shawn applied a Sharpshooter of his own, and referee Earl Hebner instantly called for the bell—then ran for a waiting limo, having cost Hart his title on a phantom submission.

My version of the Scorpion/Sharpshooter gets an immediate wave of recognition from the Philadelphia fans. Philly, after all, has been a hotbed of hardcore wrestling fanatics for as long as I can remember, which for me would be 1990, the beginning of my Tri-State Wrestling feud with “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert.

I immediately attempt to abuse my authority by demanding an end to the match from Hebner. “Ring the bell!” I yell. “Ring the bell!”
Hebner is poised, his arm in the air, ready to call this thing at my request.

Unfortunately, we don’t do the move long enough for Tenay and West to pick up on the Hebner/Hart intangible, and the exercise ends far less fruitfully than it should have. Damn! We’re down to five minutes to go before leaving the air, so I’ve really got to get moving. Unfortunately, this time constraint and my lack of conditioning are both beginning to hurt the match just a little bit. First, I shortchanged the big submission attempt. Then, I just lacked the wind to throw the full-fledged tantrum the situation called for. Things aren’t looking too good for poor Cactus. Pins won’t work, he’s unable to climb, and now he’s been unable to sway the shifty Hebner with his feeble submission attempt and implied threat to his job. Now it’s time to change the rules, to go back on my word.

“Open the door, Earl,” I say, thankfully loud enough for the viewers to pick up on “Open the door.”

“Wait a second,” Mike Tenay says. “I thought he said you
couldn’t
win this match by stepping through a door.”

“He didn’t say you
couldn’t
, he said you
shouldn’t
,” Don West helpfully points out.

I shove Hebner to the ground and attempt to persuade Slick Johnson, the chrome-domed referee on the floor, to do my bidding for me. “Open the damn door!” No dice from the Slickster.

Time to ratchet things up a notch. Time and hope are both running low when I make a mad dash for the fence, drop-kicking Dirk the cameraman, doing my best not to damage either Dirk or his camera in the process. If you watch it back in slow-mo, you’ll see I catch mostly cage, not the actual Dirkster. The change in atmosphere at the Liacouras Center is palpable, an appreciative but drained crowd is now on its feet, anticipating a special treat from the two ring legends—three, if you count Hebner.

With that pesky cameraman out of my way, I attempt to exit the cage through the camera hole. I’m halfway out when Sting makes the
save, like a one-man cavalry riding to the rescue. He drags me back through Dirk’s camera hole and immediately hooks on the Scorpion—the much cleaner, more effective version. The crowd is now fully alive, possibly because the Scorpion is a legitimate finishing move—the difference maker in many a Sting match. Unlike me, the Stinger has won many matches during the past decade, many of them with this very move.

A city like Philadelphia is hard to excite with wrestling moves, even big ones, which are not likely to either injure a human being or end a match. They’ve seen so much wrestling over the years that they’ve gotten a little complacent; they remind me a little of myself back in the midseventies, when I’d seen
Rocky
over thirty times in the theaters. I mean, I loved Balboa, but I knew from experience not to get too emotionally invested until the middle of the fourteenth round.

Well, welcome to the middle of our fourteenth round. I throw a couple punches at the laceration over the eyebrow, attempting to block the pain of Sting’s submission hold with some pain of my own doing. At least that’s my theory. I paw for the side of the cage and attempt to climb through once again. But this time I’ve got another motive besides escape. I see my bat outside the ring, my security blanket, my Rosebud, but alas, it’s just beyond my grasp.

I have one last chance. Dirk, the drop-kicked cameraman. “Give me the bat, Dirk, give me the bat!” It’s an odd request, given my recent actions toward him, but Dirk responds favorably to my request, handing me the barbed-wire beauty just as Sting pulls me back through the would-be escape hatch.

Sting lets go of his hold, momentarily frustrated, and turns his back to me for just a moment. When he turns around, I’ve got a little surprise in hand—a little fire for the Scarecrow, if you will. Go ahead, put in the
Lockdown
DVD and read my lips. “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?” I say, waving the bat at the Stinger, toying with him.

I’ve
seen
this picture, I’ve
thought
this picture. Now I
am
this picture. I feel a little rush of energy as I see my vision playing itself
out live in Philadelphia. Man, I could have used that little energy burst a couple of minutes earlier, when I lacked the wind to throw a tantrum.

