I have often imagined how this entire scene would play out on film, with Martin Scorsese directing, in black and white if possible. Dramatic music in the background. Vivid close-ups of the ear as it pirouetted in the air before dropping gracefully to the canvas, old-fashioned flashbulbs going off all the while. The referee screaming in French with tears streaming down his face. Cappetta sprinting to the back, trying not to lose his lunch. Flair, played perhaps by Buddy Ebsen, crying at the fate of Cactus Jack. Except in the movie version, Ill be damned if I’m going to scream for help. No, I’m going to take it like a man on the big screen.
Anyway, back in the ring, the match continued for about another two minutes. Yeah, I know, it would be great to say that I won the match and was carried away victoriously on the fans’ shoulders. But even though I’m writing about a sport that some feel is not “real,” this is a real story, and the real truth is I did the job that night (lost the match). With the match won, Vader went back into his “who’s the man?” when Doug Dillinger, the head of security, rushed in and told him to get the hell out of the ring. I reached for my right ear, and, well, there wasn’t a whole lot there to feel. I got a sick feeling in my stomach, and then sucked it up and headed back to the dressing room.
Believe it or not, I was actually in high spirits when I got there. I have often been referred to by doctors and nurses as “the most cheerful patient they’ve ever treated.” I like that. It may not be as badass as “the toughest SOB in the World Wrestling Federation,” or as colorful as “the most electrifying man in sports-entertainment,” but it’s something I’m proud of nonetheless. Can’t you just hear Howard Finkel at WrestleMania XVII as he announces: “Ladies and gentlemen, making his way to the ring, he weighs in at 287 pounds and is known around the world as the most cheerful emergency room patient in the world … Mick Foley!”
Vader, once again showing his sensitive side-the big softy-was pretty upset about the whole thing. He even wanted to ride to the hospital with me. Of course, being shaken up about it would not prevent him from claiming for years that he had been the man who tore Cactus Jacks ear off. Too Cold Scorpio offered to show me my ear in the plastic bag. I declined. Emergency medical technicians prepared to take me to the hospital. But, wait … something was missing … I couldnt leave yet. This event needed to be recorded for posterity-we needed a camera. I grabbed an English photographer named Colin, and he snapped about a dozen photos of the gruesome injury. If you look closely at the photos you can detect a gleam in my eye and just the slightest hint of a smile.
I hopped into the Krankenwagen, or ambulance, and we headed for the Krankenhaus, or hospital. Amazingly, we were denied access to the first hospital. Luckily, there was room at the second, and I hopped out, but not before uttering a German sentence that probably had never been used before, and possibly will never be used again:”Vergessen Sie nicht, bitte, mein ohr in der Plastik Tasche zu bringen,” or “Please don’t forget to bring my ear in the plastic bag.”
A plastic surgeon was called in and he gave me some unfortunate news. I should mention at this point that I had the utmost confidence that the wonders of medical science would enable him to sew my ear on in no time. After all, John Wayne Bobbitt had been sewed up, right? Oh, but I guess that wasn’t an ear. Anyway, the surgeon explained to me that unlike an ear that had been cut off and would be relatively easy to repair, mine had more or less been pushed off my head and had been too badly destroyed to salvage. There was hope, however. I underwent a four-hour operation during which all the cartilage from the missing ear was removed and placed in a man-made pocket an inch above my remaining lobe. By doing this, the cartilage would remain vital for a reconstructive operation somewhere down the road. And yes, I am at this very moment feeling that lump of stored cartilage, like a play toy that I’ll never misplace.
After the operation, one of the Krankenschwesters, or nurses, showed me the remains of my ear, except by now, without my cartilage, it looked like a giant skin flap, kind of like the cheese on a pizza thats been sitting at room temperature. I asked her if I could have it “Ich mochte mein ohr zu haben?” She looked at me as if I’d just farted in church, pinched her nose with her fingers, and replied that the ear would become schutzig, or dirty and smelly. Now that’s a hell of a thing to say about something as near and dear as my ear, but as I searched in vain for the German word for formaldehyde, the Krankenschwester did something, the image of which would haunt me for months. She calmly stepped on the foot pedal that lifted the lid of the medical waste basket, and with a flick of her wrist, disposed of my former ear forevermore. She then turned to me and with the inquiring eyes of a child said, “Der catch ist alles schauspiel, ya?” or “Isnt wrestling all fake?
