Countdown To Lockdown (41 page)

If only I’d had that blue cage with the platform to walk across, to exchange punches on, to drop an elbow off of. Things might feel different. I’m going to have to follow some mighty athletic match offerings with my half a thimbleful of athletic ability. At least I have that “how about a little fire, Scarecrow,” thing going for me—provided I can fit through the little hole in the mesh that one of the cameramen shoots through. Really, it was quite an innovation on TNA’s part—a way to bring an unobstructed view into the wrestling fan’s living room without putting a cameraman in the ring itself.

I get to the arena about an hour late, due to a rookie GPS mistake that took me through some pretty rough neighborhoods in Philadelphia, and head straight to the cage. Can I? Can I? Yes, I slip right through. Good thing I’d done that organic cleanse. Next, I approach Dirk, our venerable handheld cameraman, and ask him a question that must have seemed new, exciting, and a little bit crazy. “How do you feel about me drop-kicking you?”

Dirk looks at me in horror.

“I’m pretty sure I can do it without hurting you,” I say, although even as I say it, I’m aware of the sheer dishonesty of my words.

“Okay,” Dirk says, and after figuring a way he can land without breaking either himself or the camera, I’ve got my big spot—my Margaret Hamilton spot. I might be able to piece this thing together after all. If only I knew how to start the match. I literally have one idea, courtesy of Burt Reynolds in the original
Longest Yard
, a classic that, with all apologies to Kevin Nash, Stone Cold, Goldberg, and the Great Khali, wasn’t really crying out to be remade. After whipping a close-range spiral directly into the general area of all-pro linebacker Ray Nitschke’s balls, Reynolds huddles his teammates and says, “Worked once, should work again.”

That’s kind of how I feel about those hardway punches on
Impact.
That promo, including the punches, had created a minor buzz, and, at a complete loss for ideas on how best to begin, I wonder if Reynolds’s words of wisdom will hold true if applied to pro wrestling as it pertains to hardway punches.

Out of respect for my opponent, I run the idea by the Stinger first. Sting laughs and throws up his hands. “You want to start the match by punching yourself in the face, Mick? Go ahead.” Suddenly, I see some light at the end of the tunnel. We might, just might, be okay.

But what if I can’t reopen that eye? What if I throw a bunch of punches and there’s not a drop of blood? If
Impact
wasn’t taped so far in advance I might take that chance. Two or three days after the fact, I’d be pretty sure I could bust that bad boy open. But twelve days out? Not too good a chance. So, I take the easy way out and, looking in the mirror, like a teenage girl applying eyeliner before a first date, gingerly trace over the twelve-day-old scar with a tiny remnant of a razor blade. Yes, I knew I could use that word—
remnant
—correctly in a sentence! The cut bleeds just a little, requiring a few seconds of pressure before drying up. I slap a little tape on that eyebrow, and as Randy “the Ram” said in
The Wrestler
, “Brother, I’m good to go.”

Well, not quite. I’ve still got an hour or so to get ready, stretch my legs, soothe my nerves, try to get to that emotional zone I was in during that Mick Foley–Cactus Jack interview. Those punches to my eye will actually be of great service to me; as in each of my recent comeback matches, I’ve needed to absorb some kind of big move to remind me of the person I used to be. Yes, I do believe these punches will work out nicely.

I spend a little while talking with Sting, going over a couple of key moves and possibilities, but largely establishing a theme, or story line, for the match—taking our advanced age and combined collection of ring injuries into consideration. I thank him for the match ahead of time and take the opportunity to once again tell him how much our matches in ’91 and ’92 meant to my career. Really, who knows where I
would have ended up without him? Maybe things would have worked out just fine. But I think there’s a pretty good chance that without those marquee matches with WCW’s top star, I would have been back on the independent scene within months, toiling in obscurity within a year or two, waiting for a phone call that would have likely never come.

