Have a Nice Day (68 page)

As I mentioned earlier, the best gimmicks in wrestling are actually extensions of a real-life personality. I was feeling a lot like a battered and beaten man that time had left behind and was confused because of it. I decided to portray myself as a battered and beaten man that time had left behind and was confused because of it. I knew for a fact that many of our fans were not actually “cool.” I gambled that they would get into a character that likewise was not. I had already begun wearing a torn-up collared shirt and tie to the ring, and now I had my reason. The shirt and tie would represent my last remaining connection to the corporate world that had shunned me. In a sense, the outfit was my connection to Vince McMahon, who is the company’s hottest heel, and was the perfect guy to play off of.

I went into Summerslam in Madison Square Garden as a co-holder of the tag team belts with Kane. We were the bad guys going up against the now beloved New Age Outlaws, but I was starting to get little lines and sight gags in, and the fans were slowly but surely starting to catch on. The Kane-Mankind team was falling apart as well. It had been revealed through an intricate story line that Kane and the Undertaker were actually in cahoots. With the memory of King of the Ring still fresh in my mind, the cahoots thing hadn’t sat too well with me, and Kane and I had started a feud of our own, even though we held the tag belts. As a result, Kane never showed up for the match, leaving me to valiantly take on the Outlaws, until Kane popped out of the Dumpster and “smashed” my skull with a sledgehammer. Two weeks later, I showed up with a bruised face, a heavily wrapped hand, and an announcement that “I’d been lucky for two reasons. One, I was able to block the blow with my hand, and two, I really didn’t look all that good to begin with.”

September 13, 1998, was a fateful day in my career. I did something on that day that a few years (or even one year earlier) I would have thought impossible. I politely turned down a chance to return full-time as Cactus Jack, and pleaded with Vince Russo to leave me as Mankind. “Why?” Russo wanted to know. “I thought we were doing you a favor.”

“I know, I know, and I appreciate it,” I answered back. This was a big moment, and I knew it, so I didn’t want to regret anything later. “It’s just that I think I can do everything you have planned for Cactus as Mankind, and I really feel that Mankind is just getting rolling.”

Russo laughed. “Well, Vince will be happy,” he said. “He’s always liked Mankind best; he just thought you’d be happier as Cactus.”

“You know, up until a week ago, I would have agreed,” I responded. “But I’m starting to get a little soft spot in my heart for Mankind. By the way, I had an idea.”

“What is it?” Russo wanted to know.

“Well, you know how all the babyfaces hate Vince?” Russo nodded his head in agreement. “Well, what if I were the one guy who liked Vince, and it drove him crazy? I think it would be great.”

Russo smiled a genuine smile and told me, “I’ll run it by Vince. I think he’ll like it.”

As it turned out, Vince did indeed like it, and thus began our strange, pseudo father-son relationship that some felt was meant to mock Brett Hart, but in reality was just meant to be fun. At the TV tapings in San Jose, the short-lived team of Mankind, The Rock, and Ken Shamrock was wreaking havoc on Vince’s corporation until Vince pulled the gullible Mankind aside to talk some sense into him. “Mick, I don’t want your new friends to get hurt, and I know you don’t either,” Vince gently told me with his arm around my shoulder. “So maybe the best thing you can do is take Shamrock and The Rock and just convince them to leave. Okay, Mick. Now, go ahead. Get your friends and just leave.”

I thought over Vince’s proposition, but saw one small problem with it. “Okay, Vince,” I replied. “But I need a ride, and I don’t drive.”

Vince started to laugh. “I’m sorry, Mick, you caught me offguard with that.” He smiled as the cameras stopped rolling.

“Sorry, Vince,” I apologized “It just came out.”

Vince disregarded my apology. “No, no, that’s great. As a matter of fact, don’t tell me what you’re going to say anymore. I’ll just react to it.”

That set the tone for the entire Mankind-McMahon sequence of events, with Mankind and Vince ad-libbing their way through their unique love/hate relationship. Mankind loved Vince and Vince hated Mankind.

At the next set of tapings, which would turn out to be my biggest merchandising coup, Vince Russo came running up to me in the dressing room of the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. “Vince just hurt his ankle. They’re putting him on a stretcher now.” He was practically hyperventilating. “He wants you to be there, and he doesn’t want to know what you are going to do. Surprise him.” Hell, I didn’t even know what to do, as I ran as fast as my concrete-battered body would carry me. Along the way, I picked up a few props.

