Countdown To Lockdown (17 page)

But I didn’t feel like a winner. After all, the little smudge of red wasn’t exactly what one would think of when carving up a Thanksgiving turkey. Wait, come to think of it, there isn’t a whole lot of bloodshed during the Thanksgiving carving. So I may not have used
the proper simile/metaphor there — an almost unforgivable wrestling offense.

I walked out to the ringside announcer’s desk, grabbing my trusty barbed-wire bat in one hand and a microphone in the other. “This half a thimbleful of blood is not how you win a First Blood match,” I yelled into the microphone. “I said someone was going to get busted wide open … and I’m going to make this kid suffer.”

Shelley rolled into the ring, oblivious to the barbaric pleasure I was about to indulge in. He’s draped over the bottom rope, in perfect position for me to begin the carving process. I lower the bat toward Shelley’s head, slowly, carefully. Like so much of wrestling, or life in general, anticipation is such a key to really maximizing potential enjoyment. Far too often, the appetite is not properly whetted for the finer things in life, be it a vintage wine, a decadent dessert, or a barbed-wire bat to the forehead.

So, I let the audience savor the possibilities, slowly placing a single barb on Shelley’s head before the Stinger earns a little payback from my chair shot heard around the world.
Bam!
From seemingly nowhere the Stinger has struck the head of the Hardcore Legend with a mighty chair shot. I fall to my butt, roll to my stomach, and come up with half a thimbleful of blood of my own, like a baby chick peeing red down my head.

But it’s enough to cost me the match. The referee calls for the bell, and I am the official loser of this First Blood match.

Now it’s time to draw some money. The things we have done thus far on the evening’s
Impact
— Shelley’s challenge, K.C.’s lyrics, the “Tweak It” song, the match itself — are all just reasons to get us to this point.

I hop out to the floor, the warmth of my own blood reassuring me, letting me know that the visual I want is there — the baby chick is peeing a little more freely now. It’s not a hideous mask of congealed plasma, like you’d see in way too many matches involving blood. This
is more artistic, like a Jackson Pollock done in crimson, if Pollock worked on right sides of faces, instead of boring canvas.

Sting and I converge and throw a barrage of wild haymakers before being pulled apart — really pulled apart by a security force that apparently didn’t pass “Pull Aparts 101,” which more or less teaches the ancient art of pulling apart while not actually pulling apart. I mean, I’m not asking these guys to be hockey refs and just watch the brawl, but don’t be so adamant about breaking it up that the guys can’t get their licks in. We don’t actually hate each other, you know. Just trying to get people interested.

Hopefully they will be. It’s been a good day of television. I’m proud of myself, not just for surviving a match and a pull-apart brawl that was probably pulled apart too soon, but for sending my character out on a limb without a net for the past few weeks of television. Like I wrote earlier, I’m not looking for real heat — just interest. I just want people to care. And I believe that they will. One of the drawbacks of taping our shows in the Impact Zone is that it’s difficult to get a true read for what people are buying — and what they’re not. The
Impact
crowd is a blend of TNA loyalists and Universal Theme Park guests. Some of these loyalists can’t help but feel complacent, as they’ve been supporting the company so regularly for so long. By now, they’ve seen it all a bunch of times, and wrestling, no matter how well done, just isn’t going to excite them the way it once did.

I heard a similar concern from a respected cameraman in the motion picture industry. Looking for a way to supplement his income, this talented cameraman turned to the world of adult films, brandishing a pseudonym, “Conrad Doughbler” (not to be confused with the legendary NFL player), so as not to stain his legitimate film credentials. I asked Conrad if he found filming the adult stuff to be enjoyable. Alas for the Dough man, the thrill was gone, a casualty of a profession in which DP no longer stands for “director of photography.”

Everyone was happy with the match — the Guns, Sting, even me.
The Guns thanked me for letting them get their classic moves in. One of them points to the other and refers to him as Josh. “Who the heck is Josh?” I ask.

“Oh, that’s Chris’s name,” Alex said.

“Really?” I said. “And what’s your real name?”

To tell the truth, I can’t even remember what he said. Bill or Ted, maybe … maybe not.

Even after twenty-five years in the business, the name thing can throw a guy just a little bit. Just ask Kip, who wrestled as Billy, but whose name, I believe, is Monte. Or Stinger, who’s Steve; or B. G. James, who I think was Brian Armstrong when I met him, before he became the Road Dogg, before he became the Road Dogg Jesse James. It just brings to mind a comedian who many years ago took note of the acting credits in
Hawaii Five-O
, where Kam Fong played Chin Ho, and Zulu played Kono.

Awhile back, I was attempting to leave tickets at the “will call” area of the box office for Frogman LeBlanc, a journeyman wrestler I’d worked with twenty years ago in Texas. The Frog had recently gotten in touch with me through the miracle of MySpace, and I was looking forward to seeing him at the show. Only one problem — I didn’t know his real name. I asked around a little, until finally, with a state athletic commissioner and a few local independent wrestlers around me, and with B. G. James/Road Dogg/Brian Armstrong as my witness, the following words were said:

“Hey Silverback, could you get in touch with Slick or Half-squat and see if they know Frogman’s real name?”

Only in wrestling, brother — only in wrestling.

Absolutely nothing to do with wrestling.
Go ahead, skip it.

Yes, I know I detailed a meeting with Wolfowitz previously in
The Hardcore Diaries
in the provocative, erotically charged chapter “My Dinner with Wolfie.” No, I’m not rehashing history here. Indeed, this is an altogether different encounter with Wolfie, which took place during the
Diaries’
final editing process.

