The Hardcore Diaries (20 page)

Sometimes it seems to be the same in wrestling—at least, I hope it is, for my sake. Hopefully on June 11 enough fans can overlook the obvious lack of athleticism and glamour in that ring, and focus instead on the emotion and conviction on display. Hopefully that will be enough. Emotion. Conviction. Oh, and maybe a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. And thumbtacks. And garbage cans. And especially the return of the ten-pound weight taped to my foot that I intend to kick a field goal with—assuming, of course, Terry Funk’s nuts play the part of the football in this match. Hey, Lada, there’s going to be more than just a scratch on the Funker’s right ball.

As I mentioned in my earlier diary entry, “Sports Night” attracts some of the biggest stars in athletic history. While very few of these stars have the time or willingness to make fools of themselves in the play, they nonetheless give up their time for a great cause, often traveling considerable distances to do it.

The first hour of the official event is a cocktail hour, where all of the stars are available for conversation and autographs. Because most guests have already paid pretty substantial money to attend the event, there is no extra charge for these autographs. As you can probably imagine, not all stars are equal in the guests’ eyes, and therefore, the line for Jim Brown (perhaps the greatest football player of all time) is considerably longer than the line for Mike Masco (the Olympic bobsledder whose name I forgot in the earlier entry).

I’m somewhere in the middle—lots of kids, some adults. But by the forty-minute mark, I was on the verge of being lonely when I was approached by two nice young ladies, in their mid-to late thirties, I guessed.

One of them, a blonde, seemed genuinely happy to meet me, saying, “Out of everyone here, my son is going to be the most excited to hear I met you.”

The three of us proceeded to chat amiably for a few minutes before the blonde said, “Well, I don’t want to bore you, so I’ll leave you alone.”

“Listen,” I said, confiding in them both. “Anyone who wanted to meet me has already met me. You can feel free to stay and talk as long as you want.”

So they did. They hung out while I expressed my concern about the “Lunch with Mick Foley” that was up for bid as part of the silent auction.

“Well, at least it’s up to $450,” I said. “At least that’s respectable, right?”

“Oh, definitely,” one of them said.

“Yeah, they asked me if I’d mind doing it, and I said ‘Sure,’ just as long as its not part of the live auction. Because I’d really be terrified that no one would bid on it, which would be humiliating, you know.”

They nodded in agreement. That would be humiliating. I then regaled them with a story from my glory days, where two people paid $32,000 each for the “Dinner with Mick Foley” package.

“Yeah, for a while, I put a dinner up at every event I went to, but that price slid down pretty rapidly, to the point where it barely covered the cost of dinner. But hey, $450 is respectable, right?”

“Definitely,” the blond woman reconfirmed. Then she said, “Mick?”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind if I introduced you to my dad?”

“Oh, of course not,” I said, thinking it was actually quite sweet that she would bring her dad out to meet all his favorite sports stars.

“Mick, this is my father,” she said.

I looked up to see Jack Nicklaus.

“No,” I said in disbelief. It couldn’t be.

She laughed and said, “Take a close look at me.”

She looked exactly like him. Like looking at a photo of him on the cover of my dad’s 1970
Sports Illustrated.
I’m not a golfer, or a particularly big golfing fan, but even I understood how important Jack Nicklaus was. I was stunned.

After talking with Jack and his wife for a minute, and thanking them for supporting Abilities, I turned to the blond woman, Jack’s daughter. “Can I have your permission to tell this story everywhere I go?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

The main item on the live auction list was a round of golf with Jack Nicklaus, with an opening bid of $50,000—a number that was the main course of conversation over dinner. Following the cocktail hour, each athlete (or sports entertainer in my case) sits at a designated table with guests, for dinner and the grand Jo Jo Starbuck production. Of course, those foolish enough to perform leave the table immediately after dinner.

“How much do you think it will go for?” I was asked.

“Right around a hundred,” I said. “How about you?”

“One-fifty.”

“One-fifty,” I said in bemusement. “No way.”

Good thing I’m not a gambler. A round of golf with Jack Nicklaus went for $300,000—twice. A grand total of $600,000 for the honor of putting and driving with golf’s greatest legend.

The show, as usual, was a blast, even if someone forgot to tell Irish tenor Ronan Tynan that the adults are supposed to embarrass themselves with bad acting, humiliating costumes, and Ashley Simpson–esque lip-synching. So instead, Tynon went out there and had to ruin it with “God Bless America” and some Rogers and Hammerstein tune that wowed the crowd. How the hell was I going to follow that with a bald wig and some overacting worthy of Vince McMahon?

Uncle Dee

Brian Hopkins has been a friend of mine since somewhere around the end of 2000, about the time I moved back to Long Island. Somewhere around that time, I called up my local Make-A-Wish, asking if they knew of any wrestling fans, who might want to hang out, kind of like a bonus wish for a kid who loved wrestling, but might wisely choose a Disney vacation or trip to Hawaii over a chance to meet a guy in tights who pretends to fight.

