The Hardcore Diaries (12 page)

May 11, 2006

Dear Hardcore Diary,

A few hours ago, I was the emcee of a fund-raiser for a young wrestler, John Grill, who had been paralyzed from the chest down during his very first pro wrestling match, which took place around six weeks ago. The move that caused the damage was apparently a German suplex, my least favorite maneuver in the business. Most people reading this book will be familiar with the move, as it is frequently used in today’s wrestling game, from the smallest of independents right up to the WWE. Although it’s commonplace, it has always struck me as dangerous, as the margin for error seems too damn narrow. Even though a single German suplex doesn’t seem to result in many injuries, I firmly believe that the preponderance of serious neck injuries in WWE is caused at least in part by the constant repetition of the move.

I was always known as a guy who took a lot of punishment. Maybe the punishment I took was unprecedented, leaving a dangerous legacy for others to attempt to follow. But for the most part, I was in control of my own destiny. I
took
big bumps in and out of the ring, I wasn’t
given
them. There’s a huge difference.
Taking
bumps means that I assumed personal responsibility for the outcome of a move. Being
given
one means that safety is someone else’s responsibility.

I always knew there would be a price to pay for the style I chose. I pay that price every day. But at least I’m still functional. Slow, but functional.

Chair shots are another matter. I took too many, especially in 1998 and ’99, when my body was really wearing down, but I nonetheless wanted to present a physical product. That was pretty much when it became open season for the headshots, which I took full force, without blocking, as if it was some macho rite of passage instead of sports entertainment.

Some fans ask me if I resent current WWE Superstars who dare to have the common sense to actually put their hands up to block heavy metal objects traveling at high speeds, aiming for their heads. No, I don’t. I actually wish I’d done a little more of it myself. This book might actually be grammatically correct. Maybe I could even learn how to use a computer.

For those fans out there looking to get into WWE, some other type of pro wrestling, or even looking to mess around in their backyard—please be smart. Be safe. I know I covered some of this same terrain in
Foley Is Good
, but it bears repeating. If you want to be any good, start out as an amateur wrestler. Go to college. Get an education. The chances of making it in wrestling are slim, and the chances of getting badly hurt doing it are very good. Have that education to fall back on. Don’t do anything that could potentially compress the spine—piledrivers, Pedigrees, powerbombs, hura-canranas, tombstones, German suplexes, etc. And for God’s sake, don’t use fire.

Yeah, I know I used fire at
WrestleMania
with Edge, but including Lita, our match involved three people with a combined forty-five years in the business, plus a fire marshal who had approved the move, and about ten guys with fire extinguishers hidden in the crowd, ready to put it out the moment anything didn’t look right.

Plus, it was
’Mania,
man, a far cry from a couple losers trying to impress their pimply-faced girlfriends in the backyard at Uncle Marty’s family bar-b-que.

Look, I don’t care if it’s in a backyard, a first pro match in an armory, or
WrestleMania
—a wrestler can always say no. As I said earlier, I earned a pretty decent living by knowing my limitations. On many occasions, I simply said, “I don’t feel comfortable doing that.” Once you’ve voiced your concern, only a real jerk would insist on making you follow through against your wishes.

May 13, 2006
12:01
A.M
.—Long Island, NY

Dear Hardcore Diaries,

What am I thinking? Starting a
Hardcore Diary
entry at midnight? Even if it’s a short writing night, I won’t be in bed until 4:00
A
.
M
. The late-night writing poses a problem because my little guys get up around six. Obviously it would be a little hard to function on two hours’ sleep, let alone train for a huge match and write semi-literate stuff. So as a result, I often end up sleeping in the top bunk of Hughie’s bed, knowing that the littlest of my little guys has already beaten a path to his mom’s room, or will be doing it in the very near future.

So the good news is, I get in a few extra hours’ sleep. The bad news: I’m a 319-pound man (although I’m working on the weight) in a child’s bed, which, considering my history of lower-back disc problems, is asking for trouble. Well, I asked for it, and I got it—major back pain, bringing back the S-shaped posture that I’d been known to style over the years. What a crummy time for a back injury, with the ECW show only four weeks away, and the deadline for my
Hardcore Diaries
manuscript due only three weeks after that.

And how to explain this injury to my dozens and dozens of fans?

“What did this to you?” they’d ask. “Was it Edge’s spear? Kane’s chokeslam? Cena’s F.U.? Triple H’s pedigree?”

“No,” I’d say. “It was worse than that. It was Hughie’s bunk bed.”

It was a good day. Although I had written “write all day” in my calendar, I opted to spend the day with Colette, just hanging out—taking a bath, ordering in, watching a movie in the Christmas room. Hughie and Mickey go to preschool three days a week, so we try to pick one of those days as designated husband-wife day.

