by Mick Foley
Somehow, we turned it around. The momentum began to grow and we turned up the volume to the point that it was a very good match. The Rock was making a comeback and had things going his way until I caught him charging at me and backdropped him over the ropes. As The Rock struggled to his feet, I climbed to the second turnbuckle outside the ring, as I had done many times before. This time, however, there was nobody home, and I crashed hard into the Spanish announcer team table with my right knee absorbing the impact. Because I had hit the edge, the table didn’t break like it normally did. Instead, it put up a hell of a fight before crumpling to the ground. I lay on the ground and tried to will myself back into the ring. The pain was intense, as I had dislocated my kneecap and torn my medial meniscus. The injury would eventually put me on the operating table six months later. Regardless of the pain, I had a match to finish. I rolled into the ring, and saw The Rock waiting for a big clothesline. I ducked it, and instead delivered my double arm DDT. I went for the corner. One, two, and … ooh, The Rock just kicked out, but it was real close. I lifted up my button-down shirt that I’d bought at Kmart for $12.50, but would later sell for $200. The fans knew what was coming next, and despite the fact that they disliked Vince’s new stooge, let out a mighty roar. The Rock turned around and I clamped on the hold. He struggled mightily, but managed to counter with his second big move, the Rock Bottom. The Rock was groggy, but placed an arm over my chest. The referee dove down. One, two, and … I just kicked out, about as close as a count could get. The Rock stood up. He glared at the St. Louis crowd, and the place just erupted. The Rock threw off the elbow pad, signaled for the move, and then went about completing the single worst move ever created in sports-entertainment. Boom. People’s elbow. The place exploded. This had to be it. One, two, … I just barely kicked out, and a big “ooh” echoed throughout the arena.
It was about time for things to get screwy. The Rock looked at Vince and gave him the “people’s eyebrow,” the same facial gesture that Lee Majors had used so well throughout his career. Vince nodded and shot his version of the arched brow back. The Rock then calmly stepped between my legs, and crossed them with my right foot hooked between his biceps and armpit. He turned me over, and Vince frantically called for the bell. I had not been in the sharpshooter for more than two seconds and the match was over.
Vince hugged The Rock, and proclaimed him the new “corporate champion.” In a complete reworking of Brett Hart’s Survivor Series screw-job ending, I had now been “screwed.” Somehow, Vince had managed to take last year’s real-life situation and turn it into the most creative finish of the year.
Immediately, The Rock became the most hated man in the company and my popularity took off. I was entering into the territory that only Austin had previously had access to. I was about to get my hands on the McMahons. Over the course of the next several weeks, I wreaked havoc on Vince, Shane, and the corporate stooges. I beat up Vince in a parking lot and destroyed Patterson and Brisco in a boiler room. I had the honor of giving Shane a beating in his first professional match, which was very good for what it was. With Shane in trouble, the stooges ran in for the save, but I was able to cut them off and caught Brisco with the Socko claw. Patterson came running as well, and I had a claw waiting for him too. No, it was not a mandible claw, but instead the dreaded ball claw that I had once had used against me in the famous “backyard match” at Danny Zucker’s house. My parents were visiting for the holidays, and my dad thought the claw and Patterson’s subsequent selling of it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. “Play that back again,” he howled, and as a result, we got to see poor Pat tap dancing in terror as I traumatized his two testes half a dozen times. “Show it again, Dad, show it again,” my kids kept saying, as we laughed as a family at the gonadal goings-on. It was a perfect example of wrestling bringing a family together.
The next morning, I was awakened by the sounds of my children laughing. They were watching that same tape over and over again. I thought so much of it that I even addressed it the following Monday in Albany, New York. “Last week was a big week for me,” I informed the raucous Raw contingent. “It was the first time that I’d ever touched another man’s testicles, and I’ve got to admit that, in a rugged, manly type of way, I kind of enjoyed it.” Fortunately, footage of the previous week’s scrotal assault was aired while I was speaking in order to clue fans in on what the hell I was talking about. Otherwise, they might have thought that I was referring to a secret camping trip or something.
The stage was set for Worcester, Massachusetts, the next evening. We had been defeating WCW in impressive fashion, but they had been promoting a huge title match for their Georgia Dome Nitro, with which Raw would be competing. We decided to give them a title match of our own.
The Royal Rumble was set to be our next Pay-Per-View at the end of January. Triple H and I were set to wrestle in a Rumble qualifying match, with Shane McMahon as the special guest referee. The match was forgettable except for Shane’s ridiculously fast count that spelled defeat for Mankind. Helmsley said that he hated to win like that, but with a spot in the Rumble at stake, he’d take a win any way he could get it. “Here’s a late Christmas present, Mick,” he muttered as he booted the junior McMahon and proceeded to pedigree him into mat.
Now I had a tremendous task in front of me. I needed to put a painful submission hold on Shane, but it needed to be visually exciting. A choke old or front facelock wouldn’t do. To add pressure to the situation, I also needed to perform this painful hold while talking into a microphone, so I needed one hand free. In a flash I remembered my amateur career, and my propensity for leg wrestling that was unusual for a big man. I remembered the hold that used to make my friend Allen Bloomberg cry and even made future King of Queens star Kevin James suffer in the hot basement wrestling room at Ward Melville High. (Yes, he really was on the team with me.) Seconds later, I had Shane hooked in a pretty impressive guillotine body ride, which is more or less a lying abdominal stretch. “This is a move that Jim McGonigle taught me at Ward Melville,” I sneered over the mike while Shane whimpered beneath me. It turned out that Coach McGonigle, who had beaten leukemia when I was in grade school and had coached both me and my brother in high school, became more well known from that one comment than he had from twenty years of diligent coaching.
