by Mick Foley
I had been on the cover of the Japanese wrestling magazine Baseball the week of the tournament. Don’t ask me why they call it Baseball. I don’t know. I also don’t know why such a technologically advanced country has little porcelain holes in the ground to poop in instead of toilets. The few toilets they did have tended to be luxury models, with heating devices and bidets. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why their versions of respected news magazines had nude centerfolds. I do know why Tiger stayed over, however-he was smart. He saw me on the cover of Baseball magazine and immediately convinced Asano to team the two of us up. As soon as Asano gave the go-ahead, he called a press conference. Even though he was still in his underwear, he had photographers shoot our “training” session, which included “beating up” a couple of young boys in the ring. I’m sure the Japanese fans saw it as an example of the wild Tiger on the loose. My wife, however, saw it another way. When I returned home, she took one look at Tiger’s picture and said, “Who is the old guy with his balls showing?” Sure enough, upon closer viewing, I could see the great Tiger’s wrinkly sack peeking through his BVDs.
Tiger had taken me out to eat with him on the first night of the tour. Twenty years earlier, when wrestling was on primetime TV in Japan, the foreigners who were stars were able to attract “sponsors” who took care of them. The sponsors would wine and dine them, and often give them huge sums of money for the pleasure of their company. It was almost like prostitution, but without the sex. In the current era, sponsors were simply fans who took us out to eat, but a number of old stars like Tiger had held on to their old contacts.
We were picked up in Ikebekuro by a friend of Tiger’s in a Cadillac, which was a very rare luxury in Japan. We drove two hours to Kobe and along the way Tiger was giving instructions on how to act in front of the sponsors. “Don’t shake hands. Look at me. Do what I do,” Tiger kept coaching me on the way to the restaurant. When we got there, I undoubtedly had the best meal of all my tours. The Korean barbecue was unreal, and I ate with gusto, until my belly swelled with satisfaction. Now I wanted to go, but apparently it wasn’t time yet.
I sat there while the others talked, and I thought about the Yakuza. The only things I knew was that they sported tattoos over their entire upper bodies (kind of like the World Wrestling Federation dressing room) and had part of their pinky finger cut off as a sign of either loyalty or disloyalty. I looked across the table at my three new buddies, and tried to inconspicuously check out their fingers. I felt like I did when I was trying to look down Irene Farugia’s cleavage in tenth grade. There they were-no finger, no finger, no finger. I could hear Ricky Nelson singing again, but I had no way to leave.
Hours later, after hearing no English except for a stunning karaoke version of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” it was time to go. I saw Tiger walk up to our sponsors and shake their hands. Hey, I thought that was a no-no. When he did, I heard the unmistakable crumple of paper money being exchanged. Predictably, there were no handshakes or exchanges of crumpled money for the Hardcore Legend. On the way back to Tokyo, I promised myself that I would never do it again. From then on, I stuck to my sponsors-normal fans who would pick up the tab. Most of the time, I drank Met-Rx or paid for myself.
A friend asked me one time how much money I spent during a week in Japan. I asked him to guess, and having heard of outrageous Japanese food prices, he aimed high. “A thousand?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “it’s a little lower than that.”
“Eight hundred?”
I shook my head. After he’d guessed a couple more figures, I broke the news. “I spend about a hundred a week.”
“A hundred,” my astonished friend blurted out. “That’s only $15 a day.”
I smiled and said, “I know, I go to Japan to make money, not to spend it.” On this night at the Kawasaki Stadium, however, I was hoping, in addition to money, that I would be bringing as much of myself home as possible.
I looked in the mirror, and saw a weary man looking back. I had a large gash over my right eye, and considerable swelling underneath it. My left arm was slightly cut, and my back was killing me. I really wasn’t even going to try to have a good match-I was just going to try to get through it. I could still hear those C4 explosions in my mind, and they still scared the hell out of me, despite the Funker’s assurances. I though of Colette, Noelle, and Dewey at home. I missed them terribly and wanted to see them. I was looking forward to my posttour ritual of a Japanese chocolate bar and ice cream in my bed. I was looking forward to the trip home, even if it would be spent jammed into seat 26B. I sat down on my bench and said a prayer.
