Suddenly The Rock had an imaginary penis in his hand and was using it in the way that I just described, but was shaking his head in disagreement, as if to say, "No, The Rock doesn't do this." I continued my playacting but nodded my head as if to say, "Oh yes you do, Rock." A giant crash signaled Austin's entrance, and as suddenly and mysteriously as the invisible penises had appeared, they vanished into thin air. Austin arrived to the ring with the accompaniment of a pop (crowd reaction) even more Hegstardish and Laurentiis-like than my own. After hitting all four corners with his patented one-finger salute, Stone Cold grabbed the mike and began to speak. Actually, he began to tell a story. Austin is a tremendous promo guy, but in the ten years that I'd known him, I had never actually heard him tell a story. Why would he pick this match to begin? "My uncle was a man of the sea," Steve began. "He provided for his family by fishing for small crustaceans. Then one day a storm came along and sunk my uncle's boat. When he came home, he only had one thing to say . . . Shrimpin' Ain't Easy."
The ring had now turned into a children's play area, where big, bruising thugs looked about as dangerous as a gaggle of baby geese. The Rock tried to gain control with something about Austin's "monkey ass," but I cut him off. "Rock, you're always talking about monkeys, which you know are part of the primate group, as is the chimpanzee. And everyone knows ...Chimpin' ain't easy." The Rock lost all semblance of being in character and burst out laughing. Austin simply put his face in the corner so no one could see it, but his shaking stomach gave his laughter away. Even Kane, whose entire face was hidden, wasn't safe. I looked at him, and his mask was moving up and down, up and down, with waves of laughter. It truly was a memorable night— quite possibly the funniest of my career. Until we got to Milwaukee the next day.
I hadn't been to Milwaukee since the previous May, when, as Dude Love, I had been in a tremendous match with Stone Cold that was detailed in Have a Nice Day! As Dude Love, I had sold out to Vince McMahon's Corporation, and as a result, was combing my hair, wearing sport jackets, speaking like a pompous professor, and of all the rotten things, was wearing false front teeth. As part of the match, Austin had pulled the offensive dental work out of my mouth and had, after stomping on it, thrown it to the crowd. Much like a baseball hit into the stands, I had assumed it made a nice memento for a lucky fan.
"Mankind, a fan wants to see you," a guard told me at the arena. "She says she's got something for you." Waiting for me in the back was a family of four with a small gift box. I opened the box, and to my surprise, found my front teeth looking up at me. "We thought you might have missed these," the lady said as her children beamed at me as if I was Indiana Jones with the Lost Ark safely in my possession. I didn't want to burst the family's bubble and tell them I hadn't used them in ten years—ever since I met Colette and she convinced me I looked sexy without them. Seeing as how "sexy" wasn't an adjective usually applied to my appearance, I took the damn things out immediately and stashed them in the ashtray of my '84 Chrysler LeBaron, where they stayed for many years. Come to think of it, if Colette thought I'd looked sexy without an ear, I would have lost one of those too. Which, come to think of it, I did.
The teeth in the ashtray came in handy during an argument with Colette in 1991. Knowing that I was wrong, I reached for the ashtray, but Colette immediately guessed my intentions and reacted in anger. "Don't you do it!" she yelled. But I was too fast, and in an instant had that bad boy out of the tray and into my mouth. "Fine," Colette said, "if that's the way you're going to be, fine." Later that evening I not only put the teeth back in storage, where they would remain for many years, but actually apologized for having the audacity to commit such a reprehensible act.
Back in the dressing room, Val Venis was lecturing on the foolishness of the American income-tax system, and was explaining how he, as a Canadian, was a member of the British Commonwealth, and was eligible to live in the Bahamas, income-tax-free. The Val Venis character may have been a porno star, but dammit, he was a conservative one.
