The Hardcore Diaries (14 page)

May 13, 2006
10:25
P
.
M
.—Long Island, NY

Dear Hardcore Diary,

The Wexlers just left, following a successful night of
SmackDown!
and pizza at the Foley house. Mr. Wexler had to actually carry Stephen out of the car and into the house, a fact that has become increasingly necessary over the course of the last year and a half. Despite the tough breaks he has had to endure, I’ve never seen Stephen when he wasn’t smiling, which leaves me feeling like I should be smacked around by a couple of Stone Cold comeback punches the next time I have the nerve to complain about
anything.
Except for people who mess around with my ECW
One Night Stand
ideas. I reserve the right to complain about that.

Increasingly, I feel like I may have been dealt an unlikely favor when the “Kiss My Ass Club” segment was shelved. Sure, it would have been one of the all-time great episodes in
Raw
history and would have instantly made Terry Funk a name to contend with, but with Mr. McMahon involved, the possibility of turning a serious angle into an over-the-top comedy routine was a strong one. Which is not really a knock on Vince so much as a lack of foresight on my part. I can rattle off a long list of Mr. McMahon’s best attributes, but a sense of subtlety wouldn’t be up there. For this thing to succeed—and there’s no guarantee it will—we’re going to be dealing with various shades of gray. Had Vince been involved, it very well could have been too black and white.

It’s not an easy path by any means. I will need to be vehemently pro-WWE while still remaining vaguely fan-friendly. Edge will be vehemently pro-WWE, while professing an open hatred for the fans. The Funker and Tommy Dreamer may very well find themselves swimming against a tide of apathy for a while, although I can’t help but believe that Terry Funk’s WWE return on Monday in Lubbock, Texas, only about eighty miles from his house in Amarillo, will be met with great enthusiasm.

I just hope that they don’t try to script us. I understand the concept behind scripting interviews. It helps ensure that time considerations are not abandoned, and it gives the creative team some assurance that storylines are being followed and that the correct points are being made.

At their best, these wrestling interviews, or promos, are a mesmerizing combination of emotion and instinct. The very best can go out to the ring armed only with a microphone, a few basic ideas, and a heartfelt belief in themselves. The words will come naturally if only the situation is right and the emotion is real.

And if the situation isn’t right, and the emotion isn’t real? Well, then we fake it, depending on experience and a cache of clichés to carry us through. Sometimes they suck. Hence the need for scripting. But on Monday night I’ll be in that ring face-to-face with Terry Funk, the greatest wrestler I’ve ever seen—my mentor and friend. And deep down, I’ll want to show him that when I’m in my groove, I’m as good with a mike as anyone. And deep down, he’ll want to show not only his Lubbock fans, but millions more around the world, why he’s even better than me. We both believe in ourselves, but more importantly, we both believe in each other. We each understand that it’s not really about him or me—it’s about
us.
We have the same goals—get people talking about
One Night Stand.
The situation will be right. The emotion will be real. We have the genuine ability to create magic on Monday. Please don’t hand us a script.

And if they give us a script anyway? I say do what comes naturally and then blame Funk afterward. What are they going to do, fire him?

I may do verbal battle with Paul Heyman the following week in Las Vegas. In which case, I’ll just say reread the last two paragraphs and apply all the same principles to Paul E. He’s one of the greatest promo men in the history of our business, and better yet, he lives, eats, and breathes ECW. He knows he’ll be fighting for ECW’s very existence out there, and will have a deep belief in every word he says. And I’ll believe in everything I say. And better yet, I’ll go out to that ring believing it was Paul E. who called me a whore. Vince, please do yourself and your shareholders a favor—don’t hand me a script. Let us make some magic.

I think there is an even bigger long-term danger to the scripting process. It eliminates the need for a wrestler to think for himself. I will admit that some of my best lines have been written for me. Hey, Tom Hanks has a couple of little golden men on his mantel, thanks to saying scripted lines, and I’m pretty sure DeNiro didn’t ad lib most of
Raging Bull.
So I’m not ashamed to admit that not all of my material has been my own.

Luckily, most of the scripted lines came later in my career, when Mankind became something of a comedy character, and Commissioner Foley regularly held court in center ring with a cast of thousands. Well, maybe not thousands, but you get my drift.

But that was fourteen years into my career, when I had already been thinking for myself through the course of hundreds of interviews. And it seems like I was always thinking. Much to the chagrin of my wife, I was obsessed with those damn promos. She would see me staring into space, one eye twitching, right hand shaking, and she would know I had just ventured into Promoland. Sure, I’d return once in a while to pay a few bills or conceive a child, but for many years, I was only an occasional inhabitant of the real world.

