The Hardcore Diaries (11 page)

A few hours later, I step off a tour bus onto the red carpet at the premiere of Kane’s movie,
See No Evil.
I’m immediately approached by a WWE television producer who tells me she’s been told to get an interview with me and Melina as soon as she gets to the theater. It’s really going to happen! We will start telling the story right away.

What a day it’s been. I’ve battled with Vince, hit a home run, gotten a possible
SummerSlam
title match, ruined seven years of goodwill with the fans, and willingly agreed to be publicly humiliated. And now I get to go to the movies with Melina. Not a bad day. Not a bad day at all.

You
Can
Go Home Again

I was in New York City in June of 2003, on
Tietam Brown
promotional duties, making my way to Penn Station, when a WWE fan told me that Triple H and Kevin Nash were scheduled to face off in a Hell in a Cell match at the
Badd Blood
Pay-Per-View on June 15, 2003. I caught the train into Huntington, something of a halfway point for me, then drove the rest of the way home. Those long rush-hour commutes are kind of overwhelming for me, and always leave me with a renewed respect for the sacrifices working men and women make every single day. Give me 400 miles of open roadway any day. A few good CDs, and I’m gone. But four hours or more of rush-hour traffic or train rides with the asses of strangers pressed against mine? Hopefully not, unless, you know, the stranger is pretty good looking.

Once I was behind the wheel, my mind began wandering as I followed a steady parade of cars eastward, hoping to get ahold of some renewed energy by the time I got home, so my kids could see Superdad and not some 300-pound slug pulling up the drive. And it just kind of hit me. Hell in a Cell. Mick Foley. Special referee. It was a natural. After all, Hell in a Cell was the match that ninety-nine percent of our fans knew me for. Who better to maintain order than the guy who’d gotten the ever-living crap kicked out of him in, on, and around the structure? A single call to J.R. got the ball rolling, and within twenty-four hours, it was a done deal.

About nine days later, I was in my Miami hotel room, having second, third, and fourth thoughts, realizing I was about to reenter a world I had long presumed was part of my past. One o’clock rolled around, the scheduled arrival time. I lay in bed, watching the clock, wondering about the ramifications of not showing up. Everything had seemed so easy on the phone. Vince had even called me, telling me how much he was looking forward to my return. WWE had even been kind enough to put my upcoming book signings on their Web site, and had offered to mention the book on their
Raw
and
SmackDown!
shows. To no-show my first WWE appearance in eighteen months would be a big mistake.

I pulled into the parking lot around three, then walked to the double doors leading to the back of the arena, realizing on some level that the doors were symbolic of the world of wrestling I’d left behind. Once they opened, life was going to be different. I took a deep breath and swung a door open, stepping inside.

“Mick, Mick!” A woman’s voice—there she was, Stacy Keibler, running toward me, the world’s most beautiful welcoming committee member. As she jumped into my arms, I realized that coming back was not as difficult as I thought it might be. Then I saw Test, all six foot six of him, glowering behind her, his front teeth looming large, impossibly so. “Hey, Mick, good to see you,” he said.

“Hey, it’s good to see you too, Test,” I said, realizing how odd those words sounded when they weren’t told as a lie.

It
was
good to see him. It was good to see everybody. Gerald Briscoe was right there. Pat Patterson, Triple H, even the Texas Rattlesnake himself—Stone Cold Steve Austin. It was good to see Vince, too. He wrapped me up in a big hug, and we spoke for quite a while. I told him that I felt like I needed to go off on my own for a while, but that there wasn’t any reason we couldn’t do more in the future, including the publication of
Tales from Wrescal Lane
, which had been on the literary disabled list since 2000.

We managed to do a really good job of making a guest referee seem as important as possible during a single two-hour episode. Triple H had warned me against getting involved, and didn’t take well to my decision to follow through on my intention to do so. He caught me with a few blows and sent me hard into the steel steps, my momentum hurtling my substantial bulk through the air, over the steps. He then walked out, assuming of course that his work in Miami was through.