I walked into the dugout. It was nightfall, and with the humidity all but gone, it had turned into a beautiful starry evening. The semi main event was in the ring, Tarzan Goto against ultimate fighting champion Dan “the Beast” Severn. Years later, in Chattanooga, I asked Owen Hart how his match with the Beast had gone. Owen said, “He’s a nice guy.”
I stopped and called to Owen, who was walking away. “Owen, I didn’t ask you what kind of guy he was, I asked how the match went.”
Owen smiled and gave his little chuckle, which I will miss hearing very much. The answer came back, “He’s a really nice guy.”
Dan never really could make the transition from ultimate fighting to sports-entertainment. On this night, however, he and Goto were having a hell of a match, and the crowd was eating it up. I stepped back into my dressing room to make some final mental preparations, but I couldn’t help feeling good for Dan. He really was a nice guy.
When I went into the ring I was still scared, but filled with a feeling of power that was not unlike my feeling of being on top of the scaffold in Fort Worth six years earlier. Some of the fans were chanting “Cock-toos-uh,” but most of them were physically and mentally worn out from hours of sunshine and bloodshed. The Funker arrived in the ring to his decades-old theme music, and chants of “Telly, Telly.” He looked old and worn out. Hell, he was old and worn out. His shirt was spattered with blood from his previous match’s tumble into the plate glass. It went without saying that Terry would be the guy taking the bump in the glass-it wasn’t Tiger’s style. Once again, Terry had given, and Tiger had taken.
The bell rang, and we stalked each other like Rocky and Apollo Creed in the last round of Rocky. Terry flicked out a couple of weak jabs that grazed my eye, and opened my gash slightly. It was tough to get a rhythm going. Barbed wire matches were tough enough, even without the added presence of boards laced with explosives in every corner. We tried to use the wire, and we tried to do some moves. We fought outside, and used the nonexplosive boards, and I even hit Terry with a half-used spool of barbed wire. We rolled back into the ring and Terry pulled one of the boards into the middle of the ring. Kawasaki Stadium started to buzz. This is what they came to see.
With the ominous board in the center of the ring, we picked up the pace. Punch for punch we went, and then I took over. Wham! A forearm staggered the grizzled veteran. Wham! Another one had him reeling. Terry was positioned directly in front of the board and was about to go down. Four more forearms to the head and the Funker finally fell, like a tree, onto the explosives blow. BABOOM! “Uhwahh!” It was just as loud, and just as scary as it had been in the outfield seven hours earlier. Scarier, actually, because my idol was lying in the middle of 30,000 people with his body shaking and his arm badly burned. I knew that we shouldn’t have allowed the extra explosives. I also knew that it would be my turn next.
I brought Terry to the wire strands on his hands and knees. I draped him over, and then took two steps back. I came with an elbow, but Terry moved out of the way, and I landed awkwardly on the wire with my back and triceps taking the brunt of the barbs. Terry picked me up and shot me into the wire. As I got closer, I became braver, to the point that I thought, “I’m going to take this whole side out.” I’d done this twice at Korakuen Hall, and it was impressive, but injuries were likely. I didn’t really care at this point; I was pretty banged up alread
y. As it turned out, the point was moot-the wire was strung so well that my entire body barely even made it sag. Oh, it ripped me up, all right, it just didn’t look very good. The move bought Terry some time, however, and when I got up, another explosive board was in center ring, and Terry was waiting with a hip toss. Baboom! “Uhwahh!” “Wait, what’s this?” I thought, “I’m not even really hurt.” Apparently I had been rolling with the hip toss, and in the split second between impact and detonation, I had narrowly avoided most of the explosion.
Terry stayed on me and threw me outside. After a brief foray into the fans, he threw me back in the ring, and after a flurry of punches, hooked on the dreaded stepover toehold. Actually, it’s only dreaded in Japan; if you tried putting on this ancient, boring maneuver in the States, you might find yourself out of a job. The hold was so over in Japan, however, that people lost their minds. Then, just when things looked their worst, my savior, the Tiger, came to my rescue. He stopped Terry with the butt end of his sword, while I set up another board in the corner. Side by side, like the true teammates we were, we threw Terry to the corner. Baboom! “Uhwahh!” Terry was entangled in the wire, and in a bad way at the nine-minute mark. We had one minute until the ring was set to explode. My heart was racing as we faced the moment of truth.