Many of today’s WWE Superstars have never even seen Promoland, let alone taken up residence there. They’ve had no reason to. It’s almost like a defunct mom-and-pop amusement park, made obsolete by the advent of computer technology. But just as there will always be a place for the classic out-and-back wooden roller coaster in today’s world of high-tech, big-dollar thrill rides, there will always be a place for the heartfelt promo in today’s tightly scripted sports entertainment environment.

I spent quite a bit of time in Promoland today. Physically, I may have been elsewhere—throwing junk from my garage into a rented Dumpster, hitting the gym, buying authentic German cold cuts for Mother’s Day. But mentally, I spent most of my day at the old park, hearing lines in my mind, squinting an eye, shaking a hand.

I bounded in my front door around six
P
.
M
., soaked in sweat, drenched with excitement.

“Colette, Colette!” I called.

My wife met me at the stairs, rushing to my needs as if I was Hughie with a boo-boo. “What’s wrong, Mick?”

“Listen to this promo idea.”

“Sure.”

“Well, there’s this scene in my last book where Scooter is having the gash on his cheek stitched by his mother.”

Courtesy of the Foley family.

“Okay.” I love my wife, but like most people, she doesn’t actually read my novels, so I had to kind of spell it out for her.

“Well, while she’s stitching him up, he comes to find out that his mother never told him that the girl across the street used to try and visit him when he was injured years earlier. [His father accidentally shot him.] He says ‘Mom, did Nina ever come by when I was hurt?’ She says, ‘Oh, that Spanish girl?’ Even though Nina was Puerto Rican.

“Well, when Scooter finds out that his one real friendship was sabotaged by his mother, and that she also hocked his grandfather’s engagement ring, he ends up pulling away from his mother before the stitches are done, leaving the needle hanging from its thread, swinging back and forth across his face.”

Colette’s look of mild uneasiness was vivid proof that my visit to Promoland was time well spent. “What does this have to do with you, Mick?” she said.

“That’s how I want to do my promo.”

Colette stared at me with a mixture of shock and intrigue.

“I’ll have Funk hardway my eye. We’ll go to the trainer’s room, and I will actually do the promo while I’m being stitched. It’s never been done before.” Who knows, maybe it has, but I’m on a roll here.

“Then, when I really start getting into it, I’ll tell the doctor to leave me the hell alone, pull away from him and do the rest of the promo in close-up, making sure I move my head around a little so that the needle can swing back and forth, like a pendulum. Then, if I feel like it, I’ll give the thread a real good tug and undo all those stitches.”

With that, Colette jumped into my arms and we made passionate, hardcore love right there on the stairs. Okay, so I made that last part up. Besides, there’s no S-E-X allowed in Promoland. It’s a family place.

May 14, 2006
Aboard American Airlines Flight #703
en route to Dallas, where I will connect
to Lubbock for tomorrow’s Raw

Dear Hardcore Diary,

My son Mickey is a religious zealot. Yeah, I know just last week I called him a rock-and-roller. He still is. But he’s a religious zealot, too. I don’t mean “zealot” in a bad way, even if I’m not sure it’s possible for that particular word to carry a positive connotation. I just mean he has a particularly keen interest in the life and teachings of Jesus—his birth and even more so, his death.

The interest started inauspiciously enough, with a manger scene at Santa’s Village last fall—the same trip where I received the verbal smackdown from UNICEF. Until that point, Mickey and I had enjoyed a rather unique relationship when it came to Christmas, and especially Santa Claus. Mickey was that rare child who didn’t like Santa. I’m not talking about a kid who cries when placed on Santa’s lap—that’s a seasonal rite of passage that all my kids have been through. We cherish those photos of our kids bawling their eyes out when forced to sit on the lap of a strange fat guy. And, no, I’m not talking about me.

But Mickey wasn’t afraid of Santa—he just didn’t like him. Actually, not liking him was less about genuine dislike and more about working an anti–Santa Claus gimmick in order to get a rise out of his Santa-loving dad. Seemingly every night, the little guy and I would perform a ludicrous ritual in which he would approach me slowly, a huge sparkle in his mischievous blue eyes. My heart would tingle every time I saw that look, for though it may have been the single dumbest act of bonding in the history of fathers and sons, it was, nonetheless, one that brought me great joy on a nightly basis.

At first, his whisper would be inaudible, intentionally so. “Pss, pss, psss.”

“What, I can’t hear you,” I’d say.

“Pss, pss, psss.” Just a little louder. He would be positively beaming by this point.

“I’m sorry, Mickey. I can’t hear you. Can you speak a little louder?”

Without fail, he would fight to suppress his laughter, long enough to whisper, “I don’t like Santa Claus.”

“What?” I’d say in an over-the-top display of shocked disbelief.

“I don’t like Santa Claus.” Not even a whisper anymore. Just a genuine attempt to cause his dad deep emotional distress.

“What…did…you…say?”

