by Mick Foley
My opponent the next evening was Steve Austin, in what was the first ever Mankind-Stone Cold match, or the first singles match that Steve Austin and Mick Foley had ever been in … period. Steve’s character was really catching on, and he’d just had a tremendous Survivor Series match with Brett Hart. Steve and I had been talking frequently about the contracts we’d recently been offered that, while not embarrassing, were not nearly on the level of Marc Mero. This filled us both with the potent combination of pride and anger, and we vowed to show Vince the error of his contractual ways. Without even talking about what we’d do, we tore the house down in a match that many called the best Raw match in several years. There was nothing fancy about it, just a great give-and-take contest, but the intensity was high, and the chemistry was there, as it would continue to be during our World Wrestling Federation history.
After that night’s matches, I met with Vince for a scheduled contract meeting. He acknowledged what a great match I’d had and how large my contributions to the company had been, but he mentioned that he was disappointed that I had not signed my contract yet. I told him that I appreciated the offer but could not, on principle, sign for less money than Marc Mero had. Vince was visibly disappointed. “Mick,” he said, “you have to understand from a business perspective that we will be much more likely to get behind somebody who we know we have a long-term investment in.”
I did understand that, but the image of Mind Games with Michaels, and the house shows with Undertaker, and my match that night with Austin ran through my head. Then I thought of Mero, his match that same evening, and a match he had with the Undertaker that was so bad it defied belief. And believe me, it wasn’t the Undertaker who was at fault. Then I spoke. “Vince, I can understand that, but you’ve got to understand that I have to get up every morning and look in the mirror, and it will be hard to do that if I sign for the amount you’re talking about.”
Vince considered what I’d said before giving his retort. “What we’re offering you is just the minimum guarantee. It’s a worst-case scenario. It means, even if the bottom drops out of the business, you’re going to make at least that amount. But in all likelihood, you’re going to make far more than your guarantee.”
That was definitely a compelling argument, but unfortunately for the Vin man, I had irrefutable evidence on my side. “Vince,” I slowly replied, “I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I’ve had a great time here, and I’m happy with the way you’ve used me. Maybe you’re not aware of it, but I’m not making a whole hell of a lot more here in the Federation than I was last year in bingo halls and parking lots.”
Vince seemed genuinely stunned. “I had no idea,” Vince assured me, “but I’ll check on that, and, believe me, that’s going to change.” With that we shook hands and parted ways. Several months would go by before the subject of my contract was brought up again.
The next few months reinforced my opinion of Vince as a true man of his word. Unfortunately, this reinforcement was a good news/bad news proposition for Mick Foley. The good news was that my checks picked up immediately. In some cases, my payoffs doubled in the same arenas I had been to earlier. The bad news was, Vince stuck to his guns about being hesitant to get behind a wrestler who hadn’t signed his deal. Don’t get me wrong-I wasn’t buried or even abused and, in fact, was still often wrestling on the top of the card, but my TV presence was reduced greatly. I even went several months without any interview time on Raw. In the meantime, my back was getting progressively worse, to the point where my sciatica was making my life a hard one to live. Sciatica refers to pain thats usually caused by a herniated disc pressing on the sciatic nerve. Although the point of pressure is in the lower back, the pain radiates throughout the entire nerve, which extends down the buttocks all the way past the calf. Many of the everyday things I’d taken for granted became difficult and agonizing to do. Training with weights was next to impossible, cardiovascular work was arduous, and even standing still was physically demanding. Often I would have to sit down after standing only momentarily. I’d be in line at an airport and would have to sit down. Even though done while sitting, a trip to the toilet was no longer fun. Life in general was miserable, and over time I began to overcompensate for the back injury, forcing my body to curl up like the letter “S.”
