Countdown To Lockdown (12 page)

But I think, and I believe and I honestly feel, that it’s the song’s rarity on my life’s list of matches that makes it so special. Four matches out of approximately two thousand. But the song has become such an indelible part of my memories of those four that in my mind, at least, I can’t separate the matches from the song.

Again, though, why that song? And why the near nine-year absence from the prematch headphones? It wasn’t as if “Winter” had been banished from rotation in my cavalcade of crummy cars. I still listened to Tori, still listened to “Winter,” just not before matches.

I think it comes down to confidence. For most of my full-time years in WWE (1996–2000), I remained fairly sure that I was pretty good at my job. I still needed music to help me think while I drove, and once in a while I listened to something somewhere before I wrestled someone in some kind of match. Music that helped me get over the hump.

But “Winter” did more — it battled my fears and helped me believe in myself during times when the need for believing was at its most vital.

In all four of those matches, my anxiety was sky-high, my confidence
low. All four matches offered not only the possibility but the near certainty of injury. And in all four of those cases, I sat down by myself, rocking back and forth slowly, letting that voice, so haunting and pure, take me far away from that place where my doubts and insecurities lie.

When you gonna make up your mind, when you gonna love you as much as I do?

Most listeners would interpret “Winter” as a song about a father’s love for a child. But I think for me, those words, that question it asked, always appealed to that insecure inner child, the scared part of me, the part that believed I wasn’t strong enough, or big enough, or good enough. It never
made
me think of “brutal images” or “hardcore destruction” — it helped me
believe
that I was strong enough to realize those images, to do the things I already knew needed to be done. I didn’t visualize new ideas while I listened; ideas I’d already formed that seemed destined for doom came dancing back to life.

I wish that I’d used different words in my books. Some might look at those matches and think they were indeed brutal and violent. But my intentions were never bad, or brutal, or violent. I just wanted to leave my best artistic impression on the abstract canvas that pro wrestling can be.

Besides, I don’t think about matches anymore when I listen to “Winter.” I think about the world and what I can do to save it. Honestly. And every year on July 22, for as long as I am blessed to make a decent living, I will send a check to RAINN for that same amount of money. We need people in our lives who make us want to be better people. Even if they’re only in our lives briefly.

It’s been a few days since I started this chapter, though I’m still seated at the same hotel desk in Dublin. Earlier tonight at the TNA show, I was talking to a couple of guys about their “me” walls — those tributes to oneself that every wrestler has. Kurt Angle couldn’t even guess, but estimated that he has forty grand tied up in framing costs alone. Brother Devon guessed he had about a hundred photos on his “me” wall.

Sometime in early fall 2008, I received a package in the mail. A package from Steve Woolf, the guy who’d booked me for the Con. I knew just what the package was, and dug in with great anticipation. Yes, there I was with Tori Amos, a couple different eight-by-tens, really sharp photos. We’re looking at the camera, in both of them she’s smiling — these are a full grade above the average photo op. I’m so glad that Woolf was there to offer up visual evidence that this meeting really did take place.

But wait, there’s one more photo. You can’t even see my face, just my head and shoulders, and that cutoff ragged flannel. But I can clearly make out Tori. Her eyes are like merry little magical half moons, and her mouth is parted slightly, as if she had been speaking when the photograph was taken. And her hands are in the air, seemingly suspended in midmovement. Immediately it dawned on me — this was my special moment. Tori had been speaking and I knew just what she’d said: “I know exactly who you are.”

My wife, Colette, thought it was a great photo, too; she said it had great energy. She later said it was the very moment that Tori Amos had cast some type of spell over her husband. I cut the photo down to five-by-seven size, put it in a wooden frame, and placed it on a bookshelf inside the Foley Christmas room, where it instantly became the only “me” photo in my house. Okay, that’s not quite true — there’s an old magazine cover of me dressed as Santa Claus; the title reads “St. Mick.” But I swear, I’ll take it down if it makes my story more legit.

Every time I look at it, my day gets just a little brighter. Sometimes I walk over to the photo, and it literally makes me smile, helping me relive one of my life’s favorite memories — my little moment of “Time in a Bottle.”

March 28, 2009

On board Continental Flight 1033, New York to Houston

10:50 a.m.

“Seems like a big mistake.” I texted those words to Vince Russo, TNA’s head writer, just minutes ago, before buckling up for the three-hour forty-minute flight to Houston, where I will do an appearance for Booker T’s Pro Wrestling Alliance organization. I’ve known Booker for fifteen years, and several months ago promised I’d do a show for him
gratis in appreciation of his friendship. It sure sounded good when I said it, almost magnanimous, if I do say so myself, although saying it and doing it are obviously two very different things.

Wow, that’s a long way to go for free
, I kept thinking. Not to mention a long time to ride in coach, probably somewhere around seat 26C, more likely than not a mere row or two away from the crapper. I had e-mailed Sharmell, Booker’s wife, asking for the possibility of an aisle seat, maybe even an exit row. She e-mailed me back, “Mick, we love you and we’re flying you first class.”

Well, that little e-mail changed everything. Suddenly a long, depressing voyage, sure to be unpleasant for both my aching joints and my nasal passages, seemed like a place to sit back and relax, do some serious
Lockdown
thinking, and spend some quality time putting pen to paper; my little private office at twenty thousand feet. Plus, I’ll be able to sleep in, fly out at a reasonable hour, and get more quality pen time in during my day off in Orlando, before our pivotal pre-PPV tapings on Monday and Tuesday. Three weeks of taping in two days at Universal. Two days that will either make or break the buy rate for
Lockdown.
And, deep in my gut, I can’t help think that one of Russo’s ideas seems like a big mistake.