Tiger retreated to the back, as I attempted pinfall after pinfall. Finally when the announcer started his ten-second countdown, I slid underneath the wire to watch this tremendous spectacle from outside the ring. Eight, seven, six-Terry tried to stand, but fell back down. The fans were screaming his name. Five, four, three-no matter what happened, or how long it took, I was going to have Terry kick out of my pin attempt. He would be known forever as the guy who kicked out of the ring explosion. Two, one-I covered my ears. Here it comes. Pfftt. The four explosions that went off looked like Roman candles. My old neighbor Marc Forte had put on a better fireworks show in his backyard in ‘76. The fans didn’t just fart on it, they looked as if they’d just smelled a giant fart. I felt the whole match slipping away. Terry just stood up with his arms out to his side, as if to say “Hey, it’s not my fault.” I tried my best to think of a way to save the match, and came up with only one solution. Terry had the same idea. Injuries were about to pile up. ‘
I stepped inside the ring and Terry was there. I put on a sloppy headlock that was really just a setup, and waited for Terry to counter. He lifted me slowly in the air in classic Funk style, and dropped me backward on the remaining explosive board. Baboom! “Uhwahh,” and “Owuggha!” The third sound was me screaming. I had landed in such a way that Terry’s damn middle explosives had gone off directly underneath my arm. I felt like I’d been shot. I should have stayed down forever, but I was so hurt and scared that I popped right up. Terry stayed down-a portion of the explosion had caught under his right triceps, and he was in considerable pain.
I called to the outside and looked under the ring for something to play with. I saw a toolbox and a stretcher, but pulled out a ladder instead. I rolled into the ring and shouldered the ladder lengthwise. As Terry turned, I charged him, and the impact to his head was so severe that I felt somewhat guilty. I got over it. I set up the ladder to the side of the fallen Funker. He was too close to land on, so I gave him a boot that moved him over. I ascended to the fifth step-about six feet in the air. The blood was really flowing from a cut in my hairline. It was so thick that it resembled more of a solid mask than a liquid. A friend of mine, who had been a photographer for Baseball for a decade, later said that even though she didn’t like blood, she thought my photos were beautiful in an artistic way. I stepped from the ladder and dropped a perfect elbow on Terry.
Terry was really hurting now. As I rolled off him, I could see the anguish in his eyes. I tried to talk to him, but his mumbling was incoherent. I climbed the ladder again, but as I approached the fifth step, Terry got up and fell into the ladder. I felt like the guy in the old F-Troop fort, as I felt the ladder tipping. I had talked with Terry earlier about doing this, but had actually envisioned myself sailing over the sharp wire and crashing down onto the floor. Well, the good news is, I didn’t crash onto the floor. The bad news is, I did fall into the barbed wire and the consequences were steep. I opened up an angry gash on my right hand and a huge gash that almost cost me my good ear.
It took me quite a while to get up, and when I did, Terry still wasn’t moving. He was still down on his back, and was obviously too hurt to continue. I crawled over and draped my arm over him for a somewhat anticlimatic victory. The audience was confused, but not disappointed. I had wrestled way too long and hard that day for my victory to be questioned. I was the King of the Death Match. Cameras flashed continually for the next several minutes, as the press followed my every move. I tried to shake Terry’s hand, in accordance with Mr. Asano’s wishes, but he was hustled out by the young boys before I got the chance. I was handed a huge trophy, which I held high overhead for all of Kawasaki to see. I put the trophy down, and haven’t seen it since.
While I celebrated, Terry was placed in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. It was a truly touching scene as the adoring crowd reached out just to touch him, and chanted his name. Terry had done me a gigantic favor. Terry had only lost a couple of matches in the last decade in Japan, and a victory over the Funker was a huge milestone. Terry Funk, who had spent his entire career giving, had just given me a hell of a gift. I guess after all those years, maybe he really did see “shit” in me after all.