Yes, I was told, they had two “wish” kids who had listed WWE as their second choice. Hey, I don’t mind being second—I’m just flattered to be in the top hundred. I was given the numbers of both kids, and was told that as long as I initiated the contact, any meeting I set up would not be considered a “wish.”

One child was facing serious back surgery. Despite what some people may think about “wish children,” not all of them are terminally ill. I think by definition they are kids under eighteen facing life-threatening illnesses or procedures.

The other one, Brian, suffered from cerebral palsy, and was brought into the world under the most trying of circumstances. He was one of twin boys. His brother, Jerry, was born without any physical complications. Their mom, unfortunately, died during childbirth, leaving a grief-stricken husband and two newborns without a mother.

Following our initial meeting in late 2000, I became a sporadic guest at the Hopkins house for random
Raw
or
SmackDown!
viewings. Watching the shows seemed like a fun way to spend time with a great kid who’d endured more than his fair share of hardships along the way. I would bring my older kids, eat for free, exaggerate tales of my wrestling past, and never have to worry about leaving my comfort zone. As long as a WWE show was on, I could show up, have some fun, make a little bit of a difference, and never have to worry about addressing difficult issues.

But I feared that eventually some kid would pose a question that didn’t deal with Hell in a Cell or teaming with The Rock; a query that might actually involve some insight or knowledge on a subject I was not completely comfortable with. It’s one thing for me to say “I don’t know” to my kids—they hear it all the time from me. It’s another for a kid who has faced serious challenges to hear the same thing. Granted, twenty years in the world of sports entertainment, traveling the globe, experiencing the highs and lows of human nature on a regular basis, has been an invaluable education in its own right. But it hasn’t necessarily prepared me for questions of life and death, or qualified me as a provider of comfort or dispenser of wisdom.

I wanted to change that. So in the winter of 2002, I took a seven-hour workshop entitled Good Grief, offered by the American Cancer Society, that dealt with the emotional consequences involved in death and life-threatening illnesses and conditions. I found the course to be invaluable, especially in emphasizing what I took to be the workshop’s main theme—people want to talk about what’s troubling them.

Wow! This was the complete antithesis of the Mick Foley
SmackDown!
visit. No, no, no, my job was to show up, eat, watch TV, tell an amusing anecdote or two, and then leave without ever even acknowledging a kid’s physical limitations. Wheelchair? What wheelchair? Those types of things were simply out of my area of expertise. So I ignored them.

But shortly after the Good Grief workshop, I received a phone call from Brian, in which he asked if I would like to go to an Islander game with him before he underwent serious spinal surgery. Brian’s cerebral palsy, it seemed, was causing him to lean to the side of his chair, twisting his spine and causing a domino effect of subsequent health problems, all of which combined to cause him a great deal of pain.

So I drove my Chevy Impala over to Brian’s house in Lindenhurst (hometown of Pat Benatar) and had his dad take us the rest of the way to the Nassau Coliseum in their wheelchair-accessible van. He dropped us off like we were on a big date, and after making our way to the special handicapped section, I realized that I felt woefully out of place.

The skates, the ice, the Zamboni—it was all foreign, like a huge audience reaction in a Test match. So, after watching warm-ups in a state of near silence, I fumbled for words that might make me sound like a little less of a loser than I was actually feeling like.

My choice in cool words? “Hey, Brian, how does it feel to be a member of my posse?” Oh yeah, great, Mick, that was really cool, you’re a real modern-day Fonz. A member of my posse? What was I thinking?

Brian mumbled an unenthusiastic response, and I went back to watching the warm-ups. Maybe there’d be a fight or two so I could make a smooth transition from real fights to my fights; a way to bring it all back around to my comfort zone.

But Brian had a question. “Mick?” he asked shyly.

“Yeah, Brian?”

“Am I really a member of your posse?”

Holy crap, he thought it was a cool question. Which meant, yes, that I was cool for saying it.

I looked Brian in the eye, my confidence suddenly returning. “You better believe you are, Brian,” I said. “You better believe you are.”

Now, what I didn’t tell Brian is that I didn’t actually have a posse; that by process of elimination he was the sole member of the Mick Foley posse. With thoughts of Good Grief in mind, I decided to use this opportunity to actually venture outside my comfort zone; to ask an important question that didn’t involve the WWE.

I said, “Brian, how do you feel about this operation you’ve got coming up this week?”

Brian paused for just a moment, then proceeded to confide in me, telling me all about his fears, hopes, and dreams. Finally, he said, “It’s just too bad I’ve already had my wish, or else maybe some Islanders could visit me in the hospital.”

I thought I had an answer. “You know, Brian, I work with this one group [the Marty Lyons Foundation] that sometimes grants second wishes.”

Don’t get me wrong, a wish granted through Make-A-Wish or other groups can be invaluable in lifting the spirits of children and their parents. I’ve known many children who cherish the memories of these granted wishes, and always consider the chance to look through family photos of these trips as a special honor. It’s amazing how often the memories involve Give Kids the World, a special village unto itself in Kissimee, Florida, that serves as a home base for “wish” families as they visit the great destinations (Disney, Sea World, Universal) the Orlando area has to offer.

