The Hardcore Diaries (24 page)

MICK:
Wait, wait…hold on! Don’t be so angry. This may seem out there…this may seem downright kooky, but what I would like you to do is, I’d like you to spit in my face again.

Blood and loogies—the Hershey promo with Randy Orton.

RANDY:
You want me to do what?

MICK:
I told you it was kooky, and look, I know you can do it, because I felt the warmth of your spit that night in Tampa. I’ve seen the replays seventeen times, I’ve seen it in slow motion, hell, I’ve even seen it in rewind, but I’m just wondering if maybe that was a fluke and if you have the guts to spit in my face again right here in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

RANDY:
Mick, listen, man, listen. [Mick snatches his mike and throws it.]

MICK:
Listen here, you little bastard! I was spilling blood on six continents while you were still latched onto your mother’s breast! I’ve been hearing you run your damn mouth for seven weeks! Now I’ve got the microphone and I’m talking, and you do as you’re told! I am telling you, no, I am ordering you, to spit in my damn face! Do it! Do it! Do it! [Mick smacks Randy in the face a few times.]

Randy spits. A yellowish green wad of phlegm can be seen on Mick’s cheek.

MICK:
What! What! Why, I ought to…why—I am not going to hit you, Randy, I am not going to hit you. Not only am I not going to hit you, I’m going to take the advice of a very good book I read a little while ago that said “Turn the other cheek,” and I am going to turn that other cheek. What I’m going to do is ask you to spit on that one as well, but I couldn’t help but notice that this was one lackluster loogie, Randy. My goodness, it’s cold and flu season, the harshest winter in fifty years, and I’m willing to bet that you can exhume something real green from way down deep. Dig it up and plant me right here! But hold on, hold on, maybe Randy needs a little inspiration, so if you join me, maybe we can get a chant going, “Loogie, loogie, loogie.” Deeper, deeper…there you go!

Randy spits.

Yeah! Wooahhh! Take a good shot of that! Realize that you can look at it close, and it is still only spit. Still just spit, and, Randy, you have to realize, I’ve got four children. During the course of twelve years of raising those kids…I’ve been peed on, I’ve been pooped on, I’ve been thrown up on, I’ve been sneezed on, and yeah, I’ve even been spit on. So being spit on by you one more time is not really a big deal. When it came to you calling me names, I had it on good authority that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names, that’s right, they’ll never hurt me.” I am willing to bet that whoever came up with that helpful adage was never referred to as Randy Orton’s “bitch” on national television. You see, Randy, it was about at that point that something sank into my brain. Something that never occurred to me before—that is, people were starting to believe you. Understanding the definition of the big lie, which says, “If you tell a lie that’s big enough and you tell that lie long enough, the public will accept it as fact no matter how big a pile of crap what you’re saying actually is.” Randy, the idea of you as a hardcore legend is one big pile of crap! Take a look, because this is not just spit anymore. Because I have come to realize that when you spit on my face, you spit on my name, you spit on my legacy, you spit on the very business that I love and I cannot…cannot [Mick punches his own face] accept that, you understand. I worked too hard and I suffered too long to have my reputation torn up by you. You little bastard! I’ve seen my ear thrown away in Munich, Germany! I’ve seen my skin hanging off the barbed wires in Japan! And I’ve been bludgeoned in Nigeria! [Blood starts streaming from Mick’s eyebrow.] Now I no longer have to wonder whether I have a place in my heart where darkness dwells, because I’m already there! I’m already there, and I don’t have to deny the hatred anymore, and that’s why I accepted the hatred that exists in my heart. I will welcome it home as a long-lost friend, saying, “Welcome home, where you been?” because there is a time and a place for hatred, Randy Orton. The place is Hershey, Pennsylvania…and the time is now!

I later learned that several top WWE stars had not liked the promo, thinking that it made Randy Orton look weak. Yeah, I know that in the era of the ultra- cool heel who no one actually boos, doing something as heelish as showing fear might seem like the death knell to a career. But come on, guys! Give me a little break here. Sure, maybe it wasn’t a promo that was going to sell T-shirts, but I sure as hell do believe that it sold tickets and
WrestleMania
Pay-Per-Views.