Not so fast, Triple H. As he walked up the ramp, I crawled into the ring and pounded the mat three times, as if making a count. At first the crowd didn’t get it, but as with so many situations in wrestling, it’s all in the sell. I held three fingers aloft as Triple H looked in amazement, before heading back down to finish the job—this time with his trademark move, the pedigree. Surely no one would get up from this, unless, of course, he was in line for a really big push. But I didn’t have to get up—not all the way, at least. I just had to muster the fortitude to raise my hand in the air and come down to the mat with it three times.

“One.” The crowd got it now. “Two.” They were yelling it out. “Three.” There was no question at all that the hardcore legend was back.

Triple H and Nash had a very good match, possibly Nash’s best performance until his portrayal of the ruthless prison guard who has his anabolic steroids replaced with estrogen in the
Longest Yard
remake. I guess I was pretty good, too. The second honeymoon was in full swing. I loved WWE, and they loved me.

I was even asked back to
Raw,
simply as a way for WWE to hold a hardcore tribute in my honor at Madison Square Garden, the arena that held so many special memories for me. It was where I’d seen Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka leap from the top of the steel cage, onto a prone Don Muraco, back in October of 1983. It was where I’d seen Sergeant Slaughter battle the Iron Sheik in the classic Boot Camp match in ’84. It was where I’d seen six-foot-eight-inch, 300-pound monster Sid Vicious parade around the ring, his arms flapping like a chicken, in a match with Vader, prompting Vince to say in disgust, “I never want to see that again.”

Being honored at Madison Square Garden was a career highlight.

The night turned out to be a memorable one indeed, with Stone Cold presenting me with the original hardcore belt, in all its duct-taped, broken-metal glory, in an in-ring ceremony attended by several of my hardcore contemporaries, such as the Dudley Boys, RVD, and Al Snow. I wish the late Crash Holly had been present for it, as I understand he took the oversight very personally and it made him consider me in an unfavorable light.

I even saw my Knopf editor, Victoria Wilson, in the front row, looking about as out of place as a human being possibly can. But she was happy for me, and proud to see how well thought of I was in my environment.

What an environment it was, too. Following a really well-produced video, set to the Staind song “Right Here,” twenty thousand people chanted my name. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that many. Maybe, due to the extravagant
Raw
set, it was only fifteen thousand—still an official sellout. And sure, some of those in attendance weren’t participating in the chant. But still, there had to have been two, three hundred people mumbling my name out of the corner of their mouths.

In a farewell address worthy of Lou Gehrig, I grabbed the mike, hoping to find an appropriate philosopher, poet, or esteemed scribe whom I could quote. I went with Frosty the Snowman, saying, “So I’ll say good-bye, but don’t you cry, I’ll be back again someday.” That someday would turn out to be six months later, in December, for the start of the biggest angle of my wrestling career—an angle that actually started about a half hour after the in-ring ceremony.

But first, after accepting a hug from a very emotional Stephanie McMahon, I asked a brief question of the boss’s daughter, the answer to which hung around in the dark, sensitive recesses of my mind, waiting to become the catalyst for my WWE heel turn almost three years later.

“Steph, how come Terry Funk wasn’t here?”

“Uh, Mick, Terry wanted too much money to come in.”

Next, it was time to leave the wrestling world a slightly better place. I may not have a whole lot of exceptional in-ring talent, but I do consider myself among the best when it comes to advancing people’s careers. There is always a lot of talk within the wrestling business about what constitutes a “great worker.” Are impressive in-ring skills enough to make someone a “great worker” even if those in-ring skills don’t translate into interest, box office, or buy rates? Is a “great worker” someone who draws money, regardless of how his stuff actually looks? Or is he someone who continually helps others out, by either honing their opponents’ skills (much as Fit Finlay has done with Bobby Lashley) or increasing their stature in the company? In my opinion, it’s a combination of all three, and I’ve always taken pride in excelling at the third. I’ll let fans and other wrestlers debate where I stand on the first two.

