Countdown To Lockdown (23 page)

April 6, 2009

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2:11 p.m.

Just two hours and forty-nine minutes until showtime — my big appearance at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino. The big time. I’m sure it will be fun, and the truth is, I would rather deal with casinos, whose checks aren’t likely to bounce, than with all but a few independent promoters. I’m going to put my booking information out there on the
Web in a few days, and I will probably be the only guy whose info comes with a warning: “Don’t book me unless you really, really know what you’re doing” — especially because a promoter could book a few quality wrestlers, guys who can wrestle a good, entertaining match, for the same price I get to show up and sign autographs.

But following my tag match in New Orleans, I actually began to rethink my “no wrestling except for Pay-Per-View” policy. The match went so well, and Beer Money — Robert Roode and James Storm — were so much fun to work with that I started to think about participating in a few more matches. Certainly TNA would welcome it. I even found myself openly talking with friends about possibly teaming up with Al Snow for a Best Friends Ten-Year Reunion tour. You know, as long as Al did most of the work and I got top billing. Kind of like this:

MICK FOLEY

AL SNOW

10-YEAR TAG TEAM REUNION

I had last worked the Lakefront Arena in New Orleans in October 1993, battling the 400-pound colossus known as Vader at
Halloween Havoc.
Man, that was a brutal and bloody affair; hard fought, a Pay-Per-View main event to be proud of. I found myself comparing my life, what I’d gained, what I’d lost during the near sixteen years since then.

In a way, it could have felt like returning in front of a smaller crowd in a far different type of match was a setback, a step down. After all, there were five or six thousand fans on hand that night in ’93, compared to maybe a thousand two nights ago. I gave that
Havoc
match almost everything I had, including a sickening bump on the wooden entrance ramp that I literally hoped would end my career. A career-ending injury would have meant a $120,000 payoff from my Lloyd’s of London disability policy, enabling me to bail out on a business I’d grown tired of and frustrated with, and that I really thought offered
me little hope for the future. At one point in the match, after hitting Vader with a fan’s camera and looking at the crowd, setting off a wave of reaction, I sensed that I was simultaneously seeing the highest and the lowest points of my career. The highest because I had never been able to command that type of reaction before. The lowest because I felt like I’d never hit that high again.

Fortunately, I was wrong. I got a little higher than
Halloween Havoc
over the next several years.

But back to two nights ago. How did that compare? In terms of dignity and prestige I think I’ve become a little more sensitive to that type of analysis since
The Wrestler
, where even glowing reviews regularly pointed to Mickey Rourke’s character’s regression from Madison Square Garden to VFW halls or dingy gymnasiums as the ultimate sign of his fall from grace. Maybe it was. But I think that no matter the venue or the size of the crowd, there is something to be said for the pride one takes in their work and in how they carry themselves.

In 1981, I was a major Kinks fan, buying all their albums, taking the Long Island Railroad into the Garden to watch them on their Give the People What They Want tour. After hitting it big as part of the midsixties British Invasion with such classic rock staples as “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” the Kinks had fallen into midseventies obscurity, releasing critically acclaimed but little-noticed concept albums and seeing their massive fan base dissipate. They were even banned from touring in the United States for an extended period, for reasons I could never fully comprehend.

Given all this, it would have seemed logical for the group to see their early eighties return to prominence as the ultimate comeback story: selling out hockey arenas, moving millions of albums.

So it was with great surprise that I heard lead singer Ray Davies downplay the importance of these huge events, talking instead about the importance of “seeing faces in the crowd.” As long as he could see faces, Davies said, he was fulfilled. The size of the crowd didn’t matter. Just as long as he saw faces.

That was a little disappointing to me back then, especially as an avid WWF fan who thought of wrestling at MSG as not only the pinnacle of wrestling success but the standard of it as well. It wasn’t until four years later, setting up rings for promoter Tommy Dee in small venues throughout the five boroughs of New York, that I learned that not every wrestling show pulled in twenty thousand people. Most of those Tommy Dee shows drew several hundred fans, sometimes a thousand. I mean, I remember going to Nassau Coliseum shows in ’82 and ’83, seeing a crowd of thirteen thousand, and thinking it was a lousy house.

I saw Ray Davies several months ago on a solo tour, at the Hammerstein Ballroom right across the street from the Garden. I thought it was awesome; the guy sounded great and I knew the words to every song but one. I don’t think a single fan in attendance thought any less of Davies just because he was playing across the street from the Garden instead of in it, to a crowd of 2,500 instead of 20,000. They probably enjoyed the show even more.

Ironically, the Hammerstein is the venue where the finale for
The Wrestler
was filmed, during a Ring of Honor show — one of the best-attended shows in company history. But many reviewers, not understanding the nature of the wrestling business, saw the Hammerstein setting as a sad indicator of just how far Mickey Rourke’s character, Ram, had fallen.

