by Foley, Mick
Though I had long since abandoned the foolish notion that I was going to achieve some kind of wrestling immortality with this whole ECW thing, I still felt as if the ultimate chapter (this diary entry) could be either happy or sad, depending on the quality of our match. In the words of the poem “Invictus,” “I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul.” Despite the fact that my idea had been greatly altered, minimized, and, in terms of confidence in both Tommy Dreamer and Terry Funk, had suffered from an embarrassing case of premature evacuation, I still held out some hope that we could all have a hell of a match, and a great deal less hope that I could wrestle some type of admission of misjudgment out of Vince.
I made it to church to see little Mick really give “Heaven” his all…in rehearsal. Man, he was really working the fret board of his blue blow-up guitar, as if he was Angus Young hitting the “Stiff Upper Lip” solo. Then, come show time—nothing. He didn’t even make it to the front of the church, choosing instead to say, “I don’t really want to be here,” over and over, while sitting on Dad’s lap.
I made it to Noelle’s game too, to watch her squad lose a heartbreaker, 11–10 to the team coached by a guy who helps run the league. Actually, the game seemed like a tie, until the coach unveiled a secret error in the scorecard that allowed his team the victory.
This coach has the distinction of being the only guy in my youth league experience that I’ve questioned, raised my voice to, or yelled at. It’s just that some of these “win at all costs” parents strip all the fun out of the game. I remember limping onto the playing fields a couple of years ago, right after my Backlash injury, and watching in shock as this guy’s team stole base after base, including double steals, during the course of the game. I asked our coach if stealing was even allowed. “Yeah,” he said, “but so far the coaches have had a gentleman’s agreement that there would be no stealing.” This coach, however, didn’t want anything to do with this agreement. For his girls, it was off to the races.
I did a little research on the subject of stealing bases in ten-year-old girls’ softball games. I interviewed many people associated with the league, including the head of umpiring, and no one, it seemed, could recall a single instance where a girl had been thrown out stealing. Not a single one.
Why such a lopsided percentage of say 100 percent to 0 percent in the steals/caught stealing ratio? At Noelle’s next practice, I lined up the girls at home plate and asked each of them to attempt a couple of throws to second. Noelle came closest—a high arching lob that landed a good ten feet from the bag. The other girls did not fare quite so well. Some couldn’t reach the pitcher’s mound.
I called the head of the Little League (not the head of softball) and asked why a rule in which failure was virtually guaranteed would be allowed. “Well, we want to encourage the girls to practice skills that they’ll need as they head into middle school.”
I thought about that logic for a second, then said, “When they get to middle school, they will be mature enough to reach second base. Right now, you’re asking ten-year-olds to defend the indefensible. My experience shows me that when someone has no success whatsoever at a certain skill, they will simply stop trying.”
“That may be true,” the man said. “But at least the rule is fair to both teams.”
“Actually, it’s not,” I said. “It favors the better team.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because the better team makes less mistakes, gives up fewer hits, and allows fewer base runners. A bad team may get an extra run or two a game out of a stealing rule, but a good team can just trot around the bases at will. This is what leads to the blowouts, the 16–2 games that make adults sick and make little girls cry. This is what leads to kids never wanting to play sports again.”
I hung up, having made my point, but I wasn’t satisfied. The image of that damn coach arguing every little call while his team treated the base paths like a track meet just wouldn’t go away. Now I know how Mets fans felt when Mike Piazza was behind the plate. I only wished I had the power to change things. Wait a second, I did have the power. The power of the pen.
A day later, I called the Little League office. I know that most of the coaches and volunteers involved in youth sports have only the best interests of the kids at heart—including the head of our league—but it bothered me to see one guy (the coach) affecting the lives of children and their parents with his self-imposed rule changes (he had made up the stealing rule at the younger age group) and petty, selfish attitude. So I invoked the power of the pen.
