Maybe my poor dad should be entitled to his papers without the ridicule from his family. After all, this was a man who worked monumental hours, but still found ways to spend quality time with the family, even if it meant taking the family on business trips and turning them into little vacations. For some reason it seems that he was never around, but on closer examination, I realize just how far out of his way he went to spend time with us. Yankee games, Mets games, school sports, camping in Nova Scotia, NCAA basketball tournaments, Santa’s Village, Playland, Amish country, a rare trip to the movies so I could see Rocky for the seventeenth time, and too many others to list. Any time I think I had a rough childhood-please, somebody slap me.
Apparently all of those fond memories didn’t mean quite as much as the thought of Snuka in a cage. My parents dropped us off, and I quickly said my goodbyes. Too quickly, as it turned out. Before their car was even out of sight, we hightailed it into a thinly wooded area along the back fence, where we lay waiting against a slight embankment for the car that would take us home. To this day, I have no idea why we hid instead of just waiting. After several minutes, Scott peeked his head up to look for Imbrianio’s car. I heard him gasp, and he dropped down quickly.
“What is it?” I asked as I looked at Scott, who had suddenly turned pale.
“It’s your parents!” he exclaimed.
“That’s impossible,” I stated, before taking a look for myself. I too dropped down and got pale. “Oh my God, you’re right,” I gasped. “What are we going to do?” I had seen them only for a moment, but I’ll remember the image of them on their manhunt forever. My mom searching for evidence as if she were Angela Lansbury on Murder She Wrote. My dad was on the lookout as well-he was looking for us. “We’re done for, Nom,” I said, using Scott’s nickname derived from the heavy-drinking Mr. Peterson on Cheers. “My dad’s giving us ‘the look.’”
Nom knew all too well what “the look” was all about-every kid who had ever attended a Ward Melville basketball game knew it too. “The look” had many uses, but it was mainly a way to keep control at basketball games. Sportsmanship was highly valued by my dad, and the common practice of stomping feet and yelling during an opposing team’s foul shot was strictly taboo. (No, not the Kay Parker movie.) From his spot ten feet to the right of the basket, my dad would ready himself for the noise, and when it began, he’d give “the look,” and the noise would magically subside. It never failed. I’d seen plenty a tough high school punk try to withstand its force, but they all eventually went down. That look had caused me considerable discomfort when I was a kid trying to rid myself of the stigma of being “Dr. Foley’s son,” but never as much discomfort as it caused me right then. I had not been hit by my parents since the Parsonage Road spanking incident back in ‘68 that had left handprints on my little ass comparable to the handprints I leave on Al Snow’s ass now. But, hey, there was always a first and this blatant slap in the face of education just might set it off.
Don’t get me wrong, my dad liked wrestling, and the sport had actually done a lot to make us closer. It wasn’t easy growing up with a man like Jack Foley for a father and for a few years things had been a little tense between us. Wrestling, however, gave us a common bond. My dad used to look up from his papers, and be amazed at some of the things he saw. “Hey, Mick, these guys are pretty good athletes,” I once heard him say, and from then on, his glances up from his paper became more frequent. Eventually, it reached a point where he wouldn’t look at the paper at all, and we’d watch the hot World Wrestling Federation action as father and son.
Yes, my dad was a wrestling fan, and under different conditions, he might have been up for seeing a little double juice inside a cage. But not where school was concerned. Yeah, if my dad found me, the guy getting juice might be me.
Minutes later, I saw them leaving, and sighed a deep sigh of relief. Scott and I decided to wait for the next bus, which was four hours later, and go back to school. John Ambrobocop showed up minutes later, and the three of us sat back and reminisced about things we hadn’t done yet.
When I got back to school, I had the terrible feeling that I had let myself, the World Wrestling Federation, and, most importantly, Snuka himself down. If he truly was going to dive off the cage, as I believed he would, than certainly I should make the extra effort to be there. Where there is a will, there is certainly a way. Now, as a wrestler, I pride myself in making my dates, no matter what. Several times I have driven all night and switched flights to make personal appearances that others would have canceled. When I give my word, I want it to mean something-and in a strange way, I felt as if I’d given Snuka my word.
I tried the easy way first. As I ran up and down the third floor of Fitzgerald Hall I yelled desperately, “Hey, does anyone want to go to New York City?” No takers. I guess I should point out now that I didn’t have a car until a year later. Finally, I did get someone to give me a ride-to the Greyhound station.
At Greyhound, I left the driving to them-for forty miles to Binghamton. From there, I walked to the highway, stuck out my thumb, and waited … and waited, while visions of Superfly Splashes danced through my head. About three rides and eleven hours later, I showed up at Madison Square Garden, where, to my dismay, the marquee read “Sold Out.” Fortunately for me, the institution of scalping was alive and well in New York City, and because I was by myself, was able to procure a third-row seat for only $40-only ten hours of lifeguarding.
Most of the card was forgettable, or maybe I was just exhausted, but when Howard Finkel announced an intermission, and I saw the chain link fence come out, I felt my senses tingle. I actually was nervous. This was the culmination of the bloody Snuka-Muraco wars, and I knew that at Madison Square Garden, inside a steel cage, they would let it all hang out. Back in 1983, and for decades before that, MSG was the place to be. Before Pay-Per-View and huge Monday night telecasts, the Garden was actually the biggest show in all of wrestling. Even today, there is just something about the place that makes you want to give just a little more. I remember clips of Vince McMahon Sr.’s posthumous induction into the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame were shown on World Wrestling Federation programming, and Vince Jr. saying, “Before he died, my father said to me-Vinnie, the Garden will always be the Garden.”