I had just finished rubbing Vicks VapoRub on my chest and in my nostrils (don’t worry, I washed my hands) when panic strikes. Where’s my piece-of-crap yellow Sony Discman? The one I inherited from my children when they steadfastly refused to listen to something so embarrassing and antiquated. Apparently it’s hard to be a cool teenager without the latest in gadgetry, which doesn’t include the yellow CD player. Maybe it was an embarrassment to them, but that Discman was my lifeline to Tori Amos, who I was counting on to guide me through this thing—to conjure up some of that “Winter” magic that had been so invaluable to my prematch visualizations against Randy Orton in 2004 and Edge in 2006.

I’ll listen to it in the car
, I think. I am literally on my way to the Chevy Venture (the Sony Discman of motor vehicles), keys in hand, when I stop and think of a specific line in “Winter”:

I hear a voice, you must learn to stand up for yourself, cause I can’t always be around.

Was I crazy, or was Tori Amos talking to me through her lyrics, telling me I was going to have to go this one alone? I was certain of it. Almost as certain of it as I was certain that my “Meeting Tori Amos” chapter would be ruined if I listened to “Winter,” then went out and stunk up the place. You have to understand—I love that chapter. Along with a chapter about God and Santa Claus from
The Hardcore Diaries
, it’s my personal favorite among all the things I’ve ever written. Besides, “Winter” was there for me in cases where I faced the near certainty of injury. I’m not sure if it’s fair to expect any song, even my favorite one, to provide the antidote for being old and out of shape. I put the keys away.

Ten minutes before bell time and I’m nervous as hell. I have no idea how long my legs are going to hang in there. The possibility of dry mouth is a legitimate concern. At least I’ll be able to punch myself in the face soon. I have that much going for me.

Time to take that walk to the table behind the curtain. The place where the show is timed, where wrestlers take their cues, and where, for some reason, a huge bowl of candy is omnipresent. In WWE, it was called the Gorilla Position in honor of longtime wrestler/broadcaster Gorilla Monsoon, who had gone from monosyllabic Manchurian brawler to expert in human anatomy, regularly referring to the “external octuberal protuberance,” also known as the back of the head. We don’t really have a name for it in TNA. Maybe “Bob Ryder’s Happy Place” would work.

I jog in place, do a couple hindu squats with terrible form, and slap myself a couple times while my prematch interview plays. Thankfully I’d utilized my role as executive shareholder to pretty much make rules and plant seeds that will help me tell the story I want inside the ring. The match can be won by pinfall, submission, or escaping the cage. But a cage match should never be won by walking out a door. Nope, if I’m going to escape, I’m going to do it by climbing over the top. Although I am carrying the trusty barbed-wire bat in both my interview and my entrance, I make it clear to J.B., the interviewer, and the audience that I don’t actually
need
the bat to vanquish the Stinger. Got it? Good. Let’s get to the action.

It’s a good reaction for both of us, and a definite big-match feel as Sting and I look at each other, sizing each other up, listening to the crowd as they begin dueling chants. “Let’s go, Sting! Let’s go, Cactus!” I’m so glad I took the chance and went out on a limb with my character. The build has been so much fun and has been so personally satisfying. It’s hard to criticize Vince McMahon’s track record, but damn, that period of time detailed in
The Hardcore Diaries
was one of the most frustrating periods of my career—like every ounce of joy
had been wrung out of life’s hand towel. This period of time has been like a polar opposite. Life’s hand towel was positively full of joy. “Life’s hand towel”? Pretty weak.

But now I have to produce. A happy ending to this story is just fifteen minutes away. But in order to write that happy ending I’m going to have to make it happen first. Terry Funk once told me that every match is a great one until it actually begins. So I bide my time, enjoying the greatness of the match, worried that I will put an end to the greatness as soon as I make my first move. The first move, after all, is mine to make.

Bam!
There it is. A good shot to the eyebrow followed by a few more. I’m not sure if the fans know the legitimacy of the punches, but I sure do. As I land more—four, five, six—I actually start to feel a little light-headed. Seven, eight, nine—yes, there it is, the telltale warmth of my own blood. It’s an oddly comforting feeling, not just in this match, but in many over the years. Hey, if you’re going to have slight psychological issues, you might as well be in a line of work that welcomes them. I throw the tenth punch, then suddenly turn and level the Stinger with a big clothesline.