And as far as making Randy Orton look weak? I’m not always right on everything, but I think I know a little bit about the human mind, and its capacity for evil and revenge. Randy Orton, once taken out of the comfortable cocoon of self-assured cockiness he had created for himself, would feel an irresistible drive to overcompensate for his perceived shortcomings, causing a violent, uncontrollable reaction toward the revealer of those shortcomings. Thus, what some very good wrestlers saw as weakness, I saw as potential for character growth. Of course, you’d have to ask Randy Orton himself whether or not being involved with me was a good idea.

Marcos

Following the promo in Hershey, I was awash in compliments, from both fans and fellow wrestlers. Indeed, there has never been a time when I was part of so much emotion following a show. Yet I knew very little, if any, of the response had to do with my promo with Randy Orton. For something far more special had taken place inside that arena.

A few weeks earlier, I was contacted by the Marty Lyons Foundation concerning a boy, Marcos Diaz, whose time on earth appeared to be drawing to a close, and whose wish, it seemed, had been to be a part of WWE. I have a photo of Marcos on a bookshelf, revealing him to be a handsome, well-muscled teenager. At one time, he dreamed of being a WWE wrestler. But cancer, and the countless operations that accompanied it, had stolen those dreams, and now, with only a short time to live, Marcos’s dreams had unfortunately been altered. He wanted, more than anything, just to be a part of WWE. In some way. In any way.

I rode with Marcos to the show in Hershey, where he was treated like a king by all who crossed his path, from Ric Flair to Stone Cold to RVD to Vince McMahon. I wheeled him down the entrance ramp to ringside, and Marcos just stared, eyes wide open, at the WWE ring; the very space he had yearned to enter for so long. But Marcos was so frail, so devastated by the long battle with his disease, that his goal would never be realized.

It was Richie Posner, the “magic man,” the man responsible for everything from painting Mankind’s old referee shirts to formulating Mae Young’s prosthetic sagging boobs, who suggested bringing Marcos into the ring. Without hesitation, Dave Batista picked the young man up in his massive arms and handed him to Randy Orton, who was waiting to help Marcos into the ring. A little earlier, Bruce Prichard, a longtime WWE fixture best known from his days as Brother Love, had given Marcos an official WWE replica belt as a gift from the company. Marcos took a couple of labored steps inside that ring and then held the belt aloft, closing his eyes, savoring the sound of cheers he must have known he’d never live to hear.

Except he did live to hear those cheers. I made sure of it. So did Chris Benoit. So did Bill Goldberg. So did Stone Cold Steve Austin. For after
Raw
ended, with traces of Orton’s loogie and a tiny trail of my own blood still on my face, I announced to the Hershey crowd that I had a special friend in the audience, who unfortunately didn’t know what it was like to hear thousands of people chant his name. But with our help, he would. With Benoit’s help. With Goldberg’s help. With Austin’s help. With the help of the thousands of fans in Hershey that night, we accomplished something special. We made one of Marcos Diaz’s last nights on earth one of his best.

A few days later, I asked Vince if I could address the entire
Raw
roster—the first time I’d ever done so. Vince, for all his faults (which I’ve been kind enough to discuss in detail), has always had a heartfelt belief that what we do on our TV shows actually matters in the most important of ways; we entertain people, we take their minds off their problems. He has often said that short of curing diseases, the most important role in life is to make people happy through the gift of entertainment. Until that day, I’m not sure I ever really agreed with that.

“Mick Foley has asked for the opportunity to speak to you,” Vince said. “You know, so many times we travel from town to town, doing what we do, that we forget about the difference we sometimes make while we’re there. I think Mick would like to remind you of one of those times.”

I just started shaking. I’d addressed so many crowds, so many times, often without hesitation or concern, but this situation was so different. I was addressing my peers. About a kid I’d grown to care so much about in such a short time. A kid I’d eulogized at a funeral service just hours earlier. A kid I’d seen laid to rest, buried in the clothes we’d given him. A Stone Cold shirt, a Socko cap, the championship belt.