(Hold on. I just sent a text to Chris Jericho, wondering why there was no Ram Jam at last night’s
WrestleMania.
I caught only half of
’Mania
, as it had been a long, draining day by the time I arrived in Milwaukee. I was a little disappointed with the show overall. Jericho and Steamboat were great, but the show seemed to peak with an incredible Undertaker versus Michaels match and never quite refound itself. Still a very good show, but I think WWE should have seen the possibility of that particular problem coming and avoided it.)

It just seems like that perception is part of the challenge facing wrestlers, even the most successful ones. How do you find dignity
in a post-Garden world, when so many onlookers see success in the wrestling business as an all-or-nothing proposition?

So, maybe there were only a thousand people in New Orleans two nights ago. At least I got to look at them, really take a good look at their faces. And they were happy.

Now if only
Lockdown
were as simple. People in Philadelphia don’t smile anyway, not unless someone gets hurt. Those are some pretty ruthless SOBs in the City of Brotherly Love. And I will try to give them a match they can appreciate and remember. If only my legs will cooperate.

April 8, 2009

Williamsburg, Virginia

10:26 p.m.

I’m two days into what is quite possibly the worst vacation of my life. Do you have any idea how sick I have to feel in order to bail out on a Busch Gardens visit? Passing up on Alpengeist, the Big Bad Wolf, and Apollo’s Chariot? Something up in Milwaukee must have really disagreed with me — something far worse than promoter Dave Hero’s
constant disapproval of the recent TNA product. I’ve known and liked Dave for years, and he’s picked up many a dinner tab over the years, but man, talk about a downer.

It’s not as if he didn’t have valid points, even if some of them were nit-picking. This close to match time — less than two weeks — I try to keep everything positive, blocking out anything negative, no matter how valid that feedback might be. I don’t check the Internet, look at newsletters, ask for opinions — nothing. I’m just happy living in a little bubble of contentment, not really caring which side of that self-confidence/self-delusion line I fall on. At least not until
Lockdown
is over. Ultimately, the ratings and buy rate will let me know how well I did, as well as a number of other factors; where TNA goes from
Lockdown
, how well Sting is positioned, whether or not I’m still in a good position to help the company advance.

I spent fifteen hours lying in bed yesterday, getting up only long enough for spirited sprints to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. I was a little better today, though far from good. I couldn’t make it to Busch Gardens, but I was able to keep a little food down — my first success in two full days. I had hoped to really work on my conditioning for the next several days, planning to ease up about three or four days before the big event for some light cardio work. I’m afraid this stomach bug or whatever is going to set me back quite a way.

Maybe walking up and down the rolling hills of Busch Gardens, or climbing up several flights of stairs at the indoor water park at Great Wolf Lodge will be just what I need.

Self-explanatory.

Being far too frugal with my money to valet-park, I was heading from the remote lot at the Disneyland Hotel when I got the message, “Mick, this is Scott Fishman. Give me a call. We may have a unique opportunity for you at Spike TV.”

Hmm. Spike TV. Home of TNA — Total Nonstop Action — the place I’d almost called home three years earlier, before Vince McMahon had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I had worked for Fishman (or Fish, as we’ll now refer to him) several years earlier, as the host of
Robot Wars
, back when Spike was The New TNN. Perhaps in life, you sometimes really do reap what you sow, as I had thoroughly enjoyed my time at the
Robot
helm and had apparently been easy to work with. Word has it that several of the crew members enjoyed my unique perspectives on life — made over the course of several days when I didn’t know my microphone was still on.

I wonder, still really sometimes wonder, what I would have said to Fish if that call had come just a few days earlier. I believe it would have been a simple and friendly “Thanks, but no thanks,” before heading
back to the job I loved, the job I honestly felt would be mine for the next several years.

But that was before Sunday, before having F-bombs of the “shock and awe” variety dropped on me. As far as the initial barrage was concerned, it had come as a complete surprise — truly, I had never seen it coming.

When I was a kid, I remember sleeping over at Jack Donohue’s Friendship Farm Basketball Camp in upstate New York. I was about three or four years old, and I very vaguely remember seeing a tall, gangly figure playing on those outdoor courts; a seven-foot-plus silhouette looming larger than life — if only in my memory.

Jack Donohue had been my father’s best friend, and was perhaps best known as the high school basketball coach of Lew Alcindor, later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the all-time greats in the game of basketball. My mom remembers the teenage Alcindor at Donohue’s wedding — knees practically up to his chest in the church pew, before he succumbed to food poisoning and was pulled from the cockpit, sporting his trademark goggles, and his basketball shorts. Oh, wait, that last part happened in the first
Airplane
movie.

But Donohue, later the coach of the Canadian national basketball team, had been a huge influence on Abdul-Jabbar — a fact I read about in detail in Abdul-Jabbar’s 1987 autobiography
Giant Steps.
Kareem was full of praise for my dad’s best friend, until one pivotal game in Power High School’s 1965 season, where Coach Donohue had been unhappy with Alcindor’s first-half performance and let him know it. “You’re playing like a nigger,” he told Alcindor, referring to a type of flashy play that was popular on New York City playgrounds, which catered to a largely African-American clientele. He never actually called Lew the N word — not technically — but for Alcindor it was a turning point in his relationship with Donohue; a point from which the relationship would never be the same.