I believe this opening spot has worked well, not so much for the fans but for me personally. It does indeed remind me of the man I used to be, and the blood, flowing fairly freely, is a strange motivator/security blanket.

Wow, it’s really coming down now
, I think to myself, a marked contrast to that little trickle of blood I got on
Impact.
A closer examination after the fact would help solve the mystery. I had pretty much missed my tiny sliver over the eyebrow completely and had opened up an entirely new one. After the match, I would require twenty-five stitches (which I would refer to repeatedly over the next few days) to close the wounds of this particular brand of warfare. Nine or ten came from this barrage of self-directed haymakers. The fifteen or sixteen others? We’ll get to them soon enough.

Those nine or ten big ones are a small price to pay for getting me
back into the zone. I start to
feel
like Cactus Jack again, and the subsequent two boots (leopard skin, of course) I lay in on the head of the Stinger are crisp and convincing.

I try to seize the moment by attempting an early escape. But as I get to the second turnbuckle, Sting climbs to meet me and sends me back first to the canvas with a series of patented backhands.
Bam!
The fall kind of surprises me and really rings my bell. The bump looks wicked on camera but is another legitimate cause for concern, as once again I haven’t tucked my chin properly, and once again my skull pays the price. Statistically speaking, not a lot of men my age are taking this type of a pounding.

Now it’s Sting’s turn to dole out a little punishment. He puts a couple of boots to my midsection, followed by a rake of my face into the mesh. It’s pretty standard stuff, but it’s well done—and even better, I’m animated, really selling the blows. I don’t feel or look tired, and even though the match is still in its infancy, I feel like I’m in control of my surroundings—a far cry from that brief match just six weeks ago where I felt so helpless and naked.

I return fire for a moment, some more basic offense, stopping the Stinger long enough to make my second escape attempt of the evening. Once again I’m stopped, and once again I’m propelled backward off the second rope, this time courtesy of a back suplex. It jars me, but not as badly as the same move administered by the Dynamite Kid twenty-three years earlier, in only the second match of my career. I had heard that one of the guys had already done the move in an earlier match but I took it anyway, thinking that we’d somehow make it mean more by better displaying the physical consequences of the move.

At the time of this match, wrestling fans were rightfully still gushing about the Shawn Michaels–Undertaker match at
WrestleMania.
Like I said earlier, it was a great match, an all-time
’Mania
classic. But part of what made it so great was the ability of both guys to make every big move count. So many guys are in such a big rush to get in
their big moves that they diminish each move’s effectiveness, thereby eliminating the drama of the match. Michaels and Undertaker were all about the drama at
’Mania.
I thought Sting and I were capable of creating some of our own at
Lockdown.

Wait, wait, wait, don’t get all up in a tizzy. Don’t go thinking that I thought we could top what they did at
’Mania.
I was almost sure that we couldn’t. Because part of what made that match so great was the prevalence of each man’s finishing moves. Those moves that all fans
know
, just
know
, spell the end of a match. I mean,
no one
kicks out of a Tombstone piledriver. I know I never did.
No one
kicks out of Sweet Chin Music. Then, when someone does, in this
’Mania
case, repeatedly—and when it’s done well (which it most certainly was), it can make for an incredible viewing experience.

I’m at a distinct disadvantage here. You see, I don’t actually have a finishing move. Not one that works. Not one that has yielded victories, at least not in this decade. Look, I’m thrilled that WWE and later TNA have done such a good job of portraying me as a legend. In my eyes, they both have allowed fans to view me as a bigger deal than I actually was. But the truth is, a whole generation of fans have most likely never seen me win a match. So it’s incredibly tough to produce drama on the level of Michaels-Undertaker when not a single move in my arsenal is likely to produce that Pavlovian response. Sure, the sock is fun, and it’s a cheap, easy prop, but it hasn’t done much this decade. And the decade’s almost up.

I’m still a good storyteller, though, and unlike Michaels or Undertaker, I’m going to be channeling Margaret Hamilton.