I made a couple of calls before heading out to the show. One to Jason Antone, of the J-Rock show, out in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Jason, twenty-four, suffers from Friedrich’s ataxia, a rare genetic disorder that can cause muscle weakness, speech problems, loss of tendon reflexes, and loss of sensation in the extremities. But Jason has a great attitude, helped in part by his enthusiasm for his show, which airs monthly on several public-access channels across Michigan.

I keep meaning to send him a taped interview, but keep forgetting. But I told him that when I was next in the area, I would be sure to head over for an interview in his house. I told Jason about
Hardcore Diaries,
and how, due to the nature of the book, he might very well find his name in there.

“Can you really do that?” Jason asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Listen, Jason, it’s my book, and I can pretty much do whatever I want with it. So if I say you’re in there, you’re in there.”

“Thanks,” he said. “That’s awesome.”

Next up on the Foley phone list was Stephen Wexler. I met Stephen about five years ago, when I was a special guest at his bar mitzvah. Stephen suffers from a rare neurological disease known as familial dysautonamia and was not supposed to live past the age of five. But he’s seventeen now, and still going strong, although some days are better than others for him. Occasionally, when he’s a little down, his father will give me a call, to let me know that a phone conversation or visit might help him out. In this case, Stephen had just gotten out of the hospital following a knee surgery. I invited the family over tomorrow night for pizza and
SmackDown!

I’ve got to try to get back into my
SmackDown!
groove again. For a few years,
SmackDown!
night was Foley night, as I would regularly visit various kids I had met along the way who had been facing serious illnesses and challenges. It really wasn’t that hard, and the kids and families really seemed to love it.

At my friend Stephen Wexler’s bar mitzvah, in 2002.

Courtesy of the Foley family.

Come to think of it, I’ve got to get back to doing a lot of things I did regularly up until a couple years ago. I was really good about visiting schools and libraries, talking to kids about the importance of staying in school, reading, and getting an education. For a while, when I was really into it, I would talk about the dangers of drugs, and the serious ramifications of bullying.

I remember when Dewey first started playing Little League, at age eleven. He started a few years late, mainly due to his obsession with WWE. For years, that’s all he wanted to do. Wrestling tapes, wrestling figures, wrestling video games, wrestling trivia, wrestling shirts. With the exception of Stone Cold condoms (I kid you not), he had just about everything on the market. It’s too bad there never was a Mick Foley condom—that would have been real effective birth control. “Hey, is that a picture of Mick Foley? On your penis? Oh, gross! Forget it. Just take me home.”

I tried to take him to a department store to purchase his first baseball glove when he was about seven. But on the way to Sporting Goods, he passed the WWE action-figure aisle and forgot all about the glove.

“No, Dewey, that’s not what we came for.”

“But I want it,” he said, holding one particular figure aloft.

“No, buddy. I’m sorry, we’ve got plenty of wrestlers at home.”

“But I’ve got my own money.”

“Sorry.”

“But I’ve got my own money.”

At that point, he began to sob uncontrollably, and our special father-son baseball bonding moment was over. It would be three years before he got that first glove. The action-figure culprit? Jeff Jarrett. Which in case you forgot, is J-E-ha ha-double F J-A-ha ha-R-ha ha-double R-E-ha ha-double T. Sure, Jeff hasn’t said that in about seven years, but I thought it would be good for a nostalgic laugh. I’ve known Jeff for over eighteen years, and I came very close to working with him at TNA last year, but come on, he’s not worth crying over.

I walked out onto the field for Dewey’s first game and sat down on the bleachers with the other baseball parents. Sure, I was the only dad with his hair halfway down to his ass, but I did my best to fit in. Realizing that it had been over twenty-five years since I’d been on a Little League field, my mind began to wander, drifting back to that day, so many years ago, when I last played the game.

Back in 1976, I’d been a pitcher, the proud possessor of both the fastest and wildest arm in the league. I was good, but I hated the pressure, and by my last year in Little League, 1978, I was strictly a catcher, like my hero, the Yankee’s Thurman Munson. Munson died that next year, in 1979, and it would be about twenty years before I became interested in the game of baseball again.

I don’t even remember our team name, but I remember the opposing team, the Exxon Tigers, because of the memory that team’s coach etched deep into my subconscious memory.

During the first inning, I tried to throw a runner out who was attempting to steal second. The attempt was successful, largely due to my throw, which may have been a little less than Munsonesque.

“Look at that!” the Tiger coach, an adult male, said. “Blooper arm.”

But hey, I’d get my turn at bat, and then it would be my turn to laugh. I did get my turn at bat, but I didn’t end up laughing, as I bounced to short and was thrown out at first by several steps. Even before several knee surgeries, I wasn’t exactly a merchant of menace on the base paths.