I was in Washington, D.C., driving an Air Force officer to a Friday night dinner, honoring a wounded warrior on the occasion of the anniversary of the warrior’s “alive day” — the date of his injury in Iraq. The officer in my car had been injured in battle as well; in fact I’d met him a few years earlier when he’d been recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The officer knew I wasn’t a particularly big fan of Dr. Wolfowitz’s, and he warned me that Wolfie/the Wolfmeister/Wolforama might be in attendance at the dinner. Indeed, even after leaving the Pentagon to take up his post as the head of the World Bank, the international financial institution that provides financial and technical assistance to developing countries, Dr. Wolfowitz had remained steadfast in his support for injured
service members. Which I admired, even if I did hate the guy’s guts … and his breath. Especially his breath.

I’d specifically mentioned in
Diaries
that a blast of Wolfowitz’s breath would have dropped a lesser man. Ouch! Kind of hard to be friends after a remark like that. I mean, disagreeing on foreign policy is one thing; writing about a man’s halitosis is pretty much a non-negotiable nonstarter.

So, during the course of the dinner, I did what I thought was the manly, hardcore, mature thing to do — I hid from Paul Wolfowitz. Hid from Wolfie as if it was my turn to pick up the tab at a Devastation Incorporated reunion dinner.

Finally, after hours of regaling troops injured in real battles with my own exaggerated tales of injuries suffered in make-believe battles, I headed for the door, knowing I had a good three-hundred-mile drive in front of me, thankful I’d been spared any type of incident with the notorious Teen Wolf. (Yes, I know Wolfowitz hasn’t technically been a teen wolf since the early sixties, but I’m just about out of Wolf references.)

Suddenly, from across the room, I saw Wolfie’s eyes glare at me as he started his move. I was headed for the door and had a sizable lead on him, but Wolfowitz was like a linebacker heading me off at the pass with a precise angle of pursuit. He was going to catch me, interrogate me, breathe on me.

“Excuse me, are you Mick Foley?” he said, not angry, not even a little tired from his journey across the restaurant.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “How are you, Dr. Wolfowitz?” Trying to be polite, buying a little time before bolting out the door.

“I just want to thank you for all you do for our troops,” Wolfie said, serious, complimentary. Hard to really hate a guy when he’s being so nice to you.

“Well, thank you, sir,” I said.
Okay
, I thought,
time to leave. Maybe just one polite question, before heading out.
“How is everything at the World Bank, sir?”

“Ughh,” Wolfowitz groaned, letting out a blast of breath that was … minty fresh? What the heck? I’d expected Nosferatu and gotten Stacy Keibler instead. Because Stacy’s breath when I met her was so Doublemint delicious. Stacy once ate a tuna fish sandwich while sitting next to me on a plane (where, I should mention, she specifically asked a passenger if they could move so she and I could hang out), and she even made that smell good. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, Wolfie, grunting — minty-fresh breath.

“If you thought the Pentagon was full of bureaucrats, you ought to try getting something done at the World Bank,” Wolfie explained.

“That must be frustrating, sir.”

“Well, it is,” he said. “Especially if you’re trying to make decisions that could improve millions of lives.”

“You know, Dr. Wolfowitz, along with what I do with the troops, world poverty is one of my great passions.” Hey, maybe as long as I was talking with one of the most influential men in the world, I could score a couple points.

“Really?” he asked, intrigued.

“Yes, sir, that’s true,” I said. “I sponsor seven kids around the world with Christian Children’s Fund [now ChildFund International].”

“Which countries?” the World Bank head honcho asked.

“Well, I have three kids in Mexico, one in the Philippines, one in Sri Lanka, one in Ethiopia, and I have a wonderful little child in Sierra Leone.”

“Sierra Leone,” Wolfowitz said. “I sponsor a child there, too.”

For the next several minutes, it was just me and him — a battered old wrestler and the president of the World Bank, chatting like old friends, gossiping like schoolgirls, carrying on about things like the illicit diamond smuggling trade in Sierra Leone, child soldiers, amputation by machete — little things like that.

And it dawned on me that none of my friends from home would give a crap about the diamond smuggling trade in Sierra Leone. Wait, check that, John McNulty would. Maybe Steve Zangre, too. But none
of the others. Certainly not Imbro, who never seems to tire of personal anecdotes about Christy Canyon, but would shield himself from stories of any emotional depth as if he was Dracula, fending off the first rays of daybreak. Yet here was Wolfie, a guy I claimed to hate, a guy whose very breath I’d cast aspersion on, hanging out with me, trading concerns about the developing world.

I felt like such a phony, like a beauty contestant claiming natural Cs when the slightest feel, the most tender touch, the simplest tweak would have exposed the perfect, impossibly rounded, gravity-defying truth. This talk with Wolfie seemed to be tweaking a nipple of its own: the nipple of my conscience. And was doing it in a less gentle way than I would have found preferable. I just couldn’t take it.

“Sir, may I be honest with you?” I said.

“Of course,” Wolfie assured me. Okay, do-or-die time here; he really had a grip on that thing, twisting it around metaphorically like he was trying to tune in to the Opry live from Nashville on an AM radio in the old days, all the way from Missouri on a cloudy night.

“Well, sir, I never really liked you.”

A hearty laugh from the Wolfmeister, followed by an explanation from the Hardcore Legend and then discussions on the war in Iraq, the care of our wounded veterans, and the benefits of mosquito netting in lands across the world.

Wolfie even offered me a stick of Doublemint gum, noting that my breath smelled like I’d been gargling with a drunk man’s balls. Just kidding — he never really specified what kind of balls they were.