Al was trying to explain to some of the other boys how he had not been fooled by Shane's popcorn talk, but the boys knew he was full of Snow. I noted that it was ironic that Al had been "selling" bags of massive amounts of popcorn, when usually it was his matches that caused popcorn vendors to do the same thing. Al admitted that the statement was clever, at which time I declared that Al was "Winger" to my "Hulka," in reference to the punch thrown by Warren Oates's Sergeant Hulka that doubles over Bill Murray's John Winger in the movie Stripes. I then went a step too far by saying that Al was "Fosse" to my "Rose," a statement that was met by the blank faces of my younger cronies like Edge and Scotty 2 Hotty. When I explained that this was an allusion to the 1969 Major League All-Star Game where Pete Rose destroyed catcher Ray Fosse's career by running him over at home plate, even my cronies had to admit that the reference was a little too obscure to be effective. Later that year I had the chance to explain the story to Pete Rose himself, and baseball's all-time hit leader thought it was tremendous.
When I was eleven, I tried a Pete Rose face-first dive, when I attempted to steal third base as a member of Will Grey's Red Sox Little League team. Never mind the fact that I had the speed of a garden slug—I wanted to do the dive. One of the tricks of Pete's dive was to put the hands down first, which apparently I forgot, and by the time I realized I was "out" at third, I was "out" on the bench, where, with the help of smelling salts, I woke up to a standing ovation from my teammates. That may have been when I first realized "it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how painful things look along the way."
I stated earlier in this book that I had only been knocked out once in my career, but the preceding Little League story made me realize I was at least on the threshold of unconsciousness one other time. In June 1992, I was giving a fired-up interview about WCW wrestler Sting for an upcoming Pay-Per-View. Sting had legitimately hurt his ribs in a match with Vader, and I was attempting to convey my intention to assault the injured ribs. To do this, I had put a wooden crate on the ground, which I was going to try to break with a flying headbutt. This, I thought, would illustrate his ribs being broken. I knew that if I failed to break the crate I would look foolish, so I spent an hour in the dark, by myself, visualizing my stunt.
By the time I went on the air, I was fired up, and I just knew that the crate didn't stand a chance—my visualization was too strong. And I was right—my head went through the crate quicker than audience interest in a Posse match. Unfortunately, I hadn't visualized what would happen to my head once it went through the crate. What it did end up doing was bouncing off the floor like a basketball. I lay motionless for a moment, and then tried to stand, but fell back onto my ass, at which point Jim Ross (who at the time did play-by-play for WCW) asked me about my big match. "Ugh" was all I could say. Ross then tried to cover for me, and sounding as convincing as he could when talking about a semiconscious man with his tongue hanging out and a glazed look in his eyes, yelled, "Cactus Jack is a dangerous man!"
Okay, I'm back from my tangent now—I hope you enjoyed the trip. When I started changing from my sweatpants and sneakers into my sweatpants and sneakers (when my knee was injured, I started wearing sneakers in the ring), The Rock walked up, and we shared a laugh over the previous night's match. "I was thinking," The Rock said, "it would have been funny as hell if every time I denied it, the imaginary dick would get bigger and bigger." "Yeah," I added, "and every time we went back and forth, the imaginary sucking action would get more passionate." So there in the dressing room, we laughed out loud as we conjured up the image of larger and larger imaginary phalluses, all of which climaxed (no pun intended) with The Rock on his knees holding something the size of a fully mature anaconda in both hands while vehemently denying he would ever commit this heinous act.
Just then The Godfather stormed in. It was the first time I'd ever seen him mad, and boy, he was livid. "Those fuckin' bitches," he yelled out, which is odd because he usually treated those Ho's with the utmost respect backstage. We t
ried to figure out what was wrong, but he just kept repeating the same line about the, um, bitches. The two Ho's tried to make peace, but The Godfather stormed out in front of their startled eyes. It turned out that the Ho's, who are always encouraged to show off their goods in a PG-13 type of way, had taken it upon themselves to raise that rating dangerously close to an X by making out with each other and feeling each other's breasts at ringside. As jovial a guy as The Godfather is, I guess deep down, keepin' those Ho's in line is difficult work. Because, as you know, pimpin' ain't easy.
