The Hardcore Diaries (25 page)

Alas, it was not to be, for reasons that were never made quite clear to me.

Back to
WrestleMania,
and my match that had held so much promise. Promise that, unfortunately didn’t quite materialize. We didn’t exactly stink out the place, but we didn’t tear it down, either. We had a good match. But a good match was not what I was hoping for. Not after four years away. Not after so much buildup, so much thought, so many hours spent visualizing the great things to come.

What was most disappointing to me was realizing that I’d settled for “good enough.” I heard the Evolution music and specifically remembered hoping I didn’t suck when I got out there. That was it. Not exactly reaching for the stars, huh? It would be like Michael Jordan taking the last shot in game seven, hoping just to hit the rim. Like Albert Pujols stepping to the plate, bases full of Cardinals, his team down by three, hoping just to foul a couple off. Like doing a scene with Christy Canyon, in her spirited late eighties heyday, hoping for a peck on the cheek. I’d been guilty of setting my sights too low. I’d pitched this idea with adrenaline in my veins and stars in my eyes, then fell victim to my own nerves and the blinding glow of the Garden’s bright lights.

I had five weeks to atone for this sin of complacency.
Backlash.
One-on-one with Randy Orton. Hardcore rules. A second chance to make a lasting impression.

It was a conference call with Vince and Gewirtz, while sitting in a car at Dewey’s Little League practice, that got my mind working for Houston. My gut was churning, the result of one of those protein drinks I’d been subsisting on since
Mania.
I’d weighed in at just under 290 for
Mania
, the lightest I’d been since 1996, and a good 40 pounds lighter than I’d been for the past few years. But I wanted more. I trained harder. I dieted stricter. I’d been 280 for most of 1995 and 1996, a time when I had done much of my best work, in ECW, Japan, and WWE. I’d been 280 when I worked with Shawn Michaels in Philadelphia in September of ’96, which still stands out as my best personal performance, if not match, largely because I was in shape and could keep pace with a lighter, better athlete for close to thirty minutes.

Vince wanted to talk about the April 5
Raw
in Houston. I had requested promo time in front of the live crowd, but Vince had other ideas.

“I want to have you in a rocking chair, Mick,” he said. “Rocking back and forth. In a room by yourself. No fans. Holding a box that we think will be flowers, but which will turn out to be your barbed-wire bat. I don’t want to know what you’re going to say. I want you to surprise us. Just say it from your heart.”

So I did. I sat there alone (except for the camera, lighting, and sound crews) in that room, rocking back and forth, holding a box, speaking from my heart, letting loose on one of my favorite personal interviews.

WrestleManiaXX—teaming up with The Rock for my first match in four years.

Foley is backstage, sitting in a rocking chair, holding a tulip and a flower box with a ribbon on it
.

MICK FOLEY:
It’s been said many times that you never…never forget your first. Call me sentimental, but I…but I think that’s true. Because, in my life there have been many…dozens. Maybe hundreds. But I’ve never quite forgotten my very first one. There were times on the road where I’d pick up a couple a week. Use them for a couple of days and then…hand them off to a lucky fan. But I’ve never forgotten my first. My first flannel shirt. Given to me the Christmas of 1977. Three sizes too large. And not worn, in the last ten years, until just a few days ago I went to a box of my favorite things and gleefully withdrew it, intending to wear it in my match at
Backlash,
in Edmonton. It may sound funny, for a guy whose name is synonymous with hardcore wrestling to become so fond of, even in love with, an inanimate object. But I’ve always found the word
hardcore
really had nothing to do with chairs. It had nothing, to do really, with tables, garbage cans, cookie sheets. The term
hardcore
signified that I had an attitude that meant I was going to go above and beyond what it took to give the fans the greatest show possible. It was a word that said I loved the business, and I loved the fans enough to put my body through unimaginable pain. And even when I had the chance to go to Japan and take part in some barbaric matches, I did it with love on my mind. After all, in 1994, I had a one-year-old baby girl. I had a three-year-old boy. I had a mortgage to pay, and I did what I had to do to pay the bills. So even though some of the matches I took part in may have been described as inhumane, deep down in my heart I rested with the comfort and knowledge that I was doing it for love. And I swore I’d never go back. I swore I’d never watch those matches again. Never watch what I put those poor Japanese people through. But, in trying to recapture the fire and the passion that I thought I lacked at
WrestleMania,
I went back and I looked at the tapes. And I did barbaric things. I did inhumane things, but it wasn’t the moves. It wasn’t the barbed wire. It wasn’t the tacks that caught my eye. It was my eyes! Over and over I’d watch the tapes. Rewind, play, rewind, play. And it was there. It was a look in my eyes that said deep down, maybe there was a little part of me that didn’t mind inflicting that type of damage. Deep down, maybe there was a little part of me that even liked it. Deep down, I heard the screams. The suffering! The agony! Maybe, maybe deep down…I even loved it. Randy Orton, these were honorable men. Nice men. They never spit in my face. They never conducted a calculated campaign calling me a coward. They never took cheap-shot, triple-team efforts to send me to the hospital. But the fact is, when I had the chance, I wrapped my arm in barbed wire and I tore them apart! So, if I were you, I’d be asking myself a simple question, and that question would be, “What the hell is this man going to do to me at
Backlash,
knowing full well he hates my guts?” The answer, Randy Orton, is simple. I AM GOING TO KICK YOUR ASS ALL OVER ED…No. No, I’m not going to kick your ass all over Edmonton. Because I hear that all the time, it’s become a cliché.
[Sarcastically.]
“I’m going to kick your ass, man! I’m going to kick your ass!” I’m not going to kick your ass in Edmonton, Randy. I’m going to be a little more descriptive than that. In order to be descriptive, well, I’m going to have to introduce you to another old friend of mine. Another friend that I saw in my box of favorite things, Randy Orton.
[Pulls barbed-wire bat out of box.]
Say hello to my friend…Barbie. And Barbie’s not going to kick your ass. Barbie is going to get sunk into your skull, AND I AM GOING TO CARVE CAVERNS OF GORE INTO YOUR VIRGIN FLESH! I am going to…I’m going to bring on the type of bleeding usually reserved for special effects teams in Mel Gibson biblical efforts. Randy Orton, I am going to tear you apart. I am going to take Barbie, and I’m going to…TEE OFF!
[Hits table on floor.]
I am going to take Barbie and…
[Hits lighting fixture.]
I am going to take Barbie and I’m going to teach you what it means to be hardcore!
[Hits rocking chair.]
I am going to rip! I am going to tear…I am going to gorge! I am going to possibly disembowel! And I am going to…love it.