I wish my writing could do justice to just how happy this routine made him. I’d reach out for him and apply the big tickle, dishing out punishment, demanding an immediate retraction.

“Take it back. Take it back.” Occasionally he would take it back, just long enough to catch his breath, so he could start anew with more blasphemous big-guy berating.

“I don’t like him! I don’t like him! I don’t like Santa Claus!”

Obviously, it was all in fun. Mickey never really
disliked
St. Nick. But he honestly didn’t see the need for such a guy. After all, as he explained on many occasions, he had enough toys.

“Mickey, what would you like for Christmas?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, I have enough toys.”

“I’m sure you must want something.”

“No, that’s okay. I have enough.”

Where had I gone wrong? How could I have raised such an unselfish child? What a poor reflection on me. “Come on, buddy, how about one toy?”

“No, you can give it to someone else. I have enough.”

All kidding aside, I was always touched by these little talks. I remember taking Dewey and Noelle to Kmart a few years ago, armed with a fistful of “wishes” of less fortunate families that I’d taken down from the church bulletin board. This was going to be my way of teaching my kids the real meaning of Christmas. Instead, about a half hour into this spiritual shopping experience, my kids both literally fell to the floor in tears, sobbing upon their discovery that the Kmart excursion would yield no personal treasure for them.

In fairness to my two older kids, we tried the experiment a few years later, as volunteers for a great group called Christmas Magic, and this time Dewey and Noelle were more than up to the task, shopping and wrapping their little hearts out for the sake of kids they would never even meet.

I was so proud of both of them. But also a little flabbergasted when, after doing so much work, they both came up to me and said, “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s Santa bringing us?”

Man, my kids were ten and twelve at this point, legitimate contenders for
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
as the last kids on Earth to not catch on to the whole Santa deal. Hell, it had been earlier that year, on Easter eve, when exhausted by travel and faced with the prospect of pulling an all-nighter in the role of the Easter Bunny, I called Dewey over.

“Dewey, you’re twelve, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you still think a rabbit travels the world, handing out eggs and candy?”

“I guess not.”

“Good, I need your help.”

But I wasn’t going to be quite so quick to give up Santa. Sure, the whole Easter Bunny thing is ludicrous. But this was Santa, man! Santa! I tried to gently explain to my kids that in a way, by helping people out, we were kind of like Santa. We were doing Santa’s work.

They just stared at me. “But what’s he bringing us?”

I knew it was the right time. After all, I’d already had the talk with Dewey. You know,
the
talk. Birds. Bees.
That
talk. But somehow, an intelligent twelve-year-old who already knew about procreation, pregnancy, and premarital hanky-panky hadn’t deduced that reindeer couldn’t fly.

So, I did what seemed right. I lied. “I’m sure Santa will think of something,” I said.

Let’s get back to Santa’s Village. As we approached Santa’s house, the charming log cabin where Santa meets and greets his guests, I could sense that Mickey was a little apprehensive. We’d assured both him and little Hughie that they didn’t have to actually meet Santa—although one can never have too many photos of their children crying their eyes out on the big guy’s lap. I told the kids that we would simply walk past it.

Mickey had other plans. Somehow, even at the tender age of four, he gathered the resilience, pride, and intestinal fortitude to make a heroic dash to Santa’s door. “I don’t like you, Santa Claus!” he yelled, before sprinting to the safety of his hysterically laughing parents.

But Mickey’s whole idea of Christmas changed the moment he saw the life-size nativity scene. One by one the questions came.

“What’s that?”

“That’s the Baby Jesus, buddy. He’s the reason we celebrate Christmas.”

“Who’s that? I thought Jesus was something you said when you dropped something, ‘Oh Jesus.’” I swear he actually said that. I suppressed my laughter and said, “No, actually Jesus was God’s son.

“That’s the Baby Jesus, buddy. He’s the reason we celebrate Christmas.”

“Who’s that?” he said, pointing to a larger figure.

“That’s Baby Jesus’ mother. Her name is Mary. And that’s her husband, Joseph. But he’s not Jesus’ father. God is Jesus’ father.”

One after another the questions came. “How come? But why? But how?” Man, I’d been barely able to explain a regular conception to a twelve-year-old, let alone an immaculate one to a four-year-old.

But I must have done okay, because little Mick’s interest never waned over the next few months. Eventually, he came to grudgingly accept that Santa was going to bring him a few gifts, although he did demand that Santa leave his stuff outside the front door. He was allowed to bring toys. He just wasn’t allowed inside the house. Which actually made the distribution of the gifts a snap. Ready, set, dump. Watch the Alaistair Sim version of
A Christmas Carol,
which is sometimes called
Scrooge.
Wake Colette up, ask if she had a special gift for me. Accept humiliating rejection. Sleep until 3:30
A
.
M
., when the older kids complain that Santa hasn’t shown up with the toys yet.

