Countdown To Lockdown (30 page)

“You know, honey, I’m not really comfortable discussing this type of thing with you.”

“Okay,” she said, laughing.

“Maybe you’d better talk to Mom about it.”

“Okay.”

April 14, 2009

Long Island, New York

9:45 p.m.

“Oh fuuuuuuuudge!” Remember when little Ralphie said these words, after losing his hubcap full of lugnuts while his old man tried to fix a flat tire in record time in
A Christmas Story
? Except he used a different word than
fudge
? Well that was kind of how I felt this evening,
about two hours ago, after finding out that all these great visualizations I’d had would be of no help to me at
Lockdown.

You see, all of my visualization had revolved around a special cage I’d been told would be built for the show. Hell, I’d even sat down with the engineer, working out the specifics and dimensions, trying to customize the cage to fit my strengths and hide my weaknesses. Now it’s gone. The beautiful blue steel bars? Gone. The easy climbing access? Gone. The three-foot walking section at the top of the structure, perfect for exchanging high-altitude punches or for dropping a dramatic elbow? Gone, gone, all gone. My dreams, hopes, and aspirations? Those too are gone, gone, all gone.

I was told it was a dollars-and-cents issue. That close to a million dollars for the new structure might be a little too high a tab to pay to disguise the fact that Mick Foley can’t climb. Sure, they didn’t put it quite like that, but I think that was essentially what the decision came down to.

In truth, most of the guys in TNA are more than athletic enough to take care of the creative opportunities a standard steel-mesh cage provides. When I first heard about TNA’s annual all-cage match show a few years ago, I couldn’t help but feel skeptical. After all, when I was growing up, a cage was the match of last resort. It was the place where feuds went to be settled. Bruno and Koloff. Snuka and Muraco. Oz and Kazmaier. I just couldn’t quite grasp what an all-cage match show might look like, or how it could possibly work. But TNA has made it work for the past four years. Then again, those shows didn’t have me in their main event. No wonder they worked.

I really had
seen
that picture involving that sinister blue steel structure. I had
thought
the picture, too. Was this close (thumb and forefinger maybe an inch apart) to
being
the picture. Certainly, I wasn’t going to be afraid to make mistakes.

But now the picture’s been changed dramatically, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to psychologically adjust in time for
Lockdown.
It seems like an awful lot to ask me to adapt only five days out. Like asking
Tiger Woods to win a tournament before his knee has had sufficient time to heal. Like asking Santa to fly around the world with only seven reindeer. Sorry, without that extra reindeer, no way he visits billions of kids in a single night. It’s like asking Barry Bonds to crack seventy-three homers in a single season without the proper nutrition and training.

I considered myself an average cage-match wrestler at best. And that was in my prime. Sure, I had some pretty good cage matches along the way, but back in those days I could at least count on a couple of the old standbys to see me through the tough times. You know, throwing your opponent into the cage, raking his face against the mesh. As long as I had those two life vests in my boat, I could pretty much save any match from a stagnant pool of mediocrity. Something tells me that our fans will need a little more than the throw and rake in the
Lockdown
main event. Too bad I’ve got nothing else to offer, at least for now. Let’s see if a new picture materializes in the next five days.

At least I’ll have some help, having pored over the famous Foley CD selection for some time-tested tunes that will hopefully provide a well-needed jolt of inspiration as I travel the roads from Long Island to Elmira, New York; to Scranton, Pennsylvania; to Philadelphia; to Honesdale, Pennsylvania; and back to Philadelphia for
Lockdown.
A total of around seven hundred miles — and I think I’ll need every one of them.

Here’s some of the CDs I’ve hand-selected for the task. Sometimes I’ll listen to the whole thing, sometimes just a song or two. Sometimes I’ll listen to one song several times in a row. So I’ll mention each CD and then a song or two from each that’s given me a goose bump or two over the years. Maybe you can give a few of them a try sometime.

David Allan Coe —
16 Biggest Hits
: “The Ride” still does it for me after all these years. Coe singing, “Boy can you make folks feel what you feel inside? ’Cause if you’re big star bound, let me warn you it’s a long hard ride,” brings me back to all those weekend
trips from my college in Cortland, New York, to DeNucci’s wrestling school in Freedom, Pennsylvania.

Sheryl Crow —
The Very Best of Sheryl Crow
: I dig Sheryl; from her remake of “The First Cut Is the Deepest” through her better-known hits, this is one of those CDs I can listen to from start to finish. Wait, check that. I do skip the duet with Kid Rock, and that’s no knock on the Kid, but I just can’t buy “a different girl every night at the hotel” as an accurate description of “living my life in a slow hell.”

Blackfoot —
Rattlesnake Rock ’n’ Roll: The Best of Blackfoot
: Rickey Medlocke’s primal scream and a soaring guitar solo make “Diary of a Workingman” one of the most motivational, depressing songs ever recorded.