Backlash against Randy Orton—this may have been my favorite all-time match.

Unfortunately, little Mickey got sick a few days later, a victim of the rotavirus, which he suffered, we’re pretty sure, after a run-in with some unknown child’s fecal matter at a fast-food ball pit. The virus worked its way through part of the family, putting Mickey in the hospital for two days before catching on in my system for a couple of bedridden days—including an absolutely miserable Easter on the day before the April 12
Raw
in Chicago—before doing its worst damage on poor Hughie, only a year old at the time.

Little Mick had just been hospitalized when I headed out to Edmonton for
Backlash
, a confused study in emotional contrasts. I wanted so badly to right my
WrestleMania
wrongdoing, but I felt so damn guilty about even caring about the match.

But I really did care about the match. And I think it showed. For Randy Orton and I had a classic hardcore battle that night. Wild, intense, bloody, and very well interpreted by both parties. Randy still claims it was the best match of his career, which is a tremendous compliment, considering some of the great ones he’s been involved in over the last few years. It may have been my best match as well. But as is usually the case with these type of things, there was a hell of a price to pay for
Backlash.

I had over seventy-five cuts on my body, mostly the arms and fingers, courtesy of a board laced with generous amounts of barbed wire. Hey, at least there weren’t explosives in there, like in my old IWA King of the Deathmatch days in Japan. My knee gave out a couple of days later, resulting in a July surgery. And as I pulled into a Tim Horton’s doughnut shop, intent on celebrating my hard-fought match with a glorious jelly-filled delicacy, I was immediately reminded of the consequences of human skull meeting steel. Yeah, I puked in the parking lot. But I still got that doughnut, then headed off to the airport, for the red-eye to Toronto—where a delay in international baggage handling screwed up my connection, tacking an extra three hours onto my travel time—before finally arriving landing in New York, where I immediately drove to the hospital, giving Colette some relief from her tour of duty as hospital mom.

Oddly, sadly, or ironically—depending on how you look at it—I have written this entire “Comeback” chapter while sitting at Hughie’s hospital bedside, where he has once again contracted an intestinal virus. The poor little guy. He’ll be okay, but it’s a terrible feeling for a parent: watching someone you love lying helpless, monitors clicking, tubes hissing, the sounds of children laughing, crying, or silently dying just down the hall.

Showing off Randy’s handiwork.

Courtesy of the Foley family.

I never really got to enjoy
Backlash.
Between the hospitalized children, the postconcussion vomiting, the red-eye flight, and the postmatch knee problems, I just didn’t have time to reflect on how special it had been.

Rumor had it that the match wasn’t particularly popular with a few big stars in the WWE locker room—pretty much the same guys who didn’t care for the Hershey promo. Funny, I don’t seem to remember them having too many problems with the way I did things back when it was benefiting them.