Randy Orton was the guy I was hoping to help out on this particular night. I knew Randy’s dad, “Cowboy” Bob Orton, aka Bob Orton Jr., aka Bob “Ace” Orton, aka “Boxing” Bob Orton, from my days on the independent scene and from tag-teaming with him in Herb Abram’s short-lived UWF back in 1990. I believe Colette and I even conceived Dewey on a wrestling tour of Aruba, on which Bob and I tagged.

I’d seen Randy work enough to know his potential, and thought, “Hey, why not let him throw me down a flight of stairs?” I mean, how bad could it be? I had scoffed at stunt coordinator Ellis Edwards’s suggestion that I wear special pads for the wimpy one-flight journey, informing him that I was Mick Foley, and I didn’t need pads. Man, I wish I’d had pads. Because not only did Randy split my head open like a ripe melon with a shot from the indestructible hardcore title display case, but the wimpy one-flight fall caused a deep shoulder-blade bruise that kept me in intense pain for weeks.

To make matters worse, the wound was in the back of my head, and although it required five stitches to close, not a single drop of blood was seen on camera, rendering it useless.

Still, I was on a tremendous high when I hopped into my Impala, cranking up tunes of questionable quality as I journeyed back home. I don’t question the quality of my tunes—other people do. After all, there’s got to be some reason why nobody wants to ride with me. Here, I’ll list my current collection of CDs that I’m rocking out to on this eight-day West Coast run. You be the judge.

Loretta Lynn:
Van Lear Rose.
Alan Jackson:
Precious Memories.
Julie Miller:
Broken Things.
Bruce Springsteen:
The Rising.
Bruce Springsteen:
Born to Run.
Dolly Parton:
Those Were the Days.
Drive-By Truckers:
A Blessing or a Curse.
Jethro Tull:
Songs from the Wood.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:
Anthology.
Ray Davies:
Other People’s Lives.
Slaid Cleaves:
Broke Down.
The Cowboy Junkies:
The Trinity Session.
Waylon Jennings:
Lonesome, On’ry and Mean.
Patty Loveless:
Mountain Soul.
Neil Young:
Harvest Moon.
Steve Earle and the Dukes:
The Hard Way.
Gillian Welch:
Soul Journey.
The Cult:
Sonic Temple.
The Dixie Chicks:
Home.
John Mellencamp:
Human Wheels.

What do you think? You should probably just stick to reading the book and watching
Raw,
and run the other way if I ever offer you a ride.

By the time I arrived home, about an hour and a half later, the tremendous high had subsided, seemingly in direct correlation to the pain in my shoulder, which was cringe-inducing. Usually pains like these don’t truly surface until morning; I did not interpret this early onset of agony to be a good sign.

I lay down in bed, eager to tell Colette about the big night. Unfortunately listening to tales of my big night was not a high priority on Colette’s late-night agenda. The garbage, however, was. “Mick, could you please take out the garbage—the kids forgot to do it.”

So I rolled out of bed, clad in red flannel PJs, and took out the garbage.

Upon returning to bed, my wife had another request. The guinea pigs’ cage, it seemed, was starting to smell. Was it possible, she asked, for me to clean up the mess? So I went upstairs to their room, where they don’t actually have a cage, but one of those plastic kid’s pools that allows them some running room. By the smell of things, it had last been cleaned during the Clinton administration. Dutifully, I shoveled the pig poop, using a dustpan and garbage can, while remaining painfully aware of how big a problem this shoulder was going to pose.

My night, however, wasn’t quite done. Not according to Colette. “Mick,” she said. “Could you check and see if the dog has been fed?”

It was more than even a hardcore legend could take. Dejectedly, I turned to Colette. “You know, two hours ago, twenty thousand people were chanting my name.”