I was looking forward to the main event, which I had a feeling was going to look eerily similar to the Vegas adventure, sans The Godfather tributes. Much of what's done in the ring is ad-libbed, but we had come up with a winning formula for the "Fatal Four-Way," and besides, we were 2,000 miles from Las Vegas—who was going to know? Kane was introduced first, followed by The Rock, who went into his "trailer-park trash, big, red, retarded ass" speech. I was up next, and immediately grabbed the mike and prepared to give my "The Rock likes to talk about men's asses" speech. There was only one problem. After I got about half my spiel out, I thought of The Rock on his knees in the dressing room, two-handing the giant imaginary penis. His facial expressions were so vivid in my mind and the whole thing was so ridiculous that I cracked. The more I tried to hold it in, the more difficult it became, and I finally exploded with laughter in front of the shocked crowd. I tried to regain my composure, but when I went to speak, I got only a word out when I was hit again by the thought of The Rock in action. I laughed until it hurt, and then I laughed some more. I looked at referee Earl Hebner, and his face was bright red from laughter, even though he didn't have a clue what I was laughing about. I looked at The Rock, and he was covering his face with his hands, trying to retain some degree of coolness. Kane's mask was jumping up and down. Then I looked out at the crowd. Ten thousand people had paid good money to see talented performers put on a hell of a show and they got this travesty. Guess what? I had never seen a crowd so happy.
I believe that deep down, the crowd wants to know that we are friends. And I think that they feel good knowing that we enjoy what we do. I don't think there was any doubt in Milwaukee that evening that the World Wrestling Federation main event was having the time of their life in that ring, and I think quite a few of the fans in attendance would say the same about watching it.
As a performer, I've become well aware of the fact that much of show business is an act. That may sound a little obvious, but I'm talking more about the public personas than about the work itself. I remember being devastated when I heard that Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks sometimes barely spoke to each other before and after shows. I sat at a few concerts where the band would have their game face on, complete with orgasmic facial expressions, during songs and witty repartees with the crowd, only to turn around and suddenly turn off the face. Sometimes it's refreshing to know that performers actually love performing.
9: Author?
WRESTLEMANIA SHOULD BE the high point of a wrestler's year. For me, both creatively and emotionally, it was among the lowest. A few weeks before Mania, I had seen the poster for April's Backlash Pay-Per-View, on which I was featured. I felt a little funny about bailing out on a show that I was a focus of as well as missing matches well on into May that had already been advertised. I have a desire, bordering on an obsession, to never miss an advertised date, which was probably instilled in me during my DeNucci training days. For a guy who actually has a T-shirt devoted to his vast array of injuries, I take great pride in not missing a show due to injury in my first eight and a half years of wrestling, and during my years in the World Wrestling Federation only missed the four shows following my King of the Ring match in 1998. With my pride at stake, I talked the Federation into letting me postpone my surgery until the end of May, when all of my advertised dates would be fulfilled.
The World Wrestling Federation appreciated my guts, pride, and dedication. My children appreciated that I would have my whole summer free, which, in truth, had been more of a consideration in moving my surgery date than that whole pride thing. So with visions of amusement parks dancing in my head, I limped through the next three months, including a WrestleMania matchup with the seven-foot, 450-pound Big Show Paul Wight that ranked right up there with my worst-ever Pay-Per-View offerings. Show was a hot commodity from WCW who the World Wrestling Federation was counting on to headline WrestleMania 2000. A Mania matchup with Austin, it was thought, would set buy-rate records. To do that, however, Show would need to be a good guy for most of the next year so as to avoid giving the fans the proposed dream match too soon. So, almost from the start, when he appeared as Vince's hired corporate goon part, Big Show's babyface seeds had been planted. So in other words, no one really cared about my match at WrestleMania, which carried a winner-referees-the-main-event stipulation.
I won by disqualification, after getting destroyed for most of the match, and Big Show turned face immediately afterward by punching Vince McMa-hon. I did get to make the three-count in the main event, after rushing back from the "hospital" where I had been treated for my "injuries." I've got to admit it was a thrill being out there for that match, as the crowd was in a frenzy, and I got to witness close up an excellent last few minutes of the Austin-Rock matchup.