“Hi, Mr. Jones [not his real name], this is Mick Foley, the parent who talked to you yesterday. Good, thanks, how are you? Listen, I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but I’ve written a couple of New York Times bestselling books, and therefore, when I expressed an interest in doing a story on fanaticism in youth sports, Newsday [a Long Island paper] was very interested. So I’d like to get some comments from you and Coach Steiger [not his real name] for my article.”
I never did write that article. I’m not sure I ever really had the intention. And Steiger’s team beat ours handily in the championship game. But seeing that loudmouthed coach sitting meekly on the bench, opening his mouth only to offer the mildest of encouragements, gave me a feeling of great pride and power.
“What’s wrong with Steiger?” I heard our team’s parents ask repetitively. “He’s just sitting there.” I shrugged my shoulders for a few innings, as if I too was baffled by the case of Steiger’s inaction, before finding myself unable to contain the story of my great power any longer.
“It was the pen that got him,” I said. “The power of the pen.” The confused faces of our team’s parents gave me the necessary excuse to unveil my literary past, and unearth such notable references as “towering number-one bestseller,” “a million copies sold,” and “wasn’t ghostwritten like the president’s was.” So from the jaws of softball defeat I was able to snatch moral and literary victory.
Now that I got that softball tangent out of the way, let me see if I can snatch wrestling victory out of Vince’s hungry jaws of defeat. Wow, what a weak segue, even by my limited literary standards.
Trying to make six people happy in a match like this can often be a difficult proposition. Participants often have their own agenda, their own interests to look out for down the road, and can therefore often be difficult to appease in such a wild setting. After all, everyone wants to get their stuff in. “Stuff” is not usually the word used in such a sentence, as most wrestlers opt for a more excretory euphemism to describe their repertoire of moves in one-word fashion.
We’re lucky. Everyone’s on the same page. Everyone feels screwed. Everyone feels betrayed by Vince and the creative team, and everyone wants to prove them wrong. There is only one way to do that—tear the house down! We’re all together on this one.
I had a few ideas for a basic structure of the match. Luckily, everyone agreed. One by one, the participants chipped in with ideas, some accepted, some discarded, but each one given in the best interest of the match. It may have been the easiest Pay-Per-View negotiating session I’d been a part of. We had a few great gimmicks (foreign objects, or “international objects,” as they were called in WCW in the name of political correctness), a few dramatic transitions, a few huge surprises, and one great finish, courtesy of Paul E. A few weeks earlier, I had expressed concern that involving Lita and Beulah in the finish might strike many (including me) as a cheap way out. What sense would it make to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths? With the news of a new plan, I am no longer concerned.
This is about the point where I will start using past and present writing tenses interchangeably. I apologize ahead of time for the grammatical incorrectness. But, in order to take you guys on a harrowing journey through the match, I have to feel like I’m living through it all over again. So screw the grammar, the past and present tenses, and the punctuation as well. And as far as Dreamer, Funk, and Beulah go, I’ve got three simple words: “Bring ’em on!
” Oh, man, I hope the president didn’t read that.
It’s twenty minutes before the match, and I’m in an oddly mellow state. I can’t help but contrast this mellowness to my pre- ’Maniamindset, where I had worked myself into a frenzy. Back on April 2, I had found a private corner of the building and rocked back and forth for minutes, listening to “Winter” by Tori Amos, a beautiful, haunting song that for some reason continues to give rise to goose bumps and thoughts of hardcore destruction, thirteen years after first being touched by it in Maxx Pain’s car on a long forgotten WCW road trip.
Kane later told me that he walked by and opted not to say hello, seeing the altered state I was in the process of entering.
But all the mental preparation in the world couldn’t hide the doubts, concerns, and even fears I faced heading into ’Mania. I remember heading up to the gorilla position, mere minutes—two or three—before match time. I saw Edge and Lita and, without even thinking about my words, asked them if they would say a prayer with me before we went out there. A prayer for safety, not for performance, although I was so scared that I was willing to take whatever the big guy was willing to give me.