I already feel like last night’s TV show was a little bump in the road — like that recap video that just didn’t happen was a lost opportunity. Sure, I was happy with the in-ring promo, but Russo’s intention of mixing in another story line — Abyss versus Matt Morgan, one that’s been running awhile and thus far hasn’t caught fire — seems like a really good way to water down the product we’re trying to sell. Like the TNA consumer will be asked to scarf down two bland entrées instead of savoring one really good one, and passing on the other. To paraphrase the old Michael Hayes adage about the steakhouse, we’ve got to remember why our TNA diners are coming to the
Lockdown
Café. Sure they love the baked potato, but that’s not why they put down their hard-earned Pay-Per-View dollars. They want that steak. And I’m really concerned that instead of getting one really good-looking steak
and a delicious potato, we’ll be serving up two heaping helpings of a Who-hash. Look, I’m a big fan of Abyss and appreciate the sacrifices he has made to create compelling matches, and I think Matt Morgan has a world of potential. But their story line is just not clicking and I don’t want it to make hash out of mine. Now whether or not that steak really tastes good is the big question Sting and I will have to answer on April 19. I sincerely hope it’s delicious, and I’m looking to find ways to ensure that it is. I’ll be looking for a little seasoning, maybe a barbed-wire bat or a chair to spice up that steak. Yeah, I’ll try my best, but the truth is, if that steak is indeed going to be bland, I’d feel a lot better knowing that a lot of people ordered it. That’s right, if I’m going to stink up the arena as well as the airwaves, I don’t want that stinking to be a well-kept secret.

I’ve always been a fan of Vince Russo’s ideas, and I give him major credit for pioneering the action-adventure television format that helped launch WWE into the ratings stratosphere in the late nineties. Sure, I once wrote that he needed somebody to reign in some of those ideas, and I think even Russo knows deep down that his WCW World Title run may not have been a high point for the business. But I’ve always respected his ability to create ideas and book compelling television shows. And I do think that adding a struggling story line into my very personal issue with Sting and expecting a heaping double helping of overdone hash to attract diners to the
Lockdown
Café is a little too ambitious.

My son Dewey, who believe it or not is seventeen now, went with an amusement park analogy. Longtime readers of my multitude of memoirs might remember seven-year-old Dewey as the little guy with the pro-wrestling fixation, the avalanche of action figures, the voluminous collection of videos, and the plethora of Dad posters. Or they might remember the ten-year-old Dewey as the guy who took down those Dad posters and replaced them with new heroes — Sammy Sosa, Shaq, Olympic bobsledder Mike Wasco. But over the last couple of years, Dewey has gotten back into wrestling. He watches WWE but
prefers TNA, and he seems to have a good head for details, like what works and what doesn’t, who deserves a little more attention, who deserves a little less. A few months ago, my wife and I went to one of Dewey’s basketball games, looking on with great parental pride as our son rode the bench for the duration of the contest. Over the course of the season, I learned to show up only if his team was playing a really bad school or a really good one — to view a little Foley mop-up time in a lopsided win or loss. But on this occasion, before I’d learned to properly weigh playing-time potentials, I made an astute observation during the course of a close game and decided to share it with my wife.

“Dewey’s haircut looks kind of ridiculous.”

“Stop it, Mick,” Colette said. “He’s just trying to have his own style. We don’t say anything about your hair.”

“But he looks like a jerk, the way it’s combed up and gelled in the middle.”

About a month ago my youngest son, six-year-old Hughie, went to the barber and traded in his shoulder-length blond hair for a similar stylistic debacle. Sure, I’d felt bad for the little guy and had even become a vocal proponent for change after hearing a couple hundred too many
dear
,
honey
,
sweetheart
, and
princess
references from well-meaning but gender-confused onlookers. I heard the poor little guy say “I’m not a girl” so often that it kind of became his nickname. So I’d been in favor of just about anything, from a bowl cut, to a buzz cut, to a 1950s astronaut cut similar to the one WWE Hall of Famer Jerry Brisco sports. But this gelled thing, this faux hawk, was a little much, even if it did solve all these gender-confusion issues. I mean, what exactly were my kids thinking? A few words from Hughie cleared up the whole thing.

“Look, Dewey, now we both look like Alex Shelley.”

Alex Shelley? Alex Shelley? My children wanted to look like Alex Shelley? Don’t get me wrong — Shelley is a great wrestler. Along with his partner, Chris Sabin, they are the Motor City Machine Guns, probably the most exciting team in the business. They can wrestle any
style — Japanese, Mexican, European, submission. And I’m a big fan of Shelley’s quirky facial expressions and subtle sense of humor. I just never saw him as a setter of fashion trends or as a guy that kids would want to emulate. But at least for my family, Alex Shelley has become both. Probably because my son Dewey has a good eye for talent and is just slightly ahead of the public opinion curve.

Like most dads, I’ve had my ups and downs when it comes to relating to my teenage kids. Well, not really Noelle, who’s like a straight-A angel, one of the least problematic kids around. See, witnessing those eleven unprotected chair shots from the Rock back in 1999 wasn’t so traumatic after all. But this teenage boy parenting thing has not been without its struggles. Recently, however, a new gift from the programming gods has descended. The gift of Kenny Powers (of HBO’s
Eastbound & Down
), possibly the most lovable, foulmouthed, insensitive, egotistical loser to ever bathe us in the brilliant blue glow of HDTV. Yes, Kenny has been good to us, opening up the lines of father-son communication that had once seemed closed for good.