May 26, 2006
11:05
P
.
M
.—San Francisco, CA

Dear Hardcore Diary,

A fire was officially lit today. A fire under my ass, that is. Today, during a midafternoon phone call with head
Raw
writer Brian Gewirtz, I was informed that the Tag Team match at
One Night Stand
was being turned into an eight-man match. Why? Apparently because Terry Funk had some trouble getting down to the ring on Monday night, including a near fall on the ramp, leading to speculation that he might not be physically up to a big main event. So, instead of taking a chance that one of the greatest performers of all time would be able to defy Father Time and Mother Nature for a night, a decision was reached to sabotage all the hard work, emotion, and planning that had gone into making the angle, in exchange for four more bodies.

At first, I was tentative with my response, saying something along the lines of, “I don’t really think it makes sense.” Fortunately, I must have hit a dead cell-phone spot and the call was lost, allowing me to throw the new idea quickly at my manager Barry Bloom. Barry’s been around the wrestling business a long time. I first met him in 1992, when he was Jesse Ventura’s manager in WCW. Jesse was the first pro wrestler with official representation, a fact that was looked upon with scorn by wrestling’s old-school establishment, which saw the idea of official representation as unwanted and unnecessary. In other words, everything would be better if the talent was not aware of their options or real worth to a company. Even WWE was slow to embrace the idea. Hell, I remember when we were told it was a good life experience to negotiate our own contract, prompting a classic retort from former WWE performer Don Callis—who was more or less shunned in WWE dressing rooms for having the audacity to be introverted—when he said, “I guess it would be a good life experience to perform brain surgery on ourselves, too.”

Eventually, sports entertainment climbed out of the contractual dark ages, even yielding guaranteed WWE contracts for the first time in 1996. Sure, I came in about a week before those contracts started being offered, but by the summer of 1997, I too had a new guaranteed contract, even if I negotiated it myself. I guess I ended up doing pretty well for myself, but having Bloom’s expertise helped immensely, since I hooked up with him on nonwrestling projects in 1999 and have continued to do so with my new contractual wrestling issues since returning to the ring on a sporadic basis in 2004.

Barry didn’t care for the new eight-man idea. As I alluded to earlier, there is a time to concede certain points in order to protect what is really important—a time to lose a battle in order to win the big war. In this case, losing this battle would mean losing the war. I needed to win this battle, and I decided to start on the offensive with a few precise, direct words as my initial assault.

“I think the idea is awful,” I said. “I think it ruins the whole angle.” I decided to go back to the initial pitch meeting for emphasis. “If I had pitched my idea in Stamford, and you guys suggested an eight-man instead, I would have said ‘No, thanks.’ And walked away.”

“I know,” Brian said. Hey, I know in this case Gewirtz was just the messenger, but the message was so freaking lousy that in this case, he deserved to be shot.

“Brian, at this point, the angle doesn’t even resemble what I suggested. Tell Vince his idea sucks.”

“It’s just that—” Brian said.

“It’s just what?”

“Well, Vince is concerned that Terry—”

“That Terry what? Won’t be able to work a good match? Why, because he nearly tripped?”

“Well, kind of.”

It was time for me to go into full Funker defense mode. It wasn’t enough that we’d proved the naysayers wrong in Lubbock, with one of the most compelling promos of the year. Now, I was going to have to make a case for the greatest wrestler I’d ever seen. Sure, he’s sixty and broken down. So is Vince McMahon. But that didn’t stop Vince from putting on a hell of a show in one of this past
’Mania
’s main events. He did it by playing to his strengths and avoiding his weaknesses. Just like Terry will. Just like I will. Just like Dreamer will. Fortunately, one guy in our match, Edge, doesn’t have any weaknesses.

“Look, I know Terry’s knees are bad,” I conceded. “They’ve been bad for twenty years. They were bad when we used to tear down the house in Japan, eleven years ago. His back is bad, too. It was bad in ’89 when he was working with Flair, and had a cracked sacrum. He’d have to get out of his seat after takeoff and get on his knees, leaning over his seat, for the entire flight. And then he’d go out and tear down the house, every night.”

“This is good,” Brian said. “I can take this to Vince.”

“Hell, take this to Vince,” I said. “Tell him I saw Terry wrestle less than a year ago at
Hardcore Homecoming,
and he tore the house down there, too. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of emotion in that building on June 11. We’ll all feed off it. We’ll put together a hell of a match.”

I’d be lying if I told you I knew how we got to the subject of Ric Flair, but I know I brought him up, possibly as a partial concession to the possibility that having three broken-down wrestlers in a main event might indeed be slightly risky. I know I told Brian of my concern for my left knee, and told him there was a decent possibility I wouldn’t be able to walk after
One Night Stand,
let alone have a good singles match with Ric Flair in his hometown of Charlotte, only two weeks later. I did bring up the possibility of making
Vengeance
a six-man Tag Team match.