Welcome to my world, the world of professional wrestling, where fact is often stranger than fiction, and the line between the two keeps getting tougher and tougher to distinguish.
Chapter 2
I was eighteen in the fall of 1983. Upon graduation from Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, New York, that June, I had spent the summer lifeguarding at the Stony Brook Racquet Club and daydreaming about professional wrestling. Up on the stand for continuous eight-hour shifts, I had plenty of time to envision suplexes and dives off the top rope like my idol, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, while I watched over the well-being of a bunch of spoiled rich kids. My brother, John, on the other hand, was in his third year as a prestigious “Town of Brookhaven” lifeguard, which meant that, unlike me, he guarded at an actual beach that actual good-looking women frequented. In addition, he was given an hour off for every hour worked, during which, rumor had it, the town guards would pump up with a pair of dumbbells before taking the stand.
But, hey, my job had its benefits too, such as free tennis privileges at the club, which I used liberally-until my racket-throwing, yelling, and court-diving ways led to the termination of my court privileges. Looking back, I think I may have actually thrown the town lifeguarding test to avoid the indignity of wearing the official bikini bathing suit that the town guards were required to wear. Even at a lean, mean 200 pounds, Mrs. Foley’s little boy was never cut out for Speedos. So as a result, I grudgingly accepted my responsibility to watch out for children.
Hell, it wasn’t so bad. I was actually something of an institution at the club; I had not only guarded the summer before, but worked at Arthur’s Take Out in the winter. Arthur’s Take Out was the brainchild of club owner Arthur Grower, who paid me and my buddy Rob Betcher minimum wage to cook and deliver broasted (a combination of broiling and roasting-but it looked like fried) chicken out of the freezing snack bar. There was no heat in the place, so we would have to throw water on the stove and do calisthenics to keep warm while we waited for the phone that seemed to never ring.
As a result, we had lots of free time in the snack bar, and I had taken to whittling objects out of potatoes and then broasting them. One night, Danny Zucker, who would later go on to manage me in the Dude Love movies, called in an order, and I set out whittling my best potato penis complete with two potato testicles that we attached to the starchy shaft through the miracle of toothpicks.
I set out with two orders in my car, and after dropping off the first, headed over to the Zucker residence to unveil my unique sculpture. “You’re going to love this, Zuck,” I promised, as Danny opened the box to reveal a normal order of fries. Oops. I never did find out if Mrs. Smith on lower Sheep Pasture Lane enjoyed her meal.
I had been on several recruiting trips with Rob Betcher during the winter and spring, as we were prized players on the Ward Melville High School lacrosse team, which were perennial county champions. I was a goalie and Betch played attack. It didn’t matter that the two of us hardly played as juniors-the important thing was that we played for Joe Couzzo’s Patriots and had been seen in summer camp action by college scouts. It was actually at Couzzo’s Suffolk Lacrosse Camp that I had honed the skills necessary to promote a big wrestling match.
The situation started innocently enoug
h-I was taunting one of the counselors, a Ward Melville graduate named Dave McCulloch. Dave had been my idol when I was a sophomore, and I felt such a bond to him that I even fell for his girlfriend, Crystal Kost, in a crush that only lasted for two years. I eventually went to the prom with Crystal-at her request-but left prom night without even so much as a kiss on the cheek or a dance. Back then, even as a popular if somewhat strange kid, I would have had trouble scoring even if she had pulled the goalie.
Dave and I were good friends, but there was a small resentment that he’d felt for me ever since I had sung a song I wrote about him and Crystal over the school intercom. Feel free to sing along to the tune of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” by Canadian legend Gordon Lightfoot.
“The Ballad of Dave and Crystal” by M. Foley
His day was a loss, he was playing lacrosse, he had nothing else better to do.
But he came to his home to ans.-1er the phone, and the voice of Bob Whehman came though.
He said “I’ve got a notion, let’s go to the ocean, we can ride those big waves.
We’ll have some fun, we’re leaving at one, what do you say to it, Dave?”