When I got to Vince, he was just about to be loaded into the ambulance. His gang of stooges were all around him. Amid the concern and the corporate brown-nosing, a hairy arm came into view, cradling a 7-Eleven Big Gulp. I pushed the massive cup toward Vince’s face, and his expression was priceless. The Gulp disappeared, but then reappeared a moment later, as I diligently tried to get some frosty refreshment into Mr. McMahon’s gullet. “Would you get him out of here!” McMahon screamed, and momentarily Mankind was gone. A moment later, that same hairy arm was back, this time holding small pieces of candy. As Vince was being loaded into the ambulance, the arm kept trying to slip the candies into Vince’s pocket. Again his face was classic. Vince has a face that somehow lets him convey multiple emotions at once. In this case, it was disgust, pain, and even a little bit of pity. It seemed that I had found a formula that worked. I would kill him with kindness.

The next day in East Lansing, Michigan, Russo informed me that I would go visit Vince in the hospital. He wanted me to “cheer” him up, but again, I was told that Vince didn’t want to know the specifics. Within an hour, I had lined up a veritable smorgasbord of hokey gifts and entertainment. I was loaded to the hilt with “Get Well Soon” balloons, an inflated rubber glove, a cheesy heart-shaped box of chocolates, and a clown named Yurple with floppy purple shoes who specialized in balloon animals. Even with all the top-flight entertainment, I sensed that something was missing. I needed just one more special trick to really brighten Vince’s day. In a decision that would both help and haunt me, I grabbed Al Snow.

“Al, I’ve got a problem,” I said. “I’m going to visit Vince in the hospital, and I’ve got a bunch of great gimmicks I’m bringing with me, but I feel like I need maybe one more. What’s something really stupid that I can bring with me that Vince will hate?” Al thought it over inside that pea-size brain of his and quickly replied, “How about a sock puppet?”

Happy now, Al? Are you? Happy, happy, happy? Well, I certainly hope so. Man, it hurts to admit it, but yes, Al Snow did think of Mr. Socko. Well, I guess we’re even now, aren’t we Al, seeing as how I invented your whole “head” gimmick? The only difference is, without Mr. Socko, I’d still be a fairly popular wrestler-without my “head” idea, Al would be doing my yardwork. “Would you like me to finish planting those seeds, Mr. Foley?” “No, no, that’s all right Al, but I have some special seed of my own that I’ll be planting in a minute.” Ho, ho, ho. Oh, no, no, no. Oh boy, oh that’s good. (Fake laugh works every time.)

The scenario at the hospital was simple-Mr. McMahon was at an undisclosed hospital and was terrified that Stone Cold Steve Austin was going to find him. Although only the recipient of a bruised ankle bone, Vince was nonetheless bedridden with a heart monitor and an oxygen tube hooked up to him. He was being the ultimate cranky patient.

“Mr. McMahon, you’ve got a visitor,” a cheery nurse informed the miserable millionaire.

Immediately, Vince’s heart rate monitor started beeping faster. “Him,” yelled Vince. “It’s him. Why did you let him in here?”

The nurse remained rosy as she informed him, “He was awful big, and he was real insistent on seeing you, and he threatened to beat up the orderlies if we didn’t let him in.”

The door opened, and Vince prepared himself for the worst. Instead, an inflated surgical glove peeked its way inside the door with a big happy face on it. “Turn that frown upside down,” I said in my best goofy voice before bursting through the door. Vince’s expressive face now showed both anger and relief as I approached him bearing gifts. I handed him the balloons, which were met with disinterest, and then presented him with the delicious chocolate morsels as I kidded my old, grouchy boss, “Come on, I know Vinnie’s got a sweet tooth.”

Vince actually opened the heart-shaped box and reacted with revulsion when he saw the contents. “These chocolates are half eaten,” he mumbled in disbelief.

“I know, I know, I got a little bored on the way over here,” I replied. “But wait till you see what I’ve got for you next. A little female entertainment, and I think you know what I mean. Vince, she does a trick with a dog that you won’t believe.” Vince’s face actually cracked a tiny little smile in anticipation of the hot act he was about to witness, when I announced my special guest. “Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to … Yurple.” Then I followed up the intro with the same weak verbal rendition of the Johnny Carson theme that my wife hates so much. “Rin din di di di di, di, diddly, di dah.”