Warren Zevon —
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (An Anthology), Volume II
: For some reason, I can listen to “Suzie Lightning” over and over, despite the fact that I have no idea what it’s about. Coincidentally, the song always makes me think of a girl I kissed in 1987 while another Zevon tune, “Sentimental Hygiene,” played on MTV in the background.

Eclectic Sampler 1
: A student at Vincennes Junior College in Indiana gave this to me after I spoke at the school. There’s some cool stuff on it, but I picked it for the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt.” Over the years I’ve been given a lot of cool stuff by my fans.

Gillian Welch —
Soul Journey
: This disc was given to me by Michael “Mad Dog” Tearson, who now hosts
Classic Vinyl
on Sirius satellite radio. “Look at Miss Ohio” and “Wrecking Ball” were two of my tunes of choice when I was getting ready for Randy Orton in 2004.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band —
Live in New York City
: “Youngstown” contains my all-time favorite guitar solo. I spoke
with E Street guitarist Nils Lofgren at considerable length about the solo, telling him it reminded me of a great wrestling match, constantly building, ultimately concluding in a breathtaking fashion.

Sinead O’Connor —
The Lion and the Cobra
: Yeah, I know, Sinead kind of put the boots to her career when she tore up a photo of the pope on live TV back in 1992. But “Just Like U Said It Would B” is a little treasure from 1987 I discovered just a few years ago. I really feed off the emotion at the end of the song.

John Mellencamp —
Human Wheels
: I’ll listen to “Sweet Evening Breeze” and “What If I Came Knocking” back-to-back about four times in a row. “Sweet Evening Breeze,” a sad but nostalgic look back at a short-term romance, isn’t on any of his greatest-hits compilations, but it’s probably my favorite Mellencamp tune.

Kenny Loggins — “Danger Zone”: Yes, I’m still kidding about that one.

Julie Miller —
Broken Things
: I once listed “All My Tears” as one of the songs I’d take with me to a deserted island. It’s probably been a good three years since I’ve listened to it, so it may get a few consecutive listens on this road trip.

Hole —
Live Through This
: I know Courtney Love has some issues, which is probably what makes a line like “someday you will ache like I ache” in “Doll Parts” feel so raw and real.

Steve Earle —
Transcendental Blues
: Maybe I really am a glutton for punishment, but I just love “Lonelier Than This,” one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. I’ve been a huge Steve Earle fan for over twenty years, but he’s been out of the rotation for a while. Glad to have him back in.

Drive-By Truckers —
Southern Rock Opera
,
Act 1
: Another disc I haven’t listened to in a while. These guys pay tribute to their seventies Southern rock heroes on kick-ass tunes like “Ronnie and Neil” and “Birmingham.”

Dire Straits —
Making Movies
: I used to play this CD to death — both on my radio show in college and on all those road trips to DeNucci’s school. “Tunnel of Love,” “Expresso Love,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Skateaway” — one of my all-time favorite discs.

The White Stripes —
Icky Thump
: A couple listens of the title track at high volume might be just what I need.

Tori Amos —
Little Earthquakes
and
Live at Montreux
: Come on, you didn’t think I’d take a road trip leading to my biggest match in years without “Winter,” did you? The 1991 version from
Live at Montreux
may be my favorite of all. But asking Tori Amos to salvage my match at
Lockdown
may be too much to ask of anyone.

I’m not sure what, if anything, I’ll listen to right before my match. But this selection of songs should at least get me into the building, if not inside the cage itself. Once there, it will be up to me to really
be
the picture. Provided I can
see
the picture first. I’ve still got five days to look.

One of the worst days in my career.

Let me state for the record that I hated the June 2007 WWE story line that featured the car-bomb explosion and possible death of Vince McMahon. Absolutely hated it.

Especially when I watched
SmackDown
a few days after the initial
Raw
explosion and saw the announcers treating the feigned death like it was a real one. There’s a certain tone of sincerity WWE announcers have when tragedy has struck; a tone that lets the viewers know that what they are seeing is no longer a show, that something very real has taken place. When done in the wake of a real-life tragedy, such as the in-ring death of Owen Hart in 1999 or the death of Eddie Guerrero in 2005, that tone can be of great comfort. In those cases the announce team serves almost as trusted friends helping millions of viewers through an emotionally trying time. In the case of the McMahon fake car-bomb death, the announce team was being asked to duplicate that same legitimate emotion for a completely bogus angle. In the process, I think we greatly violated that trust.

I hate to use the word
hate
too often.
Hate
is a strong word when
used correctly and infrequently. So, I’m going to go with it here and hope that it’s the right choice to properly convey my dislike, disbelief, and disgust with what I saw on the television screen later in that same show.

I hated, absolutely hated, the television segment that saw dozens of WWE wrestlers walk out onto the entrance ramp to pay “tribute” to the memory of Vince McMahon, who was alive and well behind the curtain, pulling the strings to the world’s largest puppet show — a cast of barely willing participants, doing their best to appear sad at the make-believe loss of their employer, but with an occasional legitimate “I can’t believe I’m doing this” look betraying their faux sadness.