Countdown To Lockdown (22 page)

“I’ve got a present for Michael Cole,” I said. “He’s either going to think it’s the greatest thing in the world, or he’ll fart on it so hard it will sound like the bombing of Baghdad.”

“What is it?” Triple H asked.

“Well, it’s a harmonica that Bruce Springsteen used onstage at MSG — a friend of his gave it to me.”

I walked up to Cole and handed him the gift. Initially, he thought it was a joke. As he gradually realized it wasn’t, he broke out into a huge smile, taking out the harmonica and turning it over in his palms.

“Wow,” Michael said. “It’s even got Bruce’s lip marks on it.”

Indeed it did. Bruce’s … or Hughie’s … or Mickey’s … or mine. But

I guess Bruce’s lip marks were on there somewhere.

Chris Jericho asked me about the announcing job one time. “Oh man, I love it,” I said. “You know, I used to walk around all the time,
thinking of promos I could do — ways to talk about myself. Now I walk around thinking of things I can say about the other boys.”

Yeah, I really did love the announcing gig, and I even took to carrying notebooks around with me, jotting down ideas for different wrestlers. I would talk to the guys before their matches, asking about a potential big move to look for, or some type of story they were trying to get across in their match. For years, during my full-time wrestling days, I would seek out the announcers, trying to explain the story I wanted to convey. Sometimes I got the distinct feeling I was bothering them. Personally, as an announcer, I
wanted
the feedback — I wanted to be on the same page as the guys in the match. I wanted them to feel comfortable approaching me, talking to me about their characters or their opponents. I was usually treated with the utmost respect by the wrestlers, both old and young, and I tried my best to treat everyone with respect, whether they were a main event superstar or just a rookie trying to catch a break.

On one occasion, at the end of May, I was onboard a cross-country flight, doing some work in preparation for our June 1 Pay-Per-View in San Diego. It was an experience I was especially looking forward to because of two big matchups that Cole and I would have the opportunity to broadcast: Batista and Shawn Michaels in a stretcher match, and the Undertaker and Edge in a TLC (Tables, Ladders, and Chairs) extravaganza. The majority of the Pay-Per-Views seemed to lean to the
Raw
brand in terms of marquee matches. The
Raw
broadcast team of Jim Ross and Jerry “the King” Lawler was practically a Monday night institution — they’d been a tandem for almost twelve years, and their teamwork and instincts were second to none in the business. But this particular show seemed to have a
SmackDown
flavor, and I was intent on showing what I could do with a big, well-built matchup. On this night, I’d have two of them to work with.

Colette and my two little guys would be joining me out in California a day later — in fact, they would be landing in San Diego while the
show was in progress and would be waiting for me at the hotel when I got back. Surely this was going to be a big occasion for me, as I could bask in the glow of my broadcast performance, have a day off with the kids at Legoland on Monday, kick some serious butt on
SmackDown
in Los Angeles on Tuesday, then finish the trip in style — walking in Walt’s footsteps for three days at Disneyland.

I noticed that the passenger seated next to me had four daily newspapers and about five weekly newsmagazines: the
Economist
,
Time
,
Newsweek
, and a couple others too exclusive and obscure to recall.

“You’ve either got to be in the news business or in politics,” I said early in the flight.

“No,” the man said. “I just like to be well informed.”

I didn’t believe him — no one likes to be
that
well informed, but I respected his implied wish to be left alone. It’s not like I hadn’t avoided a question or two about my vocation over the years. In fact, if someone doesn’t know what I do or who I am, they darn near have to play twenty questions to figure out exactly what my job is.

About three hours into the flight, the man, who had been discreetly observing me at work, asked a work-related question of his own.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Are you a college professor?”

“A college professor?” I said, laughing. “No, definitely not. Why do you ask?” I mean, I’d been accused of being a lot of things over the years, but “college professor” was a new one.

“Well,” the man said, “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been writing nonstop for a long time. And you look somewhat professorial.”

“I do?” The man who asked the question was well dressed, well groomed. If I had to guess, I’d say he had money, lots of it.

Usually I play twenty questions, but this fruit was just too ripe not to pick. “No, actually I’m a professional wrestling announcer. And I’m taking notes for an upcoming show.”

“You must really believe in preparation,” the well-dressed man said.

“Yes sir, I do,” I said. “And you
are
in news or politics, aren’t you?”

He shook my hand and gave me a business card. Lewis Eisenberg, John McCain’s finance committee cochair.

I told Mr. Eisenberg that I wasn’t likely to vote for his guy, but that I liked and respected Senator McCain, and I had actually had a brief, pleasant conversation with the senator about a year earlier. I spoke with Mr. Eisenberg for the next couple of hours, enjoying an in-depth discussion on politics and the news of the day.

Looking back on it now, it’s somewhat ironic that Mr. Eisenberg thought I was a college professor, based on my prodigious note-taking tendencies. Because following the San Diego show, I never made another announcing note.

Use your imagination.

My wife heard the distinctive sound of alcohol bottles clinking together as I walked through the door of our San Diego hotel room. Knowing I’m not much of a drinker — usually utilizing my famed two-drink tolerance to make a happy occasion a little happier — Colette broke into a big grin at the very sound of the clinking. Obviously, I was in the mind to celebrate.