Hughie, Mickey, Colette, me, and Noelle with the big guy, at my favorite place, Santa’s Village. (Dewey was working as an elf.)

Courtesy of the Foley family.

But Santa’s act was strictly secondary to little Mick’s fascination with Baby Jesus. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mickey completely grasped the idea that Jesus, at a certain point, stopped being a baby. Possibly I should have consulted a book or member of the clergy about how best to deal with the subject of the Easter celebration. Had I done so, the ensuing Easter talk may have been a little less confusing.

“Daddy, what happened to Baby Jesus?”

“Well, he died, buddy,” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, uh, he, uh, died for our sins.” I knew as I said it that this was a little vague. Besides, at this point in his life Mickey’s sins had been pretty much limited to a little late-night bed-wetting, some massive fib-telling, and the previously mentioned verbal bombardment of Santa Claus.

“Why?” he asked.

“So that, um, whoever believed in him could have everlasting life.” Wow, now I was hitting a four-year-old with gospel teachings that even I don’t fully understand.

In truth, this “Easter” talk took place some time in January, giving Mickey over three months to mull over my words. And every day, he wanted to know more—about the cross, the crucifixion, cemeteries, churches, even questioning the rationale of commemorating the death of the Messiah with the distribution of chocolate bunnies. Well, that’s not quite the way he put it. I think it was more like, “Why do we get chocolate when Baby Jesus dies? Why? Why are we happy when Baby Jesus dies? Why?”

Mickey wasn’t happy about it at all. Colette saw him moping around the house, carrying the cross I’d received as a communion gift in 1984. Yeah, for those of you doing the math, I was a little old for communion; nineteen, to be exact. My dad, who has missed something like two Sunday masses in his life, never forced me to go to church—I started going on my own, and was communed and confirmed under the private instruction of Father Thomas McGlade, an absolutely wonderful man whose death still bothers me because I never told him in life what I’m writing right now.

For a year or so, I even thought about the priesthood, before opting to travel down the pro wrestling road. I think I could have handled the vow of poverty—I took a similar one when I worked for Jerry Jarrett in Memphis—but the whole celibacy thing was another issue. Even in my prime I never had an insatiable sex drive, but damn, forever is a little longer than I was willing to go without.

I considered myself something of a devout Catholic for the next ten years or so, until seeing a photo in
Newsday
(Long Island’s main newspaper) of the priest who married me and baptized my first child, underneath the bold headline “Pedophile.” I had been reeling a little from a string of problems in the Catholic Church—the denouncing of birth control despite overpopulation and starvation, the failure to allow priests to marry, the failure to deal with the obvious pedophilia problem—and the
Newsday
photo and story seemed to serve as a knockout blow. My churchgoing just kind of stopped. And while my faith in God never ceased, my faith in men acting in his name certainly did.

A few days later, I noticed that Jesus was no longer in an upright position on my crucifix. He was dangling by one hand, like Sly Stallone in the climactic scene of
Cliffhanger.
The culprit was Mickey, who was doing his best to free Jesus from his death, although I thought I’d made it pretty clear that he had to die in order for us to live.

Maybe a few of the books Colette got him cleared things up a little, because as he absorbed the lessons for the tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth time (the kid loves to be read to), he seemed to get the hang of Jesus’ life, even asking if we could reenact some of the more well known parts of the New Testament.

So he’d say, “Dad, pretend to be blind, and I’ll be Jesus and heal you.” So I would stumble around the Christmas room until the little guy healed me in his own unique way, summoning the power of God as if he was Mr. Freeze unleashing a mighty blast of superfrozen molecules. And while I’m not an official biblical scholar (although I am staying at a Holiday Inn right now—I checked in about an hour ago), I’m willing to bet that Jesus’ healing miracle sound effects couldn’t compete with those of little Mick.

One night, after returning home from the road, I asked the little guy if he’d like to see a movie. “I have a better idea,” he said. “How about we’ll play Jesus. You be Jesus, and I’ll be the bad guy and put you up on the cross.”

And that’s just what we did. I laid down on our makeshift whiffle-ball bat and Captain Hook sword combination cross, and Mickey pretended to drive nails into my wrists. Yeah, I know that sounds a little morbid, but they were really just crayons placed between my fingers.

Then it was my turn to be the bad guy, and I did my best to put my little guy on the cross, not knowing he intended to come back to life in fulfillment of the Scriptures. But I guess the subtlety of rising on the third day and appearing before his disciples had not been completely explored in his books. Jesus’ resurrection, little Mick style, resembled more of an Undertaker sit-up spot followed by a Hulk Hogan comeback. Yes, in the gospel according to little Mick, Jesus didn’t really love the sinners—he beat the bejesus out of them.