And if it’s all right with you, there is someone else too, to go on this trip we are plannin’
It isn’t just Sean, who will bore you till dawn, but a pretty female companion
She looked so good on the beach that Dave could not speak-she was wearing a nice white bikini
And the look of that suit on her body so smooth, sent a tingle right down his big weenie.
Oh, there was more, much more, but because the song was fictional and I was using creative license, it got a little graphic and unfortunately ended in one of the three ways that my songs always did-pregnancy, venereal disease, or the cutting off of the penis. Actually, it was the latter subject that had won the high school talent show for me and my buddies, John Imbriani, John McNulty, Scott Darragh, and Zucker—collectively known as the B.P.s (The Brothers Penis). However, the next day we were called into the principal’s office and told that we were disqualified for “inappropriate song material,” and that we would therefore have to forfeit the grand prize of $40 worth of Chinese food. “Man, I sure could go for an egg roll right now,” I mumbled as Mr. Marschack continued to admonish us.
“You really think this is funny, don’t you, Mickey?” Marschack asked me. “I mean, this is humorous to you, isn’t it?”
“No, Mr. Marschack,” I politely answered. “I don’t think it’s funny. We were judged to be the winners by a team of judges, and now you are stripping us of our rightful prize.”
Marschack laughed, because as my seventh grade English teacher who had remained friendly with me over the years, he knew that I was dead serious. I wanted the food. “Mickey, I cannot in good conscience give the grand prize to a bunch of guys who sing about a penis.”
Now he had me mad. “Mr. Marschack, there’s a lot more to it than just a penis. It’s about the guy who is attached to the penis, who can’t cope with his guilt and therefore has no other alternative than to get rid of the part of his body that’s causing him so much pain. It’s actually a pretty touching song.” I then recited the sensitive song and waited for Marschack’s ruling, which came about a second later. “No food for you guys” was the final word.
After all these years, I still feel that we were wronged, and now you can be the judge. Sung to the tune of the Kinks’ “Lola,” and with sincere apologies to Ray Davies, here is the award-winning “Boner” by Mickey Foley.
Well I don’t acquaint with girls I don’t know, and I don’t go to parties, I stay at home-I’m a loner L-0-N-E-R Loner.
But I saw her out there alone on the street, her body was built; I looked at my meat-I had a boner B-0-N-E-R boner, bo bo bo bo boner.
She said, “Hey boy won’t you come inside, and when I walked inside, I felt my penis rise into a boner. Bo bo bo bo boner.
We sat at the bar and I bought her a drink, and she glanced at my pants, and she said, “I think you’ve got a boner.” Bo bo bo bo boner. Bo bo bo bo boner.
Well I could feel the blood flow though my sack and I could feel the cloth stretch in my slacks.
Actually, I forget the rest, but it had something to do with becoming oversexed, and cutting off the penis as a cure. Probably not much of a cure. Just as important as the lyrics was our show-stopping finale, in which I did a horrible front handspring into a flat-backed landing, and sat up just in time for Danny Zucker to smash me over the head with a plastic “Village People” guitar. Sure the guitar was fake, as were all the B.P.’s instruments (we had a real band behind the curtain), but it was still a pretty impressive sight, and a sign of things to come.
Let’s get back to Joe Couzzo’s camp. The tension between Dave and me was growing to the point that it would have to be settled in a “bout,” which was the name given to camp boxing matches in the cabins, with lacrosse helmet and gloves on for protection. Actually the lacrosse helmet is a lot lighter than a football helmet, and its shock absorbing usefulness was arguable. I began promoting this bout to the best of my abilities. I wrote humiliating facts about Dave in Magic. Marker on my chest. I did pushups during lunch with a plate of beans beneath my face and scoffed down a bite between each poorly executed push. I even wore a bull’s-eye over my balls for the camper-staff game, of which Dave was a part.
By the time the bout rolled around, it was the hottest issue at the camp. For some reason, all of the younger kids looked up to me, and my entrance was met with great enthusiasm from the campers. McCulloch, however, was booed relentlessly. There was no bell, so someone blew on a horn, and the bout was on. I came out fast and furious and threw everything I had at the college sophomore. Lefts, rights, hooks, uppercuts-you name it, and I threw it-for about thirty seconds. At the half-minute mark, my arms felt like lead, my legs felt even worse and my entire respiratory system felt like it was failing me.