So though I’m uncertain of how Flair’s name came up in regard to
One Night Stand,
I know I did try to mount a decent campaign for why he’d make a hell of an addition. “He’s the one non-ECW guy those fans will accept as part of that team. They’ll love it. And they’ll love the idea that they’re getting the first crack at seeing Foley and Flair. And it won’t really hurt a potential singles match a couple weeks later—it might even help build it.”

“Okay,” Brian said. “I’ll take it to Vince. I’ve got a meeting with him in an hour. I’ll call you when it’s over.”

By the time he called back, I was on the road from L.A. to ’Frisco, fifty miles or so into a near-four-hundred-mile trip.

The eight-man, per my request, was history. Flair, however, was not going to be a part of
One Night Stand.
We would apparently start our program from scratch the following day and shoot for a singles match, ligament tear or no ligament tear.

I’m a little worried about this, as despite my history with Ric, I want to be able to do my part to have a good match in his hometown of Charlotte.

I asked Brian if in retrospect they’d have had Ric lose in two minutes in the last
Raw
Pay-Per-View, if they knew they’d be counting on him to have a big match at
Vengeance.

“Probably not,” Brian said.

Listen, I know booking
Raw
and
SmackDown!
—four hours of prime-time programming a week—is no easy task. And I don’t meant to be hard on Brian Gewirtz, because I think he does a tremendous job in a very high-pressure, often thankless job. And I understand that Umaga, the wrestler who defeated Ric at that last Pay-Per-View, needed a big win. But not to realize that Ric Flair, one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, might be playing a big role on a big show in Charlotte, where he’s practically royalty, is a stunning lack of foresight.

As a footnote of some interest,
I
was the guy originally slated to be Umaga’s first victim, on his debut, the night after
’Mania.
I resisted the idea, on the grounds it would greatly minimize Edge’s big hardcore victory at
WrestleMania.
Above and beyond helping draw a buy rate for
’Mania,
and having an extremely large check (I hope) sent to my house a couple months later, the match with Edge was supposed to help keep him at main-event status. I thought my being crushed the next night by an unknown entity would greatly minimize Edge’s accomplishment.

“Well, I disagree,” I was told by “Freebird” Michael Hayes, one of the business’s best minds, but who in this case was someone I couldn’t agree with.

“Listen, Michael, after my match with Randy Orton, he bragged for over a year about beating me.”

“That’s true,” Hayes said.

“After Triple H beat me, he bragged about it for four years. I mean, he was still talking about retiring me even after I was no longer retired.”

“True, again,” Hayes said.

“Both of those guys got a lot of mileage out of those wins, which is great—that’s what those wins are for, to get mileage out of. Now, tell me how much mileage they would have gotten if the night after either of the matches, a new guy squashed me in thirty seconds?”

“I see your point,” Michael admitted.

“Besides,” I said. “I may have an idea for the ECW show.”

So Ric got squashed instead of me. And now we have to figure out how to unsquash him in two weeks, so he can wrestle a guy with one leg. Still, it can be done, and it might even be done well, provided someone decides to let Ric Flair talk. It seems Ric has gotten hit with the label of giving “eighties ’rasslin’ promos,” which despite having drawn money all over the world, simply won’t do in the era of the homogenized, scripted interview, circa 2005. Wooooo!

Back to
One Night Stand.
No eight-man, no Flair, but Vince does want a change. He wants Lita on our team, and Tommy Dreamer’s wife Beulah (thankfully, not her real name) on theirs, to make it a mixed-gender six-person match. I think it will work. Even if I concede this point to Vince, I consider the battle a victory. But Brian has one more point for me to ponder as I make my way to ’Frisco.

“Vince says it looks like the match is going to be the shits.”

I hate to use the
S
word there, but not only is it a direct quote from Gewirtz, who was directly quoting Vince, but the term “the shits” is a popular, almost universal term for describing a match that is thought to be no good. But I didn’t actually hear the Gewirtz quote. I thought it was part one of a two-part quote. I thought he said, “
If
it looks like it’s going to be the shits.” As if Vince was suggesting a mid-match remedy, if indeed the match was in danger of suffering.

So, I said, “Okay,
if
it looks like it’s going to be the shits, what? What does he want me to do?”

It took Brian a second to figure out what I meant. Once he did, he was quick to correct me. “No, Vince says, it looks like it
is
going to be the shits.”

Pretty straightforward. No real room for interpretations. Vince’s cards were on the table.

“Well, tell Vince I disagree,” I said. “And I intend to prove it.”