I walked slowly back to the dugout area that led to the dressing rooms. Before entering, I stepped onto one of the alternate rings, and delivered a final “bang bang.” I walked to the empty concession area, where I saw Mr. Asano. He was beaming, and rightfully so-this had been a huge success for his little promotion. I was covered in blood from head to toe, and had literally risked my life for his company. I thought he would surely recognize this. “Asano-san” I said, adding the san to his name as a sign of respect. “Big house today. Maybe sukoshi bonus?”
Asano smiled his $500 million smile at me as he put a 100 yen coin into the soda machine. “Cock-toos,” he began, his hand now reaching for the frosty beverage, “ha ha, here bonus.” I don’t know where the $300 I earned that day went, but I do know where my bonus went. I brought it unopened, back home, where it now occupies a place of honor in my bathroom closet. I don’t want to showcase it too much, but I do want to be able to look at it every now and then as a reminder of my past.
I answered questions for the Japanese media, while they took careful inventory of my injuries. They photographed my ear, my hand, my eye, and my head. Strangely, I hadn’t thought much about my arm since the explosion, although it did seem to bother me. When the media left, I was practically alone. I had time to think about just what had gone on in the stadium, and just what the kids would think when they saw their battered “Big Daddy-O” stumble in the front door. After careful reflection, I had the sudden revelation that maybe I too needed some medical attention. When I walked out the door, the screaming fans were gone. The ambulance was history. Only Masa, a faithful Tonto to my Kemosabe, had stayed behind. He explained that everyone had gone, and that he’d make sure I got back to Tokyo. We were in luck also, as the hospital was less than a mile away. So, without a trophy, but with my head held high, the King of the Death Match walked to the hospital with his sidekick Masa.
I was stitched up in the same room as Terry. He took some stitches in his head, and his triceps area was badly burned. I took seven stitches in my hand, nine in my eyebrow, eleven in my head, and fourteen behind my ear. Once again, I failed to acknowledge the injury to my arm, even though it was now throbbing with pain. When I returned to the Ikebekuru section of Tokyo, I phoned home and blatantly lied to Colette by telling her I was fine. “A little banged up, hon, but nothing serious.” I then had a small dinner with Masa, and headed to my room to count T-shirt money and eat ice cream in bed.
I arrived at the Tokyo airport the next morning and waited to board. I heard my name called and
walked to the boarding desk. “Mr. Foley,” a woman explained, “you have been upgraded.” I didn’t know what to think. I had been upgraded without asking. I thought about it while I sat in my wide, comfortable business-class seat, and concluded that they simply must have felt sorry for me. We took off for JFK, and the woman next to me started to wiggle. She tried not to look at me, and when she did, she was clearly uncomfortable. I tried to put myself in her shoes, and the situation became a little clearer. I had prominent stitches in my eyebrow and head. My right cheek was a deeply swollen purple, and I had my left ear bandaged with gauze. To make matters worse, because of the stitches, I couldn’t shower, and my hair was particularly matted with dried blood. The dried blood was flaking and falling in small chips onto my shoulder. And to top. it all off, my right arm, which I finally deduced had been burned by the explosion, was now turning brown. The poor lady excused herself to go to the restroom, and oddly, after an hour, had not returned. I looked around, and saw her in the distance, resting comfortably somewhere in the vicinity of 21 C. This woman had paid a great deal of extra money to sit in business, but had made a conscious decision to sit in coach rather than be next to me. I kind of like that.
When I landed at JFK, my dad was there to pick me up. I shook his hand, and he guessed correctly that the previous evening had been a rough one. I deliberately kept my right arm, which was now a crusty brown, away from him.
I stepped into our rented house in West Babylon, and I was met by a big reaction of “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Colette gave me a hug and quickly said, “What’s burning?” I played dumb, but Colette persisted. “God, Mick, that’s bad, was someone smoking next to you on the plane?” By this time, I was twisting into some strange positions to keep my wife, children, and father from seeing my arm. I swear, I hadn’t fought so hard to keep my high school Mohawk from being seen. My dad said goodbye, and when he stepped out the door, Colette was on me again. “Can’t you smell something burning, Mick? It’s awful.” I finally answered. “Yes, I do, Colette,” I admitted, as I turned my right arm to my wife, “it’s me.”