I looked at Dave, and he was smiling. He knew I had nothing left, and he began throwing punches with bad intentions. Dave was damn near a man, and I was just a boy, and he was hammering me relentlessly. I got through the round, but tasted the stale iron of my own blood. His punches had split my lip, and I was, to quote many a wrestling show, “busted wide open.” The coaches stepped in, and seeing that I was getting the crap beaten out of me, stopped the fight. I believe it was the last “bout” ever held at the Suffolk lacrosse camp. When they stopped me, I went ballistic. “Don’t stop it, Coach, I’m okay,” I argued.
“Mick, it’s over,” Coach Ray Weeks told me. “Now go clean yourself up.”
“This isn’t right,” I yelled for the whole camp to hear, “I was just getting started.”
Slowly, I walked outside to the bathroom building. I stepped inside and shut the door. I looked into the mirror at my bloody face and had to admit that I liked it. I envisioned a big wrestling match, with Vince McMahon screaming, “Look at Foley, my goodness, he’s busted wide open!” I smiled at the thought and then another thought hit me. “Thank God they stopped that damn fight.”
Lacrosse had been my passion for several years. At my father’s request, I had also played football and basketball as a sophomore, but I had sucked at both of them. I think I had one tackle and one basket for the entire season on each of those teams. It wasn’t that I wasn’t a good athlete-I just seemed to be an underachiever when it came to team sports. In football, I would actually bend down to tie my shoes when it came time to pick sides for practice. In basketball, I liked to stand outside and wait for long-range jumpers.
Contact wasn’t the issue. In a game of one-on-one, or even up to three-on-three, I was impassioned when it came to boxing out, or playing defense, or driving the lane. When the game turned to five-on five, or eleven-on-eleven, I just kind of disappeared and figured my teammates would take care of it. To this day, I’ve kept a little bit of that inside me, which is why I’ve always preferred wrestling as a single. As a single, I get caught up in the match easily-as part of a team, I
really have to fight the tendency to rely on my partner.
I guess that’s why I enjoyed playing goalie in lacrosse. Even though I was part of a team, the responsibility was all mine. I loved the challenge of stopping shots without a chest protector or cup. It was my propensity for playing without a cup that led to the much-publicized “testicle the size of a grapefruit” story on Raw Is War fourteen years later. Actually the whole story is slightly misleading, as I didn’t make a habit of playing without a cup, I just oftentimes forgot to wear one. My ball wasn’t exactly the size of a grapefruit either-more like a medium-size tangerine.
Lacrosse was so important to me that as a senior, I went out for the winter track team strictly to shape up for the spring season, during which I would grace the goal for the Patriots. The fact that I was no runner was soon discovered, and I began taking to bailing out on the far side of the track and hiding in the woods for a couple of laps. I threw the shot-put and discus too, but one look at my shoulder development should tell you how I fared at that endeavor.
One day before practice, I was talking to fellow B.P. John McNulty, who was nicknamed McNugget in honor of the McDonald’s food of questionable origin. “Track, huh, slick guy,” he said, before adding, “You might be the slowest guy in the school.”
“I know,” I agreed, “but I just want to get in shape for lacrosse.”
John thought it over before saying the words that would have a profound effect on my life: “Why don’t you go out for wrestling,” he wondered. “Even if you never have a match, it will get you in better shape than track will.”
Wrestling, now there was an idea. With my father as the school district’s athletic director, I had grown up watching amateur wrestling in addition to the fake stuff on TV. I knew Coach Jim McGonigle well, as he had coached by brother for two years and also had been my instructor for driver’s education. Hell, I’d even covered the team for the local newspaper and baby-sat the coach’s children on a couple of occasions. In addition, my living room matches with my brother, John, had taught me techniques that would prove invaluable on the mat. In gym class, I had even dominated a school bully so bad that he begged me not to pin him and ruin his reputation. After that, Rob Pilla and I always had a special bond, even though if I had to do it all over again, I would have pinned his ass. “What the hell,” I said, laughing, “I’ll do it.”