Words are like that sometimes—they just kind of sneak out. Although the last time I remember being that surprised by my own words was back in 1987, on one of my weekly 800-mile round trips from college to Dominic DeNuccis’s wrestling school, when I asked a hitchhiker if she would touch me in a not so innocent way while her boyfriend slept in the backseat. Wow, where did that come from? I swear, I was a really shy kid back then.
The poor woman didn’t really know what to say. Keep in mind that I’d been very polite about the idea, and that it was presented as a question/suggestion so that there was no need for fear, or bold action, like slashing me with a hidden blade, or jumping out of a moving car. In an odd way, she seemed genuinely flattered by the remark. Finally, she said, “I’d like to, but it would be kind of disrespectful to my boyfriend.”
“How long have you two been together?” I asked.
“We met earlier today.”
About an hour later, the long-term boyfriend woke up and, yawning, asked a question from his prone position on the cracked burgundy interior of the Ford Fairmount’s backseat. The woman turned in her seat to face him and, in the process of doing so, grabbed a hearty handful of the future hardcore legend’s most private parts.
A few minutes later, I dropped them off. She said good-bye with a wink and a sly little smile that I interpreted as a victory of sorts. Sure, as far as victories go, it was devious, and morally bankrupt, but at that point in my life, I was willing to take victories wherever I could find them.
An unforeseen factor almost makes a most unfortunate mark on our match. Dreamer reported a sense of queasiness and gastric pains an hour or so before the match. Unbeknownst to me, my partner Edge was almost indisposed for his entrance music, having sought emergency relief in the Hammerstein Ballroom restroom. A day later, following Raw at Penn State University, I fall victim to some sort of intestinal virus—severe enough to keep me bedridden for three full days.
Vince McMahon’s prediction had almost come true before the match could even begin, as it was damn close to being “the shits” in a far more literal sense than Vince probably could have imagined.
Speaking of imagination, my entrance yields far less response than I would have previously thought possible. As I stand in the ring, I try to rationalize the funereal atmosphere. Where the hell is the reaction? I would have thought I’d have a ton of heat, but this crowd is lukewarm at best, bordering on downright brisk in its response. Well, I rationalize, they don’t want to cheer me because I am playing the part of the ECW turncoat. The crowd has been so wild, and has been such an integral part of the show, that a turn against ECW protocol could be seen as a detriment to the show. These people, by virtue of their love for ECW and their willingness to go to great lengths to procure these tickets, are already rebels. To rebel against their rebellious nature could really be confusing. So there are very few cheers. But there aren’t a whole lot of boos either. Maybe they respect me too much to boo. Maybe some of them realize the lengths I’ve gone through to create our match scenario. Or maybe, just maybe, they don’t really care a whole lot, one way or another. Yeah, I think, that’s it.
Edge and Lita have considerably more heat for their arrival. Edge has got the hardcore title held proudly aloft and seems to be enjoying the unique atmosphere of this particular party. I really enjoy watching how much pride he takes in accepting the boos that come his way, and firmly feel that I am in the presence of the top bad guy in the business.
“Listen, you don’t want to mess with these idiots,” he says to me. “Because this is their night. This is like their Christmas. Only their Santa Claus is Jewish, fat, bald, and gives out an endless supply of bullshit instead of presents.”
Preparing for hardcore battle with my tag partners, Lita and Edge.
What a great line. I know I sometimes seem down on the writers, but whoever came up with this line (I think it was Gewirtz) deserves a round of applause. Edge and I had wondered about the appropriateness of the “Jewish” comment, but Gewirtz, who is himself Jewish, seemed to think it wouldn’t be a problem.
“All you idiots are going to go home,” Edge says, pointing to the fans, “and you’re going to go text your imaginary girlfriends about how good this show was. Then you’re going to hop on the Internet, and you’re going to pleasure yourself looking at pictures of my actual girlfriend.”
Lita shows off a dose of gravity-defying cleavage, and she and Edge engage in the most graphic French kissing I’ve seen since Christy Canyon and Ginger Lynn swapped saliva for my viewing pleasure on Playboy radio.