I take a few good swings with the bat and miss each time. The onus is on Sting to move or get hit—I’m not a big fan of anything that doesn’t look like it’s meant to connect. Sting retaliates with a few of those big backhands, knocking me down, and attempts to scale the cage. He makes it to the top rope before I gain my bearings and mow him down with a bat to the back of his knee, followed by a good one to the hamstring.

Two minutes to go. I’m cutting it real close here. I want to do justice to the match, but I certainly don’t want to go off the air before the match reaches a conclusion.

I charge the Stinger with the bat, but he thwarts the advance with a drop-toe hold—an old-school move I learned on my first or second day at Dominic DeNucci’s wrestling school in western Pennsylvania. The move is not really a big deal, unless the recipient falls on something besides canvas. Like ring steps, a chair, or a barbed-wire bat. Bingo! I land hard on the bat and immediately hold my fingers. It’s not a move that will yield any Honjo-like pinkie scars, but nonetheless yields a couple small cuts that will take a week or so to heal.

Sting grabs the bat and prepares to receive the easiest audience pops in the business. Sure, the bat shots to the back and gut induce some pain, but the huge reaction they create, those distinct
oohs
and
aahs
, are so far down on the risk/reward scale as to make the pain almost negligible. Gut shot, gut shot, back shot, back shot. Pop, pop, pop, pop! It doesn’t get much easier than that. I mean, it’s a move that hurts a little, but it’s way down there on the risk/reward flow chart. Lots of reward, almost no risk.

The Stinger is a real pro. Even though we are down to a minute left, he doesn’t rush the shots. He lets each one get its reaction, then he prepares for the rudimentary grinding of the bat—that ultra-easy gross-out move where jagged barbs meet forehead and a little grinding
ensues. Gross, right? Except I cut the Stinger off, connecting with a kick to the nuts that the camera unfortunately misses.

I guess I’d better hurry. There are all of forty seconds left before
Lockdown
is history. Earl Hebner is practically begging us to take this baby home. But I’ve got one more move left in me. It’s a classic “Foley running knee,” in which I don’t really connect with my knee at all—but
knee
sounds so much cooler than
flaccid inner thigh.
This knee is a little special, however. I drop the bat down at the last second, so that the bat, not the flaccid Foley thigh, makes contact with the Stinger.

Oohh! Even those heartless bastards in Philadelphia felt that one, and with good reason, as a laceration requiring sixteen stitches opens up immediately … over my right eyebrow. What the heck? You see, in all the hundreds of instances where I’d charged in with the knee, I’d never had a steel cage to stop my momentum. Look, here comes a charging Foley. See, there’s my head bouncing off a steel bar. Down goes Foley! In go sixteen big ones, sixteen bad boys, sixteen stitcheroonies.

I had hoped to pull off a move so devastating that even a physically exhausted has-been with bad knees like me could have the time needed to mount one last valiant climbing effort. Which would have been perfect if I’d just had a little time to spare. But I’m down to twenty seconds. I might need to forsake the drama of a slow climb in favor of a quick exit.

I think back to 1986—to the words spoken by an eighty-four-year-old woman when she awoke to find me sleeping in my underwear on her couch. “You’ve got to get out, Mickey, you’ve got to get out now!” I was supposed to be a guest at the house for the entire summer, but a few weeks into my stay, a heat wave struck the area, and all of that clothing seemed somehow unnecessary.

Heeding those words, I find the fortitude to attempt one last escape and am shocked at how easily I am able to climb the mesh. I had anticipated big trouble and was quite pleased to be proven wrong. Sting shakes off the effects of the running bat to the face and mounts
an escape attempt of his own, climbing the cage in the corner to the right of me. I have the head start, but the Stinger is gaining.

I’m reminded of the children’s classic
Race to the Outhouse
, by Willy Makeit, illustrations by Betty Dont, which, along with
Tiger’s Revenge
, by Claude Bawls, was probably my favorite bedtime story. Not counting the timeless Chinese fable “Spots on the Wall,” by Who Flung Poo. I guess it’s about time to end this match, and this chapter.

Look, the TNA World Heavyweight Championship (like the WWE Championship I held on three occasions) may not be a “real” title in the truest sense of the word. But holding it is an honor, and anyone who says they’re not excited about winning it is either a liar or someone who needs to find a new line of work. I won’t lie—I am absolutely thrilled about the prospect, even as I try to figure out how to land in a way that is exciting but not overly dangerous. But Sting is almost at the top of the cage. If I don’t find an exciting way to climb down, I’m going to screw this thing up. So I just decide to let go. A moment later, I’m tumbling backward awkwardly, free-falling for what
seems
like minutes, even though the actual impact occurs less than a second later.