I know that during the course of this book, I have sometimes seemed like an outspoken critic of things I see wrong with WWE. But on this particular afternoon, at Penn State University, I just wanted to thank all of the guys for all their acts of kindness. Every single person in that room had gone out of their way to make that kid’s day a special one. Every single person. And I appreciated it. And every one of them had made me so damn proud to be part of the business.

I concluded by telling the whole group that I hoped they would feel like they could come up to me at any time and ask me about ways they could help out. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually know of any ways to help out.

I don’t know Dave Batista that well. To this day, I’m not sure I’ve had a conversation with him that’s lasted more than five minutes. But I’ll never forget that he was the first person to come up to me, his eyes filled with tears, and say, “How can I help?” No, I don’t know Dave that well. But I will always respect him, and I will always be grateful to him for fulfilling the last wish of a dying young man.

Comeback

How would I feel about The Rock being part of the
WrestleMania
match? About making it a Tag Team match?

To tell the truth, I was a little confused. “I’m fine with it,” I told Brian Gewirtz, the placer of the phone call. “But I read that Rock only wanted to come back if it was a really big deal.”

“He thinks this
is
a big deal,” Gewirtz said.

“Really?” I liked The Rock, had done great business with him in ’98 and ’99, and had long gotten over whatever problems we may have had during our working relationship. But I honestly wouldn’t have guessed that The Rock considered anything involving me to be a big deal. I was flattered.

“Yeah,” Gewirtz said. “We wanted to make it a handicap tag. You and Rock against Evolution—Orton, Batista, and Flair. Do you have any problems working with Ric?”

“No,” I said. “I’d be glad to have him in the match.” Hey, until Ric’s book was published, I actually liked the guy, and considered it an honor to have him involved in our deal.

So, for the next few weeks, we set about creating an urgent need for The Rock’s return. And what better way to necessitate his return than to beat the living crap out of the hardcore legend on multiple occasions, including a battering in Bakersfield, California, on February 16, 2004, that has to go down as one of the most brutal in sports entertainment history?

The WWE seems to be constantly going through phases, be it the “serious” phase, the “real people don’t play kazoos” phase, the “hot lesbian action” phase, or the “necrophilia equals ratings” phase. On February 16, we were in a short-lived “wrestling” phase, where no damage could be caused by or attributed to an outside object, such as a sledgehammer, barbed-wire bat, or even a set of ringside stairs. Blood was also not an option. So I wondered how, exactly, to make a three-on-one beatdown seem brutal enough to inspire a Hollywood movie star to play the role of my knight in shining armor, riding in for an “Emotional Rescue,” which for you trivia buffs is the name of a dreadful Rolling Stones song—probably the worst one they ever recorded.

I called Randy Orton over right before we went out.

“You know, Randy, sometimes in this business we make our own breaks.” Randy looked at me, eyes wide open. Despite the grumblings of those stars who thought I’d made him look weak in Hershey, Randy trusted me implicitly. “I want you to catch me with a couple of punches right here,” I said, pointing to the outer part of my left eyebrow. “Try to split it open. If you get any heat from the office, just tell them that I called it in the ring, okay?”

“Okay, Mick.”

And with that I was off. Off to catch eight punches in the left temple. Off to feel consciousness leave my body like a Garden crowd streaming toward the popcorn stand during a Test match. Off to drive to LAX with the left side of my skull swollen like the Elephant Man, making only a brief pit stop to puke all over the interstate. Despite the throbbing in my skull, my biggest pain of the night came from realizing that Randy Orton had never bothered to check on me following the Bakersfield beatdown. I have always gotten along very well with him, and I always appreciate how willingly he gives me credit for the success he’s enjoyed, but unfortunately, the first vision I have when I think of Randy is the vision of no Randy at all backstage at Bakersfield.