But as I headed back to the dugout, which wasn’t actually a dugout, but merely a bench with a wire mesh fence in front of it, I heard the Exxon coach, Mr. Sensitivity, crank up another comment about my limited physical skills. “Look at the way he runs—like he’s got a dump in his pants!”

As I caught the warm-up throws at the top of the next inning, the umpire, whose sister Felice was a good friend of mine, heard me crying.

“What’s the matter, Mick?” he said.

I continued crying.

“Mick, what’s wrong?”

I started one of those long sentences that kids make when they’re trying to hide their shame. “The other…coach…keeps…making…fun…of…me.”

“Do you want me to say anything?” my friend’s brother asked.

“No.”

I was twelve years old. Twelve. Being ridiculed by a grown man. For having the audacity to be slow. And there I was, twenty-five years later, sitting in the bleachers, hurting every bit as much as I did the moment the words hit me.

The umpire’s name was Ken Erikson. The last time I saw him on television, he was the Olympic softball team’s pitching coach, celebrating a gold medal victory with his team.

I went on to wrestle a couple of thousand matches, write a few towering best sellers, and get interviewed a couple of times by Katie Couric.

I don’t know what happened to that coach. But I have thought about finding him, so I can pay him a visit. So I can tell him what an inconsiderate prick he was. But also to thank him for making me realize an important truth that I went on to share with thousands of kids over the next few years.

I have a little paperweight on a bookshelf hanging over the desk upon which most of
Hardcore Diaries
is taking shape. Surrounding the paperweight are framed photos of children I’ve known who have since passed away. The paperweight reads, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

In honor of the Exxon Tiger coach, I added a new phrase: “No act of cruelty, no matter how small, is ever forgotten.”

Yeah, I did a lot of talking for a while, but I seem to have lost my drive. Part of it stems from the uphill battle I face every time a school asks me to speak. Almost without fail, I will learn that the school board or some other governing body put up strong resistance to the idea of a wrestler talking to their students.

“You really proved them wrong,” I’ve been told on several occasions. But why should I have to be in the position to constantly prove people wrong? It gets frustrating after a while.

I’ve had a couple of meetings with my local congressman, Tim Bishop, about setting up some kind of literacy or anti-bullying campaign. I would volunteer to spend one day a week, every week, for free, speaking to kids at different schools across our county. He seemed genuinely interested, but nothing ever came of it. I can’t help but think that some well-meaning advisers told him to steer clear of the wrestler, for image purposes.

One evening, I received a phone call from Senator Clinton’s office. I was told that Paul Begala (a former advisor to President Clinton, and a top political commentator) had recommended me for a literacy campaign, after meeting me in an airport. Again, I offered to donate one day a week, for free—but this time at a different New York City school every week. I never heard back.

“What do you think happened?” my wife asked.

“They probably Googled me,” I said.

Yeah, part of my problem is bureaucratic, but part is personal. You see, I’m just not sure if what I’m saying is actually important, or if I’m even qualified to say it.

I was really good at talking about writing back in the days when people actually bought my books. But when they stopped buying, I stopped writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved the writing experience. Each book, including this one, has been a pleasure to work on. But I’ve come to realize that I’m not really a writer. Writers write. It’s in their blood. I’m
not
a writer. I’m a
wrestler
who happens to write. There’s a difference.

As for bullying? Hell, people might listen to me for a day or two, a week tops, but in the long run, forty-five minutes with Mick Foley isn’t likely to change people much. Certainly even an impassioned speech from “the hardcore legend” is no match for a young lifetime of bad habits and peer pressure. For most kids, my visits are simply a cool way to miss math class and ask if it hurt when I was thrown off of the top of the cell by Undertaker.

I think part of the reason I have increased my interest and contributions to children overseas is that, unlike my intangible efforts in schools and libraries, these charitable interests yield concrete results.

When I traveled to China with Operation Smile, I could actually hold a child who had just received a new lease on life due to a single one-hour cleft-lip operation. I could see the joy in his father’s face when the child he’d entrusted to our care just an hour earlier came back looking like a new boy.

When I traveled to the Philippines this past winter, I could see the early childhood education center that my proceeds from
Tales from Wrescal Lane
had built. I could see the reports on the hundreds of families who now had access to clean drinking water as a result of my contributions.

As a long-time UNICEF donor, I was very enthusiastic about the prospect of promoting Trick or Treat for UNICEF with WWE. I talked to Vince and Shane McMahon and received their blessing.

“What would it entail?” Vince asked.

“Not much,” I said. “An article for the Web site, a mention in the magazine, maybe let me take one of the orange boxes into the ring with me on
Raw
or
SmackDown!
”