The Hardcore Diaries (32 page)

Vince McMahon’s prediction had almost come true before the match could even begin, as it was damn close to being “the shits” in a far more literal sense than Vince probably could have imagined.

Speaking of imagination, my entrance yields far less response than I would have previously thought possible. As I stand in the ring, I try to rationalize the funereal atmosphere. Where the hell is the reaction? I would have thought I’d have a ton of heat, but this crowd is lukewarm at best, bordering on downright brisk in its response. Well, I rationalize, they don’t want to cheer me because I am playing the part of the ECW turncoat. The crowd has been so wild, and has been such an integral part of the show, that a turn against ECW protocol could be seen as a detriment to the show. These people, by virtue of their love for ECW and their willingness to go to great lengths to procure these tickets, are already rebels. To rebel against their rebellious nature could really be confusing. So there are very few cheers. But there aren’t a whole lot of boos either. Maybe they respect me too much to boo. Maybe some of them realize the lengths I’ve gone through to create our match scenario. Or maybe, just maybe, they don’t really care a whole lot, one way or another. Yeah, I think, that’s it.

Edge and Lita have considerably more heat for their arrival. Edge has got the hardcore title held proudly aloft and seems to be enjoying the unique atmosphere of this particular party. I really enjoy watching how much pride he takes in accepting the boos that come his way, and firmly feel that I am in the presence of the top bad guy in the business.

“Listen, you don’t want to mess with these idiots,” he says to me. “Because this is their night. This is like their Christmas. Only their Santa Claus is Jewish, fat, bald, and gives out an endless supply of bullshit instead of presents.”

Preparing for hardcore battle with my tag partners, Lita and Edge.

What a great line. I know I sometimes seem down on the writers, but whoever came up with this line (I think it was Gewirtz) deserves a round of applause. Edge and I had wondered about the appropriateness of the “Jewish” comment, but Gewirtz, who is himself Jewish, seemed to think it wouldn’t be a problem.

“All you idiots are going to go home,” Edge says, pointing to the fans, “and you’re going to go text your imaginary girlfriends about how good this show was. Then you’re going to hop on the Internet, and you’re going to pleasure yourself looking at pictures of my
actual
girlfriend.”

Lita shows off a dose of gravity-defying cleavage, and she and Edge engage in the most graphic French kissing I’ve seen since Christy Canyon and Ginger Lynn swapped saliva for my viewing pleasure on Playboy radio.

Lita grabs the mike, and refers to Tommy Dreamer as “the innovator of silence,” a remark that unfortunately hits way too close to home, but which nonetheless gives me and Edge reason to celebrate with a daring white-guy jumping high five. Lita does a remarkable job of maintaining her composure during her speech, considering that “She’s a crack whore” chants threaten to drown out her voice. By the time she finishes, the “crack whore” chant seems almost quaint, having been replaced by not so subtle suggestions for her to kindly stop speaking.

Now it’s Funk and Dreamer’s turn to enter, which they do to the accompaniment of loud cheers, nondescript techno rock music, and Tommy’s real-life wife Beulah. The Funker looks great—fired up and ready to go, ready to prove Vince McMahon wrong. At least, I hope so. Tommy looks…stoic, which I’m not sure is a compliment. But hell, at least he doesn’t look soft and doughy, like yours truly. Fortunately, I’ve got quite a following. But, for those just tuning in, I honestly don’t look (or feel) like the most dangerous guy in the world. More like somebody’s slightly offbeat biker uncle, who had a few too many drinks and decided to enter a local tough-guy contest.

The crowd is coming alive, though, chanting, “ECW, ECW.” Beulah, noting Lita’s rumored fondness for threesomes (fictional, by the way), suggests making the match a three-on-three, mixed-gender Tag Team match. A couple of girl slaps later, and the match is on. The fans have bought the concept, and the bell rings. All the planning, phone calls, arguing, and frustration become a thing of the past. The match is all ours. Our chance to make a difference—to create a lasting work of art on our own twenty-by-twenty piece of canvas.

Edge and Dreamer start the match. Nobody (and I mean nobody) is expecting this match to be a technical classic, so the main purpose of the opening minute—a headlock, headscissors, etc., etc.—is just an excuse to get to the fun stuff.

The Edgester tags me in, and I make it very clear that I want Terry Funk in the ring; eager to dispense a little payback for my swollen, discolored eye, which I do my best to point to every couple of seconds. In actuality the entrance of Funk, awash in a chorus of “Terry” chants, is merely a means to an end. I am willing to take nine more slaps to the face in return for the privilege of uttering two of the greatest lines of my career.

“This wasn’t a good idea,” I say to Edge as I step through the ropes, my night in danger of reaching a very premature conclusion. “I don’t really want to be here.”

Okay, maybe the lines don’t seem to be so great, at least on the surface. But perhaps the beauty in these words lies not in their delivery but in the knowledge that they were stolen from my five-year-old son, who only hours earlier had said those exact same words to me while sitting on my lap, watching the rest of his church choir mates sing “Heaven” to the congregation. “I don’t really want to be here. I don’t really want to be here.”

Despite my heartfelt admission, Funk is in no mood for compassion, and the match proceeds to break down into mayhem, with me and Funk spilling to the outside, and Tommy and Edge following suit. The girls view the ugliness from afar, knowing they will have a pivotal role in the latter stages of the match.

I’m all over Funk, until he tosses a random chair my way, and it finds its mark—the top of my skull. To this day, this move remains the sole property of Terry Funk, probably because any right-thinking person wouldn’t particularly care for the trail of lawsuits such a move could likely leave in its wake.