“Oh, it went that well?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, it went that bad.”

Look, I know this is where some people expect to hear every word spoken to me, every magical F-bomb thrown my way. Those people are going to be disappointed. When I left WWE, I was asked to sign a paper stating that I would never speak disparagingly of the McMahon family. Now I never signed that paper because the word
disparaging
is really open to interpretation. In a sense, I’d be placed on a lifetime gag order, to more or less never speak of the McMahons again. I’d already spoken and written freely (some might say disparagingly) of Vince McMahon in the past, especially in books that WWE themselves published. I thought I should have the right to continue to do so.

Nonetheless, I’d like the actual content of the headphone head games to be left between Vince and myself, and between you and your imaginations. The way Hitchcock did with horror films. Just imagine it’s a horror story and the language used was more horrible than the most horrible language you’ve ever experienced. Or better yet, imagine it’s a fantasy movie, and the hero of this movie puts on a special set of “magic” headsets. Yes, they are magic, because from the very instant our hero places them on his head, all the respect he thought he’d earned over the course of twelve years working for Mr. McMagical simply disappeared. After twelve years, it was gone in an instant; like the respect itself had been a mere speck of dust swept away by the winds of change.

Our hero just sat at that table wondering how that respect could have disappeared so quickly and so suddenly. Surely, he was still the same man who had slayed dragons in the past at the bequest of Mr. McMagical. He had so enjoyed Mr. McMagical’s respect, acceptance, possibly even friendship back then. He really enjoyed the money, too, to be perfectly honest. Still, our hero wondered how he could have lost Mr. McMagical’s respect simply because he now sat at a desk and told of how others slew dragons, instead of he.

At one point, after Mr. McMagical used the magic headsets to transmit his unhappiness to our hero for about the fifth time in one evening, the hero began wondering why he still remained at the table at all. Certainly, his pride told him to flee the offensive table — to throw down the magic headsets and leave this arena where previously he had been the hero.

For a long time, our hero would be angry with himself for not displaying the fortitude necessary to flee that evil table and tell Mr. McMagical in no uncertain terms that he would not tolerate that type of tyrannical treatment.

Alas, it was not to be. The best our hero could do was muster the thimbleful of fortitude needed to make his feelings known to Mr. McMagical via an incredible device known as a cellamaphone. Yes,
while heading to the land of giant Legos, also known as Legoland, in the town of Carlsbad, the state of California, our hero made his feelings known.

To tell the truth, our hero really just expected to hear a recording of Mr. McMagical’s voice on the cellamaphone — for he thought Mr. McMagical would be far too busy to actually answer the incredible device himself. At which point, our hero would leave a recording of his own voice that Mr. McMagical could listen to at a later time. Even though our hero had performed great acts of courage throughout the period of his employment with Mr. McMagical — being hurled off large structures, dueling large dragons while being thrown into piles of shiny, sharp objects — he nonetheless would have preferred not to speak to Mr. McMagical directly. For that required more fortitude than our hero’s testicles could provide at that point.

“Hello, this is Mr. McMagical.”

Drat. What was our hero to do? He had his princess and two of his offspring with him, and they were only a few miles from the land of the giant Legos.

“Hello, Mr. McMagical, this is McFoley [a heroic Irish name if ever there was one] and, um, I just want you to know that I can’t remember the last time I was spoken to so disrespectfully, and if this job involves being spoken to that way, I think you should find someone else to do it.”

Whoa! Wow! Looks like quite a bit of fortitude had sprung forth from our hero’s balls! Mr. McMagical was momentarily silent. Surely, he was not used to displays of such insolence surging from the mouths of his subjects, be they former dragon slayers or not. Be they scribes of towering number one best sellers or not.

“You know, McFoley,” Mr. McMagical said slowly and most unmagically, “I apologize for that. I was having a bad night and I took it out on you. Just give me a chance to make it up to you, and we’ll just chalk it up to having a bad night.”

Well, our hero thought, that seemed fair. After all, everyone has bad
nights, and Mr. McMagical’s position of all-powerful but benevolent ruler of his people surely was a stressful one. Plus, our hero McFoley was well versed in Freud’s theory of transference. Once in a while, our hero would have a bad day and, upon returning to his lair, would complain about the size of his princess’s Majestic Express bill, even though the bills themselves were not the cause of the hero’s bad day. Yes, our hero could live with that. We would indeed just chalk it up to having a bad day.

“Thank you, Mr. McMagical,” our hero said. “You just have to understand that I’m taking my kids to Disneyland in two days, and I won’t let anyone ruin a trip to Disneyland, not even you.”

Our hero’s princess later said that our hero sounded psychotic when he said that thing about Disneyland to Mr. McMagical.

For a while — three weeks, maybe four, things were fine. Then came the day the magic headphones once again stung our hero’s ears — once more a victim of Mr. McMagical’s verbal venom. The venom started spewing forth more regularly, almost weekly at some points, leaving our hero once again wondering why he remained at the table at all.

Our hero spoke to Mr. McMagical a time or two about the magic headsets and how bad the venom stung. But by now our hero realized that all who sat at the table and wore the magic headsets were subject to the venom.

Our hero was faced with a difficult choice: to stay inside Mr. McMagical’s magical kingdom, or to venture out into the great unknown.