My days off were few and far between, and much of my free time was spent at the chiropractor or with a massage therapist. When I was with Colette and the kids, it was difficult to do anything but lie down and watch TV. Even our yearly trip to Disney World was marred to a great degree by my inability to ride anything but “It’s a Small World.” Sure, it’s a nice, pleasant ride, but after our fifth trip, even three-year-old Noelle was looking at Big Daddy-O as if he were some kind of wimpazoid. Adding to my woes at the Magic Kingdom was the news that my televised match with the Undertaker, which I’d hoped would snap the WCW win streak, had actually been a nonfactor in the ratings, which stayed exactly the same. I had pictured Vince diving to his knees, begging my forgiveness, forever putting me in a different tax bracket from Marc Mero, but unfortunately, as my daughter ran in terror from Minnie Mouse, I realized that it was not meant to be. Later that day, I ran into wrestler Scott Taylor, who may be an even bigger Disney nerd than me. It really is a small world after all-but I wouldn’t want to paint it.
After my Disney letdown, I received a phone call at home from Jim Cornette. He was all excited. “Cactus,” he said in his high-pitched Louisville lingo, “I know you haven’t been in the mix that much, but, dadgum, I think we’ve got something for you.”
Hey, this was great. “What is it, Corny?”
“Well, Cactus, we were thinking of doing a little something where Marc Mero and Rena continue their little spat, and you don’t like it, so you deck Marc. You want Rena with your little group, but Uncle Paul doesn’t like it … so ya deck Paul. Now Paul still doesn’t like Rena, but he knows he has to tolerate her for your sake, and the three of you will have your own strange little family.”
Now usually Jim Cornette can make anything sound good, but this time I wasn’t buying it. I think he would have had an easier time selling me a time-share in Kosovo than convincing me of the career benefits of having a run with Marc Mero. My face must have given me away, because Colette passed me a note reading, “What’s wrong?” While Corny rambled, I wrote back, “They want me to wrestle Mero.” Colette’s face quickly converted into a mask of disdain-as if she’d just smelled a fart or seen anAl Snow match. Jimmy finished his pitch with a big “So whaddya think,” and after thinking on it for about a second, I firmly stated, “I hate it, Jimmy … I really hate it.”
Corny had to laugh. “Jesus Christ, Cactus, why don’t you say what you mean? What don’t you like about it?”
I got real serious, because I’d been thinking a lot about my future, which didn’t look real good at the moment. “Corny,” I sadly began, “I’ve taken a lot of risks, and I’ve taken a lot of bumps, and most of the time I think I can get through anything. But my back hurts so damn much that I can’t take it much longer, and I’m seriously thinking about retiring. And if I’m going to retire, I want to go out on top.” Jimmy was temporarily speechless, and when he did speak, it was with uncharacteristic restraint.
“Cactus, I know it’s not the best angle in the world, but Vince just wanted to get you involved in something for WrestleMania.”
I knew Jimmy was telling the truth, and I felt like he deserved the truth in return. “Jimmy,” I slowly started while thinking of the right way to verbalize what was going through my mind, “I’m not saying this to sound like a big shot, and I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but please tell Vince that if all this is about getting me in WrestleMania, I’d really rather not be on the show.”
Corny was stunned. “Wow.” He exhaled. “I’ll tell him, but goddamn, that’s got to be a first.” For most of the wrestlers, WrestleMania is the biggest moment of their year. For me, a Mankind/Mero matchup with Rena in my corner would not have been the best.
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When I got to the next television tapings, I was ribbed by all the office members about my conversation with Corny. To make sure he didn’t get secondhand information, I told Mero himself about my feelings. “Marc, just so you know,” I explained, “the office proposed a deal with me and you, and I didn’t like it, and I told them so.” He was actually fine with my decision. Like I’ve tried to say earlier, I don’t dislike Marc Mero, but I can’t understate just how much it bothered me that he was bringing in more money than I was. After the taping, Vince was gracious enough to have a meeting with me that included Vince’s right-hand man, Bruce Pritchard, Paul Bearer, and future McMahon stooge (and I mean that in a good way) Gerald Brisco. They ribbed with me in a good-natured way about the Mero proposal, and especially the line about missing WrestleMania. Then Vince asked in all sincerity if I had a better idea. Remember, I was still honestly considering retirement, and wanted to go out with pride. “What about Vader?” I said. “Vader’s kind of been written off, but that’s only because his head’s been messed around with so much. Let him do what he does best, and I guarantee, I’ll show you a match you won’t believe.” I was passionate about this belief and explained in great detail about our history, my ear, and WCW’s refusal to act on what surely would be a big-money matchup.