So WrestleMania 1999 had not exactly been a high point of my career, but it stands out in my mind for one important reason: it was the day I found out I was going to be an author.
"Hey, did you hear the news?" I was asked by John Nahani, one of our producers in the World Wrestling Federation, and the man responsible for the World Wrestling Federation's highly acclaimed Super Bowl commercials. "The World Wrestling Federation is going to do an autobiography on you, and my dad is going to write it." I was stunned, but in a happy way. I had often visualized my life story in book form, but had doubted it would ever become reality, especially because no large publishing house had ever shown an interest in previous wrestling books. The World Wrestling Federation, in an agreement with ReganBooks of the HarperCollins family, had changed that. "They're going to do three books," Nahani informed me, "Austin, Rock, and you, and yours is going to come out first."
I met John's dad Larry the next day. He came up to my room at the Airport Holiday Inn and began explaining the book-publishing process to me. "It's very easy, Michael," he said, using the name that my mother had reserved only for when I was in big trouble as a child. "You tell your story into the microphone, and I turn it into a book." This all sounded a little too easy to me. I mean, shouldn't I have to actually do some writing to get my name on a book? But after all, Larry was a veteran of seventeen books, which included some of sport's biggest names of the 1970s, so who was I to argue?
Still, I was a little surprised by this news, because I had been an avid reader of sports autobiographies when I was a kid, and had always assumed that the star on the book's cover was the actual writer. Larry laughed when I said this. "Michael, none of these guys do any of the writing. They tell the story, and then I fill in the blanks, put in some quotes, and write the book. It's called creative license." I don't think I was this let down when I found out the tooth fairy wasn't real. "Larry, that somehow doesn't seem right," I said, although I had the feeling that my sense of right and wrong was not a concern of the publishing industry. Larry laughed. At sixty-nine years old, he had been around sports and its stars for his entire adult life. He knew better. "Michael, I wrote one baseball superstar's book after talking with him for half an hour. He was never going to write his own book—none of these guys are. That's just the way it is."
Grudgingly, I accepted this somewhat strange and more than somewhat dishonest news. I looked at the bright side, instead. Hey, I was going to be an author, wasn't I, and besides, it was at least going to be all in my own words, right? So, after rationalizing this whole autobiographical process in my head, I began telling my life story, and entrusting its outcome to a sixty-nine-year-old man who barely knew my name.
The next da
y I picked Larry up and we began our drive to the next town. He had a yellow legal pad with several paragraphs written on it. "This," he said with great pride, "is the beginning of your book." Like a kid on Christmas morning anxious for his big gift, I begged Larry to let me have an earful. My life was about to be immortalized on the printed page, and even better, I was going to be an author without actually writing a single word. With a little urging, Larry laid it on me: "I was born Michael Francis Foley, a typical Irish name if ever there was one, but our family was not the typical Irish vision of free-flowing beer on Saturday and church on Sunday. Hell, I didn't even make my first communion until I was eighteen, an age when the other guys on the block already had their first girlfriends. After all, what kind of a girl would want to go out with a guy who hadn't had his first communion?"
I was a little shocked. I should have known right then that this partnership wasn't going to work out. "What do you think, Michael?" Larry asked. "I'll tell you, I'm a writing fool." When I spoke it was with great trepidation. I had genuinely liked Larry during my time with him the previous day and wanted to spare his feelings. But I couldn't let a book on my life begin this way. "Larry, I have a few problems with it. First off, most of the guys on the block have their first girlfriends at twelve, not eighteen. Also, I don't think having communion is a prerequisite for dating. I mean, I don't think girls would ever say, 'hey, he's nice and cute and all... but he hasn't made communion yet.' "
Larry was not to be deterred. "That's okay, Michael, we'll change it."
I had a bigger problem, however. "Larry, I didn't actually say any of those things to you."
So let me get this straight. A "ghostwriter" takes a tape recording, fills in blanks, makes up quotes, and changes facts? Then a person who has never written a word of the resulting book gets credit for being an author? I certainly was surprised to find out that in many ways, the prestigious business of publishing books was, in truth, faker than pro wrestling.