With Shane at my mercy, I called out, “Vince, I want a title shot, and I want it tonight,” while Shane moaned in displeasure. “Give it to me, or I’ll break his goddamn shoulder.”
I then put the mike to Shane’s face so that he could say a few words. “Oww, oww, oww,” was all he could manage. With his own flesh and blood in peril, Vince almost immediately gave The Rock up, and agreed to the big showdown. The Rock was displeased, but the crowd was not, as they prepped for an epic battle.
I almost didn’t make the epic. I decided to take off through the people as I’d seen so many wrestlers do before. I almost didn’t get out in one piece. I had neglected to tell security of my grand exit scheme, and as a result, there was no one to block the fans from reaching out and touching me. And slapping me. And tearing off my clothes. For anyone who wondered why I showed up for battle with a shredded garment, now you know. What scared me is that these people liked me and they nearly killed me. If they hadn’t, I might have had to no-show my date with destiny.
I got back to the dressing room with almost no time to prepare. I knew Vince’s Corporation and DX, who had kind of taken me in as their “little buddy,” would be surrounding the ring. I wanted to make sure they didn’t fight until the time was right. I had seen way too many similar situations end up in disaster because of overzealous ringside onlookers and I wanted to make sure that momentous occasion didn’t suffer a similar fate. I barely had even a chance to wish The Rock luck when his music played. Although the situations were completely different, I felt just like I had before my King of the Death Match finale in Japan. I just wanted to get through it.
Fortunately, we did much more than that. We had engaged in a b
etter bouts before, and we would engage in better in the future, but this night was special. Too many wrestlers think the secret of a great match is to line up as many great moves as possible, and run them off from A to Z. That may be great for them, but it takes out the factors that make the match turn into magic-emotion and spontaneity. Our title match may have been lacking in choreography, but it was filled with emotion and spontaneity, and as a result, felt magical as it unfolded.
I was “Rock Bottomed” on a table, which was a first, and as a result, was on the defensive as The Rock began kicking my “rooty poo, candy ass” all over the Worcester Centrum. Time and again, the “great one” fired away, but I waited for a mistake, and with my white shirt in tatters, mounted a small offensive. I stunned The Rock with a suplex and then slowly got to my feet. As the Corporate Champion gained his bearings, I took off for the ropes, but was unable to spring off due to the Big Boss Man’s interference. I pulled Boss Man up to the ring apron and fired a punch, which set off a chain reaction of Corporation and DX fisticuffs. With the referee’s attention on the ringside melee, young Shane, who was still selling his sore shoulder, slid the championship belt in to The Rock. I turned around, and WHAM, The Rock caught me on the head with a shot so hard that you could hear the heavy belt dong off my skull. The referee turned around to see the “great one” going for the cover. In the closest of counts, I kicked out on two and twenty-seven twenty-eighths for a huge “ooh” from the frantic fans.
The Rock was irate, but the readied himself quickly for a second belt shot that would surely allow him to walk out of Worcester still wearing ten pounds of gold. He swung mightily, but just like Casey of Mudville fame, struck out, and I was there to benefit from his mistake. One boot to the stomach and a double arm DDT later, and both of us were lying on the ground in a weakened state. The DX-Corporation battle was really picking up outside, and the referee headed out to restore order. Amazingly, none of the combatants heard the gigantic sound of glass breaking or the thunderous 9vation that came with it as Stone Cold made his way to the ring, brandishing a steel chair.
Austin had not been heard from since his December 13 injury, and the absence had served only to make the fans’ hearts grow fonder. As The Rock was recovering, Stone Cold slid into the ring and caught the rising champion with a nice chair shot to the top of the People’s Skull. Klong! The champ wasn’t rising anymore. The referee looked up to see me just barely covering The Rock and slid in to make the count that would list my name forever in the annals of sports-entertainment history. One, two, three. The bell rang, and it was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard.
For years, I had never believed this could happen. I had been respected by my peers and even idolized by certain fans, as witnessed by the “Foley Is God” signs that were gracing the Centrum in Worcester. I had shed blood on five different continents and had taken part in what were arguably some of the finest matches ever seen. Still, I had wrestled for fifteen years with the knowledge that I didn’t look like a star, let alone a champion. I had learned to accept and even love my role as the lovable loser who somehow never wins the big one, and I can honestly say that before that day of December 29, 1998, I never believed that it would happen. But it had happened, and the reaction was heartwarming.
The Worcester fans were on their feet, and I was on the shoulders of D-Generation X as they paraded me around the ring. Several pictures later showed the members of DX smiling broadly, and I know that the smiles were too bright to not be real. Much like the early Dude, Mankind-or more accurately, Mick Foley-had made the people feel good about themselves. A chant of “Foley, Foley,” began, but unlike my traumatic night at King of the Ring, these chants were loud and growing louder. I was let down from the shoulders of the D X and grabbed the house mike. I first addressed Vince, who was yelling and fussing his way off stage, although secretly I suspect he was beaming. I then got down on my knees and spoke from my heart.
“At the risk of not sounding cool,” I began, “I want to dedicate this belt to my two little people at home, Dewey and Noelle-Daddy-O did it!”
I lost the belt at the Royal Rumble in an emotional and brutal bout only twenty-six days later. But if you want to read about that, you can buy The Rock’s damn book.
The End