I was supposed to be off for a couple of weeks following Bakersfield, at which point I would reappear with the other half of the “Rock ’n’ Sock Connection,” hell-bent for vengeance, and a potentially huge
’Mania
payoff. This angle had really been connecting with fans, and it figured to be a major part of what we all felt would be an extremely successful
WrestleMania
.

Four days after Bakersfield, however, I gave Vince a phone call. “Listen, Vince, I know we talked about keeping me off for a few weeks, but I think you really need to get me on camera. My eye is a mess.”

Indeed, it was. Despite the fact that the botched hardway attempt had not yielded a single drop of external blood, the internal bleeding had been severe, leaving my face a work of abstract art: splashes of purple, greens, and black, with a dash of red thrown in the eyeball for good measure. Kind of like a Jackson Pollock rendition of Rocky Balboa.

I drove the ninety minutes to Stanford, cut a short in-studio interview with Coach—Jonathan Coachman—and drove on home, not completely thrilled with the interview, but relieved that we had captured the eye in all its swollen beauty.

Vince, however, was a good deal less than completely thrilled with the interview. In fact, he wasn’t thrilled at all. Deeming it “the worst work of his career”—meaning mine, not Coachman’s (which would really be saying something)—Vince demanded an immediate reshoot, this time with J.R. manning the microphone. Dutifully, I climbed back into the road-worn Impala and put a slightly better threat down on video, warning Orton and his Evolution cohorts that I wasn’t coming into Atlanta alone.

The Return of The Rock was one of my finest moments. Sure, it was
his
pop, technically speaking, but I savored it as if it was my own, for I had worked so very hard to set the table from which he dined. And what a meal it was: know-your-own rolls, a pint of shut-up juice, and a special helping of The Rock’s favorite pie for dessert.

Speaking of “pie,” that most thinly veiled of sexual euphemisms in the WWE repertoire, the following week in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on March 8, the word
pie
was responsible for one of the great unintentionally hilarious moments in WWE history.

As you know, I’m not a big fan of rehearsing segments for television. I’m very much a believer in improvisation and the resulting magic it sometimes provides. In Bridgeport, however, The Rock was hosting a “This Is Your Life, Mick Foley” segment—an ode to a similar segment I had hosted for him in 1999, which has gone down in lore as an all-time great wrestling moment. That segment was slotted for twelve minutes—it went twenty-six. The 2004 version was set to end the show. It had to go home exactly on time. Plus the segment included a cast of thousands (actually eight), with specific time cues for each, so in this case, I grudgingly accepted the need for rehearsal.

The Rock’s first guest for me was Mrs. Snyder (no relation to Dee), the kindly old neighbor who used to willingly serve her pie to all the neighborhood kids. Cue The Rock’s abject look of horror and the requisite double entendres that made Jack Tripper’s old
Three’s Company
look almost Shakespearean by comparison. Take this gem from Mrs. Snyder, in regard to The Rock inquiring as to whether she still served pie to the neighborhood kids. “Well, I don’t leave my front window open for pie, but I do leave my back door open for strudel.”

Jimmy Snuka was next to emerge. “The Superfly” was one of my idols when I was growing up, and it’s doubtful I would have dared enter the wild world of pro wrestling had I not journeyed to Madison Square Garden in the fall of ’83 to see Snuka sail majestically off a steel cage onto the prone body of Don Muraco, seventy-five feet below. Or was it fifteen? Or was it eight? Who can tell when nostalgia and myth mix with facts and videotape so many years down the road?

The Superfly was supposed to acknowledge the fact that he occasionally enjoyed a piece of pie, yielding yet another horrific Rock reaction shot, pondering the image of “The Superfly” and Mrs. Snyder entwined in the timeless embrace of carnal desire.

The Superfly, however, must have gotten his bakery preferences confused, a result, I guess, of too many chair shots, too many high-altitude landings, or the rumors of a prolific past of partying—legendary even by wrestling standards. For when Snuka entered the ring, grabbed the mike, and began his declaration of culinary affection, this is what came out. I understand that many of you out there in literary wonderland (to borrow a phrase from Snuka, who used to refer to the viewing audience as “TV wonderland”) are familiar with Jimmy’s unique vocal stylings. For those of you who are not, the best I can do is combine a young Marlon Brando with Brenda Vaccaro on a particularly bad voice day.