With that, Yurple entered the room and with her clown feet, purple hair, whiteface, and balloon animals, was threatening to steal the show. This woman was a professional, and years of children’s birthday parties had honed her stage presence to the point that she was on the verge of stealing all my Monday night glory. I had heard a rumor that Burt Ward used to steal Adam West’s glory on the old Batman series in much the same way. “Damnit,” I thought, as if I were George Clooney on ER, “I’m losing him!”

Quickly, while Yurple was in the midst of a complex canine creation, I saw that the cameraman’s back was to me, and I made my move. In a flash I pulled out Mr. Socko, got down on my belly, and combat-crawled underneath the bed like the valiant Marine in The Sands of Iwo Jima. “What the hell was that?” Vince shouted as he felt the rustling beneath him. “What, what the-“

All of a sudden, my hand and wrist were in the air, with a dirty sweat sock over them. The face was hand drawn and was either beautiful in its simplicity or simply ugly, depending on how you look at it. The camera clearly showed my face, but that didn’t stop me from beginning the worst high-pitched ventriloquist act in the history of sports entertainment. “Hi, I’m Mr. Socko, and I’ve come to save the day. I hear you have a boo-boo, and Mr. Socko is going to kiss it and make it feel better.”

“No, no,” Vince interjected, “don’t kiss the boo-boo!” This was great. I had a world-famous millionaire genius for a boss, and thus far I had both hit him so hard with a chair that his dental work had flown off and gotten him to say, “No, no, don’t kiss the boo-boo” on national television.

Unfortunately for Vince, I overextended my reach and ended up lying on him, and as a result, instead of kissing the boo-boo, I had inadvertently hurt the boo-boo. Mr. McMahon had seen enough. “Please,” he implored us, “please just take your things and go.” When we were a little slow in leaving, he tried a more direct approach instead. “Dammit! Leave! Leave!” he bellowed, and sent us on our way amid a flurry of balloons and chocolate wrappers. After we left, the camera zoomed in on the beleaguered and outraged McMahon as he sarcastically repeated the two magic words, “Mr. Socko.”

The next day, many of the wrestlers were ribbing me about Mr. Socko, but and I really did not think too much about it. I thought it had been funny, but no any funnier than some of the other things we’d been doing. Actually, Austin was Mr. Socko’s biggest fan. He had seen the hospital shenanigans on a television monitor while preparing for a later bedside attack in which he shocked Vince with a cardiac fibrillator, and “violated” him with an enema tube. He thought it was great. I wasn’t so willing to accept his adulation because I truly believed he was joking around with me. But throughout the day, he kept mentioning Mr. Socko, so I finally asked him if he was serious. “Jack, I’m not bullshitting you,” he replied with typical Austin subtlety. “That was one of the funniest damn things I’ve ever seen.”

Later, Russo came running over. It seems that the poor guy is always running. It’s just my theory, but I don’t think that Russo was ever the same after the Sacham-Ward Melville bleacher clearing basketball brawl back in 1979. “Did you bring Mr. Socko,” he gasped, with an urgency that was reminiscent of Mike Brady searching for the missing blueprints during the King’s Island episode.

“Yeah,” I calmly answered, “but why?”

“Cactus, I’m not kidding ya,” he began in his out-of-breath Brooklynese/Long Island-ese, “there must be at least a hundred Mr. Socko signs!”

Sure enough, Mr. Sockomania was running wild. Not only were there signs hailing the new cotton hero, but when I got ready to square off with Mark Henry, a loud “Socko, Socko” chant echoed in the arena. Henry (this was before he was known as “Sexual Chocolate”) began working on my left ankle, as the “Socko” chant grew louder. Out of nowhere, I dazed the world’s strongest man and started to untie my shoe to “reduce the swelling” as the fifty announcers speculated. But no, it was not medical attention, but my trusty sidekick that I was seeking. As Henry stumbled to his feet, I put the filthy sock on my right hand. Mr. Socko seemed almost to be smiling. Henry turned around and I jammed the offensive athletic apparel into his mouth. “Ding, ding, ding.” We had a winner. It was the birth of the “Socko claw,” but more importantly, the birth of a star. “Mr. F’ing Socko.”

September and October were great months for me. I had gotten past my creative slump, and my fears of wrestling passing me by no longer seemed valid. I had been in a great three-way cage match with Shamrock and The Rock in September, and had followed it up with a pretty good October Pay-Per-View with Shamrock. I was personally proud of it because it involved more wrestling and working on an individual body part than I had done in a long time. I had also continued to wreak havoc on Mr. McMahon’s mind with my caring ways, including a story line where I kept Vince company while a heavily armed and recently unemployed Austin stalked him.