But for a family facing a serious long-term health condition, a wish granted at age four can seem like an eternity ago as that same child reaches his teens. For those families, a “second wish” can seem like a godsend.

It certainly seemed like one for Brian, as he looked up toward the nose-bleed seats in Nassau, seemingly staring off into space. “I’d like to meet Metallica,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“Really,” I said. “Is that the type of music you like?” I had no idea. Although I’d been to the house on many occasions, I didn’t have a clue as to what his interests were, outside of WWE. By the way, Brian likes what I did to Tommy Dreamer and Terry Funk. He thinks I make a better bad guy.

“Yeah,” Brian said.

“You like heavy metal?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like Twisted Sister?”

“Do you know Dee Snider?” Brian yelled. I don’t really know what prompted that sudden question. I guess Brian knew that Dee, lead singer of the classic 1980s band that belted out such rock radio staples as “We’re Not Gonna Take it” and “I Wanna Rock,” was another Long Island guy, and that it was not outside the realm of possibility that I might know him.

Now, during the course of my career in wrestling, I have had occasion to meet many famous people. And in truth, if I talk to any of them for longer than ten seconds, I consider them my friend. Like Katie Couric. I’ve been on the show, she held my baby. She’s a friend. But I’ve got a shocking confession to make—she’s not my friend. Not really. Which doesn’t mean that we couldn’t be friends sometime. If we, you know, spent some time together, maybe talked a little more, maybe a phone call, or…Oh sorry, where the hell was I?

My high school wrestling team photo. That’s Kevin James to my right.

Courtesy of the Foley family.

Oh, yeah, real friends. The truth is, I only have three famous real friends. Sarah Hughes is one. Kevin James, “the King of Queens,” is another. Kevin went to both high school and college with me—we were even on the high school wrestling team together—and we still talk every few years. He even called me up onstage last year and gave me a big public hug, then ridiculed me about my fashion sense once I sat down.

My other real friend? You got it—Dee Snider, one of the great bad boys of rock and roll. But in addition to being a bad boy, he’s a great guy, and over the last five years he’s become a good friend.

So I told Brian that, yes, I knew Dee Snider, and I’d ask Dee if he could possibly give him a quick phone call while Brian was laid up in the hospital recovering from surgery.

With the hockey game over, our big date finished, we waited for Brian’s dad to show up with the van. Once inside, Brian shared the new information with his father, saying, “Dad, Mick knows Dee Snider.”

“You know Dee Snider?” his father yelled, displaying a type of enthusiasm rare for grown men who aren’t either at a football game or institutionalized. Brian’s dad was neither. He was simply a huge fan who had come of age while following the band around the prefame seventies club dates of their Long Island stronghold. Things were different then, before the drinking age hit twenty-one and teens were entirely shut out of the club world. It used to be a rock-and-roll band could cut their teeth in the clubs and show up on the big stage of national exposure as a polished, finished product.

These days, big pop stars like Jennifer Lopez have TV specials touting their first-ever concert. But I guess, like all things in life, there is yet another parallel to be drawn from the world of pro wrestling. In the old days, guys who worked the old regional territories could hone their craft for years, and when given the opportunity could show up on the national stages of NWA (later WCW) or WWE as polished workers. Hell, I’d been in the business for eleven years before I finally got the call from J.R.

In today’s WWE, talent is often brought up before they’ve really had the chance to mature as performers. I don’t begrudge any of them for anything they’re given, but I’m glad it took me a long time. I was given a chance in WWE, and I was able to make the most of it, largely due to the poise and experience I’d developed along the way.

Any good athlete can be taught the moves. But you can’t teach poise. You can’t teach experience. And you can’t teach passion.

Back to Dee. Sure, a phone call would have been good, but as far as I was concerned, for Brian Hopkins, good wasn’t good enough. I gave Dee a phone call. Because as it turned out, Dee owed me a favor. And it wasn’t a “Could you pick up a dozen eggs at the Dairy Barn?” type of favor. It was, “Could you drive eight hours round-trip and do my radio show for four hours for free while I play myself in a VH-1 movie about the Senate obscenity hearings of 1985?” type of favor. I decided to call it in.

We made quite an impression upon entering the hospital. Dee had his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He wore a knee-length black leather duster, snakeskin boots that went up to his knees, and a pair of black leather pants that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. Even if you didn’t know who he was, you knew he was somebody. I, on the other hand, could have easily been mistaken for the plumber. Red and black flannel, sweats, sneakers.

As we neared Brian’s room, I told Dee to hang outside in the hallway for a minute. I figured I was kind of like the hors d’oeuvre, Dee was the main course. I didn’t want to ruin the meal by serving up both dishes at once.

Brian was happy to see me, despite the considerable pain he seemed to be in. But let’s face it—I was old news. I guess the first time he met me, he was thrilled and then the excitement started to wane. I was no longer a really big deal. I was just a friend who happened to have his own action figure.

Brian couldn’t hide his disappointment when he said, “I was kind of hoping Dee would call.”