Countdown To Lockdown (44 page)

Some of my favorite sports books are that way; stories that chronicle a single baseball season, like
Ball Four
, by Jim Bouton; two weeks in the NFL, like
Stop-Action
, by Dick Butkus; or a single NBA game, like
48 Minutes
, by Bob Ryan. Each of those books captured the sights, the sounds, the smells, the
essence
, of their respective sports. I hope that’s what I’ve done here with this book: captured a little of the
essence
of what it means to be a broken-down wrestler still trying to make a difference
in his strange little world. As with those books, hopefully you can take this book down off the shelf a year from now, or a decade from now, or maybe even further down the road, and immediately feel the sights, the sounds, and the smells of that six-week countdown to
Lockdown.

I never did get around to holding that big online career auction—the one I hoped would bring in a hundred thousand dollars. The rough economy made me think that holding off on having such an auction would be a wise move, and in truth I was probably guilty of highly overestimating what my career memorabilia would be worth on the open market. So I loaned some of my best stuff (original Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind gear) to the Pro-Wrestling Hall of Fame in Amsterdam, New York, and just kind of accepted that the junior secondary school I’d hoped to build in Alimany’s village was not going to happen.

But one day, I received a letter from ChildFund International, telling me that the junior secondary school was under construction. The village elders, knowing the need for a secondary school was greater than the need for the elementary school I’d pledged funding to, had simply decided to use my money to construct a
smaller
junior secondary school. How cool is that? A report from Sierra Leone said, “Mick Foley is a household name in Bombali, and villagers often stop Alimany and thank him for bringing blessings into the community.” Really, that whole thing couldn’t have worked out better. I plan on going back to Sierra Leone later this year, to do a little more nurturing in my little corner of the world. Hopefully, a few
Countdown
readers can help me in that nurturing process. I just heard from Kari Barber, one of the journalists I watched the U.S. presidential election with, and I may even get to participate in the making of a documentary about some of those Bombali schools.

As it turned out, I
didn’t
ruin “Winter” for Tori Amos. Against the advice of my agent, manager, editor, wife, and friends, and with the
invaluable help of her good friend Chelsea Laird (who was indefatigable in dealing with my steady parade of odd little inquiries), I’d managed to make the chapter available to her, after worrying for weeks that Tori Amos might not particularly
want
her very own chapter in a pro-wrestling memoir. Fortunately, she liked it, she really liked it (she said it made her laugh and cry), and she didn’t have any reservations about appearing in a book written by someone of my dubious professional lineage. She even referred to me as “my friend, Mick Foley” in a recent NPR interview (in front of a live crowd, no less), a quote I’m sure I can work into a conversation or two over the next several years.

Best of all, she sang “Winter” for me during a show at Radio City Music Hall. At least I was pretty sure she did. I mean, she
said
she did … kind of. Maybe you can be the judge. Here’s the deal—after watching Tori’s wonderful performance, my wife and I were invited backstage where the following conversation took place:

T
ORI
: (smiling just a little mischievously) I played “Winter.”

M
ICK
: (in stunned disbelief) You played that for
me
?

T
ORI
: She felt like she needed to come out.

I walked out into the hot August night elated; knowing I now had the perfect ending to my book. I wasn’t the only Foley who was feeling a little special, either. “Okay, Mick, I completely get it now,” my wife said, finally better able to understand the “spell” she claimed Tori Amos had put me under a year earlier.

A book in one respect is like a wrestling match: a great deal of imperfection can be excused if a perfect ending is employed. It can’t make a bad one good, but it can make a decent one better, and a good one great. Conversely, a bad ending in writing or wrestling can make a great one good, and a decent one lousy. Trust me, I’ve been there, in both wrestling and writing.
This
book, however, was going to be the beneficiary of a perfect ending (not to be confused, under any circumstances, with a “happy ending”). So forget for just a moment how
uneven some of the storytelling has been, how bitter I sound about that announcing experience, how over-reliant I am on the semi-colon as my punctuation mark of choice. The moment I write “She sang ‘Winter’ for me … The End,” everybody heads for the literary exit with smiles on their faces. I mean, for me, this was like Babe Ruth promising that kid in the hospital a home run, like the Undertaker saying “Hey kid, this one’s for you” before tossing me off of the cell. It was perfect!

But try as I might, I just couldn’t write it. At least not with a clear conscience. Because I wasn’t really
sure.
I
thought
she had sung “Winter” for me. But her words, like many of her songs, are open for interpretation. I just didn’t feel like I could go to print with “she felt like she needed to come out,” no matter how beautiful or poetic those words might be. I had to be sure. So, with ferocious female wrestler Awesome Kong by my side, I tracked Tori down in Düsseldorf, Germany. Wait, that sounds kind of creepy. Actually, as fate would have it, I was on a TNA European tour, and we had a night off only fifteen minutes from Düsseldorf.

Tori couldn’t have been nicer, putting up with my exaggerated tales of wrestling greatness until her tour manager reminded me nicely, for like the fourth time, that Tori really had to go. I was halfway out the door, when I realized I had yet to address my daunting dilemma. Like Ralphie in
A Christmas Story
making his valiant climb back up that steep slide to see Santa, I willed my way back into the room, saying “Tori, Tori, please wait, Tori.” Then, in a tone only slightly less rushed and panicked than that of Ralphie’s Red Ryder rant, I said, “Can I write in my book that you sang ‘Winter’ for me in New York?”

If you remember correctly, Ralphie got a “you’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” and a boot to the head from Santa for his trouble. I received slightly different treatment for mine. Tori Amos lightly took hold of both my hands and smiled that magical San Diego smile. “You can … because I did,” she said, sending me out onto the streets of Düsseldorf on an impossibly large cloud, secure in my knowledge that I had—really had—in my possession the perfect ending to my book.