Vince seemed genuinely impressed, but added some intelligent insight. “I like it, Mick, but let’s not go into this thing, which could be huge, based solely on your past history with another company. Let’s create our own history, and then we can refer to the past as an additional resource.” On that night, the Mankind/Vader team was born, and though it never did lead to a feud of any type, it made for good television with me and Leon always at odds, and even planted a Mankind babyface seed. More important, it gave me a WrestleMania matchup with Owen Hart and the Bulldog, and a little bit of pride.
By February, my back was at its absolute worst. At the urging of several wrestlers, I saw a shiatsu massage expert named Francois Petit, who was also a martial arts world champion and Hollywood fight choreographer. He had worked on wrestlers ranging from Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase to Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels. The wrestlers swore by him, and I was impressed enough to venture out to Santa Monica, California, for treatment. Francois has since gone on to work with the wrestlers six days a month and has become a good friend. He tells me now that of all his cases, my back was the strangest and hardest to work on. He said my spine was more like that of a crocodile, as if it had adapted itself to punishment after all the years of abuse. His shiatsu work was not the pristine picture of relaxing therapy, but instead consisted of pressure points and agonizing deep tissue work. If it had been a match, I would have submitted. Some people express doubt about Francois’s abilities, but I know for a fact that when I left his house, I could stand straight for the first time in months. Unfortunately, it was short-lived, as being suplexed nightly and sitting in 25B all the way to Germany is probably not the right method of sciatic nerve rehabilitation, but at least for a moment, I had hope.
While I was in Germany, where I actually did get to do PR work, Colette begged me for a vacation. I told her about the great discounts available on last-minute cruises, and she booked us a three-day trip aboard the Big Red Boat. The ship was set to sail two days after my return to the States, which would give us a chance to go to Jungle Village in Cape Canaveral, a little fun park featuring an arcade, miniature golf, and a maze. It was not unlike hundreds of other small fun parks, but for a few years my kids swore up and down that they liked it better than Disney-no lines, no pushy tour groups, and no six-foot rodent with a head the size of a Maytag washer to run in terror from.
We had fun, but I was literally in agony, and I was forced to do something I’d tried to avoid at all costs. “Hello, Vince,” I said over the phone, “this is Mick Foley, and I wanted to talk to you about my back.” Vince asked about my condition, and when I gave him the bad news, I added, “Vince, I really hate to do this, but I think I’m going to need some time off to rest my back.”
I could hear the sound of pages turning as he rifled through his calendar, before he spoke again in a serious tone. “I see here where I can give you two days off at the end of April.”
I couldn’t believe it. What kind of an insensitive asshole was I working for? I wanted to chew him out, but I honestly didn’t know what to say about it. “Ho, ho, ho, ho”-it had been a joke, and I realized immediately that I had swallowed hook, line, and sinker. Vince then got serious for real. “Mick, please, tell me when, and I will give you as much time off as you need.”
I’ve mentioned before how important it is for me to make all my bookings. To me, it’s not only a professional responsibility, but also a matter of personal pride. I don’t feel like I have to be on every show-just every show that I’m booked on. Therefore, I rationalized, if I took time off in April, I wouldn’t really be missing bookings because the cards hadn’t been booked yet. After WrestleMania, which was at the end of March, we were scheduled for a Middle East tour to Dubai, or some other country where they wear towels on their heads. In the interim period, I would have a MRI done on my injured back. I asked if I could have time off after that.
I had actually gone for a MRI for my back two months earlier, but had left in shame and hadn’t wanted to show my face again. Being in a MRI is kind of like being in a coffin, and you need to lie absolutely still for up to forty-five minutes for the magnetic resonance imaging to take place. Many people get claustrophobic and need to be sedated before going in. I was offered such medication, but calmly told them that when I’d had an MRI done on my knees, I’d been so naturally relaxed that I’d fallen asleep inside. No anti-anxiety medicine for me, thank you.
I’d forgotten to consider that when a knee is done, the patient’s head is left in the open, but that when a back is done, the whole body is enclosed. That was a big consideration to forget. To make matters worse, the damn thing was so small that I had to raise my arms over my head to fit in. After about five minutes, I started to fidget. “Stay still, Mr. Foley,” came the voice over my headphones. A few minutes later, my shoulders started hurting from being held still in a strenuous position for so long. I involuntarily kicked my legs. “We’re going to have to start over, Mr. Foley,” came the voice.
“Great,” I sarcastically thought. A few minutes later, I started feeling like the walls were closing in. I felt like my eyeball was in contact with the MRI machine. I’d often felt claustrophobic when I was thrown in the Undertaker’s casket after a difficult match, where I tried to breathe coffin air while the audience banged on the damn thing as it rolled down the aisle. This, however, was far worse. I thought deeply about what to do and finally made the only decision that a hardcore King of the Death Match could-I hit the panic button and screamed to be let out.
Determined not to have the same thing happen again, I requested an open MRI, which allows much more room to function in. The feeling is not nearly as intense, but I would still be required to stay still for over forty minutes, and that concerned me. To combat the tendency to twitch, I had Colette read to me from the current book I was working on, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, by Kenneth C. Davis. Sadly, Colette doesn’t share my passion for history, and as a result, she had about as much enthusiasm as Steve Blackman reading a bedtime story, as she recounted the irony of Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence while being a slaveholder himself.
When the MRI was done, I was handed the film that I would take to the doctor with me the following morning. “Can I look at them?” I asked the technician.
“Sure,” she replied, “they’re yours, but I doubt that you’ll be able to see anything on them. You really need a doctor to read them.”
Apparently, she didn’t know whom she was dealing with. I took one look and made my diagnosis. “It looks like a herniation of the disc between L4 and L5, and the pressure on my nerve is what is causing the shooting pain down my leg.”
The woman looked impressed. So did Co
lette. “Look, hon,” I told her, while pointing to one of the spiral discs on the film, “this disc is discolored-it’s completely white. We’ll have to ask the doctor about that.”
The next day, I took my MRI results and my expert opinion to the orthopedic surgeon’s office. Upon introduction, I asked him to look at the film and then repeated my educated finding. “Looks like a herniation of the disc between L4 and L5, huh, Doc?”
The doctor looked surprised. “It certainly does look that way, Mr. Foley,” he affirmed. I shot a smile of pride to Colette.
“Tell him about that disc,” she said.
“Oh yes, Doctor,” I said, as if we were both part of the same fellowship, “in addition to the herniation of said disc, I am a bit concerned about the severe discoloration of this other disc. As you can tell, it’s white instead of the gray color of the other discs.”
The doctor smiled and seemed both amused and sad to tell me the news. “Urn, Mr. Foley,” he knowingly began, “all of your discs are supposed to be white. The gray color indicated a degenerative condition in all of the remaining discs in your back.”
“Oh” was all my educated mind could say. I felt as if I were standing in front of him with snakeskin boots and a Batman costume on-a real doofus. A doofus with a pretty screwed-up back.
“We’re going to need to do an epidural,” he warned me, referring to the practice of injecting long needles directly into the affected disc to reduce the swelling. “Even then,” he continued, “it’s only a fifty percent chance that you won’t have to have surgery.”
This wasn’t the news I was looking for at all, so I asked one more question, hoping against hope for a favorable reply. “Is there any treatment that doesn’t include the epidural shots?”
“No” was his firm reply.
I was scheduled to begin treatment right after WrestleMania, but luckily fate intervened, or maybe just dumb luck, because the overseas tour was canceled. The tour was scheduled for eight days, followed by six days off. This gave me two full weeks off-the longest rest we’d had since my arrival in the Federation. I began my conservative treatment of ice and rest in the two days before WrestleMania. For those days, I lay in bed all day while applying ice every twenty minutes and eating delicious Chicago-style pizza every two hours. After Mania, I continued my rest and ice treatment, combined with stretching, which was absolutely excruciating. Thankfully, and damn near miraculously, it worked. I called Vince up and had him put me back on the booking sheet. I very well could have been George Costanza yelling, “Baby, I’m back!” The doctor seemed almost saddened to hear of my healing powers. I had healed myself and had done it without his needles and surgery. As my daughter would say, “Na-Na-Boo-Boo.”