“Let me tell you something, Brother Rock, Brother Mick. The Superfly LOVES…cake.”

I actually had my own request for “This Is Your Life.” I pitched this to Vince and thought it was a sure winner, only to see it rejected like one of my feeble high school/college/mid-twenties romantic overtures.

Here’s the pitch. Ready yourself for tenses that shift from past to present for no apparent reason. The Rock says, “Our next guest, Mick, is a former Tag Team partner of yours. A man you went on to have legendary matches with.”

“I think he’s talking about the great Terry Funk,” J.R. interjects.

But before any further announcement can be made, piano music of the mid-fifties Jerry Lee Lewis type drifts forth from the sound system, heralding the arrival of “Cowboy” Bob Orton Jr., Randy’s father. Throughout his career, Bob was known as a consummate technician, a great heel, and the source of a subtle in-ring sense of humor that was often lost on the masses. There he is, a good six months before his actual return; same greasy leather hat, same greasy leather vest, same cast from an injury that never seemed to heal. Sometimes I think “Cowboy” Bob and Iron Mike Sharpe are in a contest to see who can work their injury the longest. No one, however, can compare to Mike Sharpe when it comes to length of showers taken (several hours), number of plastic Baggies within a plastic Baggie protecting a bottle of baby oil (up to twenty), or any other number of curious phenomena that have made Mike Sharpe stories a locker-room staple for over two decades.

Anyway, Bob’s arrival would amuse me, but confuse me as well, prompting me to ask just what he was doing in the ring on my big night.

Once again, I’m sure many of you reading this are keenly aware of the unique (far different from those of Snuka, but unique in their own way) vocal stylings of “Cowboy” Bob Orton Jr. For the uninitiated, think Bob Dylan dueting with Tom Waits on a Kris Kristofferson song, while hung over and gargling with razor blades. Bob’s voice, you see, is a little gravelly.

“Hold on a second there, Cactus,” Bob would say, paying tribute to my old Cactus Jack days. “Is that any way to greet your greatest tag team partner?”

“Greatest partner?” I would say, laughing. “Sure, Bob, we tagged up a bunch of times, but as a team, we really weren’t all that good.”

“But, Cactus,” Bob would plead. “What about Aruba? Don’t you remember Aruba? You conceived your first child on the deck of the Holiday Inn in the room right next to mine. Did you know that I brought Randy on that trip, back when he was thirteen years old? That’s right. As a matter of fact, Randy’s first sexual experience was pleasuring himself at the Holiday Inn to the sounds of your old lady.”

Obviously, I would take great offense to that, and would confront Bob immediately, intent on defending my wife’s honor. Even if we really did conceive our first child on the deck of that Holiday Inn in Aruba.

“Hold on. Hold on,” Bob would say. “Before you get all upset, let me take you on a little stroll down memory lane.”

The WWE fans in Bridgeport would then have been treated to the worst video production values in the history of sports entertainment. Tacky, wimpy music. And one old snapshot of me and Bob, doing a variety of early eighties home video moves: the swirl, the twist, the starburst. Just when you thought it couldn’t have gotten any worse—you got it—it would. Because gravelly-voiced Bob Orton would start singing “Memories”—the Barbra Streisand song. It wouldn’t even matter if he knew the words. Let him butcher them. The worse, the better. As in, “Memories, of a misty moonlight run. Memories of all our groovy teaming fun.”

It would have been hideous. It would have been great. It would have caused both me and Rock to laugh, letting our defenses down, allowing Evolution to sneak in and do the damage they were supposed to do anyway. Better yet, it would have given a perfect reason for Snuka to be in our corner, and for “Cowboy” Bob to be in theirs, bookending the original
WrestleMania
, when Snuka was in the corner of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T and Orton was in the corner of Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff.