by Mick Foley
I went to the TV studio early in the morning to shoot another unique introduction with Chris Chambers, which would feature the Dude “morphing” into Cactus Jack. It was there that I learned that Terry Funk wouldn’t be my partner but that Chainsaw Charlie would. For reasons that I still don’t quite understand, Terry was, at his own request, turned into Chainsaw Charlie, and the result wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Cactus Jack stuck around for three months this time, but in truth his impact was not all that great. It might have been a lack of interview time, or it might have been the somewhat anticlimactic debut of Terry chainsawing his way out of a wooden box with a pair of baby-powdered pantyhose on his head, but for some reason, our team didn’t quite take off as we had planned.
Don’t get me wrong-the team wasn’t a failure, but it did fail to live up to what I thought it could be. I thought we could usher in a new era of danger and dynamic promos into the world of sports entertainment. Instead, we were just a couple of popular wrestlers who were miles apart from Steve Austin on the food chain.
At one particular six-man tag in Louisville, Kentucky, my value became very clear to me. Originally, Terry was contracted to do all of the five shows with the Federation. When he became my partner, he went on the road full-time. As a concession to the fact that he was fifty-four years old and still working as hard in the ring as ever, the office would occasionally give Terry a few days off. As a result, on this night, I was teamed with Owen Hart and Stone Cold against the Outlaws and The Rock. The crowd was chanting the familiar “Rocky sucks, Rocky sucks,” when Road Dogg got on the mike to disagree. “No, he doesn’t,” said the Dogg. “His timing’s good. He looks great, plus he’s a pretty good guy.”
The match started, and Owen and I got nice responses to our respective moves. Then I tagged in Austin, and the place went crazy. “Did you ever get the feeling that he’s the main course and we’re just a couple of side dishes?” Owen jokingly asked me. Austin threw some punches, and the crowd went wild.
“Kind of like a baked potato,” I said to Owen. Austin flipped off Gunn and the roar got even louder.
“Jack, let’s face it, you’re like a three-bean salad that no one even wants,” Owen countered. Austin hit the Lou Inesz press, a move so silly it could actually be called “the dick to the mouth,” and the Louisville Gardens erupted.
“Owen, let’s face it, you and I are just little sprigs of parsley that will just be thrown out after dinner,” I only half-jokingly answered back.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Owen agreed. “That’s exactly what we are.”
As I’ve mentioned, Steve Austin is a great guy, but I’d be lying if I said that the attention he was receiving in comparison to me didn’t hurt me just a little bit. Sometimes more than a little.
The Austin phenomenon notwithstanding, Terry and I did have several great moments together. Our Royal Rumble appearance, where Terry and I willingly traded headshots before teaming up to kick The Rock’s “rooty poo, candy ass,” was a definite highlight. I actually appeared as all three “faces of Foley” in the contest, but I will always best remember the Rumble for the reaction of Terry when he realized I had him dead to rights with a steel chair. He rolled up his pantyhose so I could clearly see his face, nodded his head up and down to give me the okay and waited like a man for the chair shot that nearly leveled him. Terry recoiled from the blow by staggering around and throwing two or three Fred Sanford jabs into the air. I presented Terry the same chair, which he accepted as if it were a cherished family heirloom. I then gave Funk the go-ahead, and he clobbered me three times. It was a truly warm moment between friends.
We also had a famous ride in a Dumpster, courtesy of the Outlaws. I had a match with Terry just for the hell of it, which culminated in my flying elbow onto the fallen Funker from the side of the Titantron into a Dumpster. With both of us incapacitated, the Outlaws shut the lid and wheeled us off the ramp, leading to a crash landing on the cold, hard concrete below. It should have, could have, and would have been a truly great image, but the details were all wrong. For one thing, my dive off the Titantron should have been a highlight to match the later Hell in a Cell fall for sheer drama. I had told Vince that I would climb only about eight feet up the massive screen, but I had every intention of going up to about fifteen when we were live. During the course of our brawl, the Dumpster had rolled too far, and when I started climbing, I realized that a higher fall would send me way past the outer limit of the Dumpster. Rather than get down and roll it to the proper distance, I just took off, which would have been impressive enough, if not for the cloud of packing peanuts that poofed up in the air upon impact. When we were helped out of the Dumpster, there were peanuts everywhere. I swear the china I had shipped for Christmas from England didn’t look as snuggly as we did when we were helped out of the trash bin.
Finally, we probably overexaggerated our condition, which didn’t help our credibility when we came running down the aisle to end the show. Within an hour and a half, we went from being unconscious in an ambulance to hitting the bad guys with our IV stands. Terry was even wearing a hospital gown, although, mercifully, his wrinkled ass never made the air.
Also, we did have a tremendous Dumpster Match with the Outlaws at Mania, which saw us capture the belts and helped set the stage for the next part of my career. With the help of a forklift, we were able to dump both Gunn and Dogg into a backstage Dumpster for the tag team championship. How were we to know that we would be the victims of the little-known “wrong Dumpster rule,” which would lead to the stripping of the belts and a rematch inside a steel cage the next evening on Raw? Unfortunately, Terry had suffered a bad injury to his lower back when, at fifty-four years of age, he was powerbombed off the ring apron into the Dumpster below. Within minutes of the fall, his back was visibly bruised, and within hours, had filled with liquid. He somehow was able to get through the next night at Raw, but it would be the last time that Funk and Cactus would team.
I don’t mean to demean what Terry and I did, because, in truth, we had some excellent matches. With all wrestling considerations aside, I will always fondly remember my three-month union with Chainsaw, for it gave me the chance to ride the road with my hero and mentor and to get inside his “middle-aged and crazy” mind. Terry Funk is simply everything that is right about this business. I think my fellow Florida Panhandle neighbor, the Road Dogg Jesse James, put it best when Terry walked past one day and he said, “I don’t care what the announcers tell everybody-that’s the real toughest son of a bitch in the World Wrestling Federation.”
I don’t know if people can fully appreciate how difficult it is to continually get up for big matches. I know the general public just sees us as a silly spectacle filled with “make-believe” fighting, but I doubt that even real fans know what it’s like to try to get up for big matches again and again-even when the mind and the body are exhausted. We were all battered and bruised after WrestleMania, with Funk needing hospitalization, but somehow we all needed to suck it up one more time for the cage match that would change my fortunes.
I had received a surprise phone call from Vince Russo about a week earlier that had changed my outlook on the business. Until the phone call, I was looking at a post-WrestleMania program with Marc Mero, who by this point was Marvelous Marc Mero and was having big problems with his valet/wife, Rena (a.k.a. Sable). Of course, the problems with his wife were fictional, but the new “Marvelous” image had given fans a whole new persona. Since recovering from knee surgery, Mero had altered his wrestling style, abandoning high flying for a more conservative ground game.
I actually came up with a good idea for me and Mero that I thought would be entertaining and I had a little bit of hope for the match.
Russo’s phone call changed all that. “Vince, how are you,” I said into the phone, as I walked around the small gym that Colette and I had just opened.
“Cactus, I got some good news for you,” said Russo, with a voice that was pure Brooklyn even though he’d grown
up only five miles from me in the middle of Long Island.
“What is it?” I said, with great anticipation running through my mind. “You didn’t reconsider that Mero thing, did you?”
“It’s better than that,” Russo quickly replied. “We want you to wrestle Austin at the next Pay-Per-View.”
I loved it, but I knew better than to get excited. “Are you sure it’s okay with Steve?” I asked.
Russo quickly assuaged my fears. “Are you kidding?” he said. “It was Steve’s idea.”
I knew that a program with Steve could be a big success, but as Michael Hayes had reminded me years earlier, I would need a reason. The night after WrestleMania gave it to me.
Terry and I had a short but brutal fight with the Outlaws and a host of others inside the cage. He could hardly move due to the “Dumpster bomb.” I guess because of that, Terry was handcuffed to the cage as the Outlaws worked me over. Showing the intestinal fortitude that was my trademark, I battled back against the odds and was climbing the cage en route to victory. When I got there and hung my body over the cage, the returning X-Pac (who had just jumped ship from WCW) was there to meet me with a chair over the head that sent me back inside. I was beaten up some before being piledriven onto the same chair for the crushing defeat. (In this cage match, a pinfall could also signal victory.) With the match over, XPac entered the ring to resume the assault and was joined by Triple H and Chyna. This was the birth of the new D-Generation X (or DX), and a pretty good birth it was. They took turns beating on me, with X-Pac giving me the “bronco ride” in the corner, Hunter giving me a pedigree on the chair, and the Outlaws giving me a couple of extra chair shots for good measure. The combination of X-Pac’s balls bouncing up and down in my face and the repetitive feeling of steel against my skull had me feeling both pissed off and pained as I lay on the canvas.
DX left the ring, and several fans started to leave, thinking the show was over. In an attempt to keep them in their seats, Howard Finkel’s voice cut through the Albany, New York, air. “Ladies and gentlemen, remember, coming up soon will be … Stone Cold Steve Austin.” The place went wild and started chanting his name. “Austin, Austin, Austin,” came the noise as I slowly got to my feet. I looked at Terry and the very real pain that was etched on his face. I thought of myself, and the years of painful mornings I’d had to endure. Two of the hardest-working SOBs in the history of the business, and all we were to Albany was sprigs of parsley on a plate. Well, I may have been a sprig, but I was a sprig with feelings, and they’d just been hurt. That was definitely a negative. There was also a positive. I had a reason, and it was a good one.
The next night in Syracuse, New York, I walked out to the ring with a neck brace and a heavy heart. I spoke to the fans, and made my feelings clear:
“I have always taken a lot of chances in the ring, and some very bad things have happened to me over the years. What I’ve always had is the comfort of knowing that when I looked at my career, my dreams, the things I’d accomplished and the things I’d set my heart on, that it was always worth the pain. So people ask, ‘Cactus, how’s your neck?’ I’d say that I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let a group of scum like DX put Cactus Jack away.
“Oh, I guess you see that Terry Funk’s not here, and I haven’t talked to Terry, but I left a message on his answering machine, and I’m not saying this to sound tough, but Cactus Jack and Terry Funk do not miss wrestling matches. So I have to guess if the Funker was hurt enough to fly home, than it’s probably pretty bad.
“I really wish that people could know Terry a little bit more than just what they see in the ring, because people will always debate on who the greatest wrestler of all time is, but I guarantee you, you ask every damn last bunch of people in the dressing room, they’ll say that Terry Funk is the gutsiest old bastard they’ve ever seen in their lives. Now, I guess you’ve probably seen Terry’s back and I hope you saw WrestleMania, because it was a tremendous match, and I’m very proud of it. And Terry was lying there on the bed with his belt and he said, ‘Cactus, it’s all been worth it. But we don’t have those belts now, do we?’
“And I’m not gonna get into the reason why, but I will say that when Cactus Jack was lying there, and I was conscious, and I could barely move, it was very hard to move, and I was not very far from being unconscious. And when I looked at Terry Funk, I heard something in my ears and, to tell you the truth, it kind of made me sick.
“That’s … there was an announcement being made thanking the fans for coming to the World Wrestling Federation, and they said something about Stone Cold Steve Austin, and people started chanting his name. And it’s funny, because when I came here two years ago I was Mankind, and there were always people saying, ‘Why don’t you just be Cactus Jack?’ Then I came out in tie-dye and some white boots and they said, ‘Why don’t you just be Cactus Jack?’
“Well, I gave you Cactus Jack. I gave you every goddamn bit of energy I had, and when I was lying there helpless, you chanted someone else’s name. This is not a knock on Stone Cold Steve Austin; hey, I’m happy he’s the champion, and he may not admit it, but we’ve known each other a long time and he’s been my friend; but what you did to me and Terry Funk laying there in the middle of the ring was not only distasteful and disrespectful, it was disgusting.
“Well, I can finally say for the first time after thirteen years of blood, sweat, and tears that it’s not worth it anymore. It’s gonna be a long time before you see Cactus Jack in the ring again.”
The next week’s Raw was remarkable for two reasons-it ended WCW’s year and a half run on top of the ratings, and it ushered in the return of Dude Love.
Actually, the show was classic Federation storytelling, with Austin challenging Vince to a match and Vince training for the big showdown throughout the two-hour show. The program was both captivating and entertaining and was a good example of why Raw is the hottest television show in the country. One of my favorite segments was when Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco, known collectively as the Stooges, were giving Vince wrestling pointers in the dressing room. “Now, Vince, you know that Austin always sets up the stunner with a boot to the stomach,” advised Brisco, a former collegiate and professional star wrestling from Oklahoma. “When he does that, you hook him here [under the knee]. Once you do that, Vince, you own him. You OWN him.”
Vince nodded his head knowingly while Patterson chimed in, “Boy, is he in for a surprise.”
Patterson and Briscoe are a shining example of the difference between the Federation and WCW. WCW was not able to make Brett Hart a star-a guy who’d already been one for over a dozen years. Vince, on the other hand, was able to take two out-of-shape retired wrestlers and make them bigger names than they’d been in their heyday. Vince’s son Shane, who is now a top performer with the company, once asked me what I would like to do when I was finished wrestling. “I would like to be one of the Stooges,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Shane retorted. “The Stooges get beat up a lot.”
“Sure,” I shot back, “I’m good at that!”
The show was primed for a crescendo until Dude’s music played and the tie-dyed hippie throwback proceeded to ruin the festivities.
“The Dude wants to know, can’t we all just get along? I got to level with ya, Philadelphia. The Dude does not feel a whole lot of love out here tonight.
“But, Steve-O, as you know, there’s only one cat who can bring peace to the Warzone, and that’s Dude Love. Now, Stone Cold, I know you got your heart set on putting some heavy-duty booty to Uncle Vinny, but the Dude has got to put the veto on this one. Oh, we are tight, Steve-O, about as tight as two cats can be. But you got to understand, Steve-O, Vince McMahon writes the checks that let the Dude live the kind of life that the Dude likes to live. So I guess you could say, Uncle Vinny, you are my main man.
“And I want you to remember one thing and remember it good. When you look at Stone Cold Steve Austin, you’ve got your eyes set on the world’s toughest SOB, and he can put you
down on your A double S just like … “
A furious Vince shoved Dude on his ample butt, and Dude started to stalk the pumped-up owner of the company. Somehow, in all of this, Dude turned on a frustrated Austin, and the show went off the air with Austin feeling the Loved One’s wrath. The numbers on the show were phenomenal, even if the Dude’s performance did serve to piss off the same people we had just entertained so well. The next week, WCW countered by premiering Hollywood Hogan vs. Bill Goldberg, and once again pulled ahead in the ratings. By doing so, WCW had actually shot itself in the foot. Hogan and Goldberg would have been a surefire Pay-Per-View main event. By throwing the match away for free, WCW had actually lost millions in potential revenue.