Lita grabs the mike, and refers to Tommy Dreamer as “the innovator of silence,” a remark that unfortunately hits way too close to home, but which nonetheless gives me and Edge reason to celebrate with a daring white-guy jumping high five. Lita does a remarkable job of maintaining her composure during her speech, considering that “She’s a crack whore” chants threaten to drown out her voice. By the time she finishes, the “crack whore” chant seems almost quaint, having been replaced by not so subtle suggestions for her to kindly stop speaking.
Now it’s Funk and Dreamer’s turn to enter, which they do to the accompaniment of loud cheers, nondescript techno rock music, and Tommy’s real-life wife Beulah. The Funker looks great—fired up and ready to go, ready to prove Vince McMahon wrong. At least, I hope so. Tommy looks…stoic, which I’m not sure is a compliment. But hell, at least he doesn’t look soft and doughy, like yours truly. Fortunately, I’ve got quite a following. But, for those just tuning in, I honestly don’t look (or feel) like the most dangerous guy in the world. More like somebody’s slightly offbeat biker uncle, who had a few too many drinks and decided to enter a local tough-guy contest.
The crowd is coming alive, though, chanting, “ECW, ECW.” Beulah, noting Lita’s rumored fondness for threesomes (fictional, by the way), suggests making the match a three-on-three, mixed-gender Tag Team match. A couple of girl slaps later, and the match is on. The fans have bought the concept, and the bell rings. All the planning, phone calls, arguing, and frustration become a thing of the past. The match is all ours. Our chance to make a difference—to create a lasting work of art on our own twenty-by-twenty piece of canvas.
Edge and Dreamer start the match. Nobody (and I mean nobody) is expecting this match to be a technical classic, so the main purpose of the opening minute—a headlock, headscissors, etc., etc.—is just an excuse to get to the fun stuff.
The Edgester tags me in, and I make it very clear that I want Terry Funk in the ring; eager to dispense a little payback for my swollen, discolored eye, which I do my best to point to every couple of seconds. In actuality the entrance of Funk, awash in a chorus of “Terry” chants, is merely a means to an end. I am willing to take nine more slaps to the face in return for the privilege of uttering two of the greatest lines of my career.
&nb
sp; “This wasn’t a good idea,” I say to Edge as I step through the ropes, my night in danger of reaching a very premature conclusion. “I don’t really want to be here.”
Okay, maybe the lines don’t seem to be so great, at least on the surface. But perhaps the beauty in these words lies not in their delivery but in the knowledge that they were stolen from my five-year-old son, who only hours earlier had said those exact same words to me while sitting on my lap, watching the rest of his church choir mates sing “Heaven” to the congregation. “I don’t really want to be here. I don’t really want to be here.”
Despite my heartfelt admission, Funk is in no mood for compassion, and the match proceeds to break down into mayhem, with me and Funk spilling to the outside, and Tommy and Edge following suit. The girls view the ugliness from afar, knowing they will have a pivotal role in the latter stages of the match.
I’m all over Funk, until he tosses a random chair my way, and it finds its mark—the top of my skull. To this day, this move remains the sole property of Terry Funk, probably because any right-thinking person wouldn’t particularly care for the trail of lawsuits such a move could likely leave in its wake.
Terry is all over me, throwing his big left hand repeatedly. In my opinion, it’s still the best-looking punch in the business and still hurts like hell as well, although considerably less than the hardway punches of six nights earlier.
Meanwhile, Dreamer has stopped Edge, and unveils a motley collection of foreign objects; the beginning of what I will refer to as “the progression of the gimmicks.” Start slow, and build. A road sign. A garbage can. Boom, boom! Not bad, but we all know it’s just a simple starting point.
Funk and I “take a walk,” fighting up the aisle, while Edge brings a ladder into the ring. The progression of the gimmicks has entered its second stage. So has the chanting, which appears to be veering into R-rated territory, courtesy of the “F——you, Edge” chant that has been birthed by the creative minds of the ECW faithful. Where do these chants come from? And how exactly do they grow?