Terry is all over me, throwing his big left hand repeatedly. In my opinion, it’s still the best-looking punch in the business and still hurts like hell as well, although considerably less than the hardway punches of six nights earlier.

Meanwhile, Dreamer has stopped Edge, and unveils a motley collection of foreign objects; the beginning of what I will refer to as “the progression of the gimmicks.” Start slow, and build. A road sign. A garbage can. Boom, boom! Not bad, but we all know it’s just a simple starting point.

Funk and I “take a walk,” fighting up the aisle, while Edge brings a ladder into the ring. The progression of the gimmicks has entered its second stage. So has the chanting, which appears to be veering into R-rated territory, courtesy of the “F——you, Edge” chant that has been birthed by the creative minds of the ECW faithful. Where do these chants come from? And how exactly do they grow?

Edge props the ladder in the corner and readies himself for the spear that will drive Dreamer back-first into the steel. But Tommy sidesteps it and hip-tosses Edge, and spine meets metal, to the delight of the partisan crowd.

Terry rolls into the ring and shoulders the ladder, spinning with it in a “whirlybird” maneuver, knocking down me, Edge, and even Dreamer with Three Stooges precision. Actually, it doesn’t look all that good, and we are in momentary danger of losing the interest of the crowd until Terry sets the twelve-foot apparatus up and begins to ascend.

Edge foils the plan, however, stopping Dreamer before tipping the ladder, sending the sixty-one-year-old Funk into an
F Troop
–like free fall to the canvas below. I lay a couple of boots into Funk, knocking him from the ring. Now it’s time to play. The progression of the gimmicks is about to speed up. Way up. Business is about to pick up, courtesy of the barbed-wire board.

I’d used boards like this on dozens of occasions in Japan. But this board, courtesy of “Magic Man” Richie Posner, puts the other versions to shame. It’s thicker, longer, heavier, and laced with considerably more barbed wire (real stuff) than it’s Japanese counterpart. Together, Edge and I lift the board overhead and drop it suplex-style on the prone body of Dreamer, who, truth be told, doesn’t seem to enjoy it. Indeed, his screams of agony seem especially realistic, and Edge seems intrigued by the stubborn barb that just won’t leave its new home in Tommy’s head.

The Edgester and I ready ourselves for a second deadly drop, but Funk is ready, and manages to grab hold of the legs of both me and Edge, sending us sprawling backward to the canvas, the board close behind, a devastating reminder of how real our imaginary world can sometimes be. Edge manages to avoid much of the impact, but the board catches me good, immediately slicing through the palm of my hand, creating a continuous stream of blood; dark, deep red, almost burgundy.

The board is then set up in the corner, and I am peppered with jabs from both Funk and Dreamer, who then proceed to throw me backward into the board. My head and shoulders crash into the lower part of the board, eliciting wails of hardcore satisfaction from the Hammerstein crowd—and a genuine scream of anguish from me, as I realize my hair is entangled in the unforgiving wire. My right forearm has been shredded as well, and blood flows freely from that second body part. My hand, however, remains my biggest problem, and I can see a chunk of meat peeking out through the blood. Even amid the wild verbal onslaught of ECW fans, I have the foresight to predict a future problem.

“THIS IS AWESOME!” the fans chant, as flattering a cheer as I’ve ever heard. It is a chant that has actually become fairly common at smaller wrestling shows around the world, but as a first-time recipient of the chant, I’m pretty touched by it.

Meanwhile, Edge has stopped Dreamer again, and although he’s cut off by Terry, gives me the time I need to free myself from the grasp of the barbs, allowing me to use the board as a weapon on Terry when he returns from educating Edge on the subject of his boots.

Terry returns, and wham, I launch the board at him. Funk goes down hard, the board atop him, and reemerges moments later in a bad way, his face a crimson mask—the point of origin seemingly his eyebrow.

Lita hands me a small coil of barbed wire, and I proceed to work over the general area of Funk’s left eye; dropping a couple of quality barbed-wire-wrapped forearms before blatantly grinding the wire into the affected area.

“You sick guy,” the crowd chants. Actually, they had a more colorful substitute for “guy” that rhymes with “truck.” It’s not quite as flattering as “This is awesome,” but it’s close. Funk proceeds to do a very convincing job of making everyone—even me—believe his life may be coming to an end. After the show, Kirwin Siflies, one of WWE’s incredible directors, who has seen literally hundreds of men ply their crafts in WWE rings, remarked that he was very impressed by Terry. “He does things that no one else does. He says your name when he’s hurt. He asks for help.”

Indeed, Terry
does
do things differently. He always has. His style has always been effective, and it always will be. Despite the naysayers and predictors of doom, Terry Funk is proving me right. He’s doing a hell of a job in turning this match into a memorable mess—a four-star fiasco. And we’re not through yet. The gimmicks still have a way to go to reach their ultimate progression.

Squaring off with the Funker

Terry Funk is carted off, and Edge and I proceed to decimate Dreamer with the barbed-wire bat. Lita even joins the fun, executing a legdrop on the bat that conveniently covers Tommy’s genital area. The crowd chants, “We want Sandman,” but little do they know that Sandman is being saved for a later segment, in which he will interrupt a poem by Eugene, complete with the beautiful imagery, “ECW isn’t phony—I want to hug Balls Mahoney.”

Now it’s Socko time. I don’t know why I didn’t milk the arrival of my little cotton sidekick. Maybe because the match was running longer than Vince had hoped for. So almost immediately after reaching into my pants and pulling out the limp white object (the sock, the sock), I pulled off a surprise of sorts by applying the dreaded Socko claw to the beautiful Beulah, even managing to pull her into the ring, proving that I am capable of impressive feats of strength when my opponent weighs 105 pounds.