Look, I know I’ve written quite a bit about Tori Amos already, and the last thing I want to do is (in wrestling terms) “put heat on her,” to make readers think,
Hey Mick, enough with the Tori Amos stuff.
But it would be impossible to overstate how instrumental she was to the writing of this book. I had no interest, absolutely none, in writing another wrestling book, or writing about anything at all before I sat down in a Dublin hotel room and wrote “Meeting Tori Amos.” But after Dublin, I kind of remembered what it was about writing I had once enjoyed so much—and within three days’ time, I went from not thinking about writing at all to thinking I just might have another book in me.

I have been so incredibly lucky to have made a good living doing what I love for such a long time. I know the end of that road is in sight, but man, it’s been an incredible trip, financially and emotionally rewarding on levels I never would have dreamed of. Even though the book world in general has struggled in recent years (people just don’t accept reading as a viable entertainment option like they used to), the success I’ve had with past memoirs helped ensure that I received a pretty substantial guarantee (an advance against royalties) for my
Countdown
concept. I really saw this book as something of a gift, an opportunity I had stumbled across largely through unique circumstance and the inspiration I found in the work and words of one exceptional performer. Perhaps I could use this gift as a way to give back, to make one last real monetary difference in the world, before reverting back to my legendary thriftiness. I decided to go all out, to venture farther out on a limb of the giving tree (not the one Shel Silverstein wrote of) than I ever had before—agreeing to donate a cool 50 percent of my guarantee.

Upon returning home from Sierra Leone in November 2008, I had expressed interest in funding a project for the SEFAFU girls, the survivors of rape and sexual assault I wrote of earlier. A few months ago, I received a proposal from ChildFund: a chance to provide microloans and scholarships for up to two hundred of these women and their children, many of whom were the products of those civil-war rapes.
This proposal was exactly the type of thing I was looking to do. Unfortunately, it came with a fifty-thousand-dollar price tag, almost exactly what half my advance (minus agent’s and management fees) worked out to. Very little money would be left over for RAINN (the group Tori had cofounded in 1994), which somehow didn’t seem right.

I did a lot of thinking—wondering just what kind of book I’d have written if not for that initial San Diego meeting with Tori Amos, if not for that “Time in a Bottle” moment that had caused me to put pen to paper six months later in that Dublin hotel room. In truth, I wouldn’t have even had a thought, let alone a book. And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I could climb out just a little farther on that limb of the giving tree.

Interpreting this feeling to be a sign from God, I walked into the RAINN offices in Washington, D.C., announcing my intention of donating those other 50 Gs to the invaluable work—education, prevention, crisis intervention—they provide in the fight against sexual abuse.

Since that day, I’ve often wondered about that sign from God I thought I’d received. Most likely, it wasn’t actually a sign from God—probably more of a sign that I should have brought my hands up when I saw all those chair shots coming over the years. But even acknowledging that I most likely don’t have any real sign-interpreting abilities, I’ve still never regretted that decision to donate the rest of the money. In fact I’m thankful I made it … every single day. Maybe a hundred thousand dollars (fifty for RAINN, fifty for ChildFund) isn’t exactly a Warren Buffett or Michael Bloomberg type of donation, but, even so, it’s going to help a lot of people, at home and overseas.

I recently completed a forty-hour training course to become a RAINN online hotline volunteer, learning to help victims on a one-to-one basis. I’m far from a natural, and it’s only for a few hours a week, but I honestly feel like it’s as important as anything I’ve ever done—up there with winning my first WWE championship, becoming a
New York Times
best-selling author, and being invited to Christy
Canyon’s Super Bowl party. If I’ve learned one thing in life, one
truly
important thing—it’s not to allow anyone else to define what success is.
We
get to do that for ourselves.

A little earlier in this afterword, I questioned whether anything in this book was important at all. From a purely business standpoint, the six-week period leading up to
Lockdown
may seem somewhat insignificant. But from a personal standpoint—from the decision to take chances with my character to the decision to write again, to take that fateful climb onto the outer limb of the giving tree, this has been one of the most important times of my life. Maybe I don’t have that one last great in-ring moment left in me, but writing this book, and experiencing the journey it’s taken me on, has made me believe that I just might have a few great moments left
outside
of the ring, where
good enough
will hopefully never be good enough.

So maybe this wasn’t the best wrestling book in the world, or even the best one I’ve personally written. I’m happy with it nonetheless. Luckily, I get to define for myself what success is—in life, in wrestling, in writing. I worked hard on this book, I’m happy with it, and I will forever consider it both important and successful, whether it sells one copy or a million. And I’m glad I was able to chronicle such a particularly enjoyable and fulfilling time in my career, especially when compared to my last book, which chronicled a pretty frustrating one. I’m guessing this is my last wrestling memoir (certainly it’s the last one I’ll write with pen and notebook pads), but one never can tell where inspiration might strike.

So, as you come to the end of this last page, feel free to express your emotions out loud. Unless, of course, your emotions are not positive, in which case I’d prefer you keep them to yourself. Say something like, “You know, that Mick Foley guy wrote a pretty good book.” Go on, don’t be shy. You can say it. You can … because I did.

There were so many people who helped make this book such a positive experience for me. Thank you to my editor, Ben Greenberg, for accepting this book into the Grand Central Publishing family based on one unlikely chapter and a vision. Thanks to my agent, Matt Bialer, for believing that a wrestling book could still be relevant the fourth time around, and to my manager, Barry Bloom, for always looking out for my best interests.

To my wife, Colette, for twenty wonderful years together.

Thank you to my typist, Karen Bohner, for not only enthusiastically deciphering my handwriting, but for serving as fact-checker, punctuation and grammar corrector, and a valuable sounding board for ideas.