I later must have watched a video of that Snuka-Muraco cage match a dozen times, and in truth, it was just an average cage match; little on the short side as well. But the magic in the air was unmistakable. I wasn’t the only one anticipating something special. Within minutes, both combatants were busted wide open. Because this was before the day of 20/20 exposes and The Secrets of Pro Wrestling on national TV, I knew nothing about the blood, but of course assumed it was fake. I would find out the hard way that it wasn’t. So, as a result, I kept looking for a blood capsule, or that other ridiculous theory-the bottle of ketchup underneath the ring.
Just as Snuka had things going his way, the thing was over. He sprang off the ropes and delivered a flying head butt that sent Muraco through the ropes and out the door. “That’s it,” I said out loud, “a twelve-hour trip for that?” Sure it had been a good match, but it wasn’t what I paid to see. Suddenly, I saw Snuka’s unmistakable display of rage inside the ring. When it came to displays of rage, no one was more animated than Snuka. Really, it’s pretty much the Ken Shamrock “snapping” routine-to put things into a modern perspective. I felt my heart rate pick up a little as the Fly went after his prey outside the ring. A moment later, both men were back in ring, and a Snuka suplex had the Magnificent One lying prone in the middle.
Immediately, Snuka climbed to the top rope, and the Garden stood in unison. We were about to see the famed Superfly leap. This was back in 1983-before the day of moonsaults, saltos, planchas, and a lot of other foreign words that faceless Mexicans perform to little or no response. For my money, the impact has always been more important than the flips, and I would later learn just how much impact that splash had. That’s one of the “secrets” of professional wres
tling; make it hurt for real. Then, with nothing but a glance, I realized my vision was about to come true.
All it took was that one glance upward, at the steel mesh that surrounded him, and the Garden started to buzz. A loud buzz that grew with each upward step that Snuka made. After all these years, it’s still the most impressive sight I’ve ever seen-the muscular Snuka standing barefoot on top of the cage, his face a mask of crimson, while flashbulbs bathed him in light. In a moment it was over, but the memory will live with me. It was a defining moment in my life-it was the day I knew without a doubt what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a wrestler, but even more, I wanted to make people feel the way I had just felt.
I got back to school at 10 A.M.-twenty-eight hours after my departure. A week later, I talked to my parents. “How was the match?” my dad wanted to know.
I started to lie, but realized it wasn’t worth it. “It was great, Dad, but how did you know?”
My dad laughed and said, “Because your Mother and I watched the tape, and saw our son sitting in the third row with his red flannel shirt.” He had caught me red-handed, and now he wanted to play Columbo and figure out the events of the crime. “You seemed to be in an awfully big hurry for us to leave, so we felt like you must have hid somewhere and had a friend come get you. Were we right?”
I proceeded to tell what might generously be called a half-truth. I was a future wrestler, dammit! “No, Dad, I definitely caught a bus to Cortland, and then I hitchhiked the next day.”
Chapter 4
December 1983 I knew what I wanted to do with my life-I just didn’t know how to go about doing it. A snowy winter night shortly before Christmas break would serve as a strange catalyst for my professional wrestling career.
I was in a bar called Toody & Muldoon’s on a Saturday night, courtesy of the fake ID I had purchased in New York City during my first Snuka-Muraco encounter back in June. The bar had two levels; one that played rock and roll, and one that played dance music. Somehow, against my better taste and judgment, I always ended up in the basement listening to “It’s Raining Men,” and trying to look cool. Probably failing at it, too. I was hanging with my buddies, John Hennessey and Steve McKiernan, who was now my roommate.
Steve had started out as Scott Darragh’s roommate, but Nom had never quite been happy at C-State, and had let his grades fall to nearly unchartable levels. At one point, a mutual friend named Dan Hegerty (a.k.a. “Hags”) had shown up, and the two of them were miserable together for about a week. “I swear,” Steve had told me during that time, as we walked back from class, “if I walk into my room and see Hags and Scottie D. looking through their yearbook and listening to Bonnie Tyler, I’m going to scream.” Moments later, he opened the door and I heard a husky female voice singing “your love is like a shadow on me all of the time,” followed by screams.
Nom really bottomed out when a combination of girlfriend problems and not making the baseball team sent him into a tailspin. Many was the time that I had heard a knock on the door, followed by a disheveled Nom simply saying “three.” I felt for Scott, and would immediately hand him side three of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which was our standard album side for depression and misery.
I was having fun at school, however, and this night was shaping up to be a good one. The World Wrestling Federation was on the television above the bar, and a rare title match was taking place. In the present-day wrestling scene, hot matches take place all the time on television-but back in ‘83, the World Wrestling Federation, like most shows, filmed a series of one-sided matchups. So it was with great excitement that I witnessed Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson, whose then eleven-year-old son Duane would go on to become the most electrifying man in sports-entertainment, defeat the Wild Samoans for the World Wrestling Federation tag team championship.
I would have been perfectly content to just bask in the glow of that glorious title change, but my night suddenly went from great to history making when I saw Kathy walk down the stairs. Man, I liked Kathy. She was beautiful, she was funny, but more important, she made me feel great just to be around her.
At this point in time, I could probably be described as a shy, insecure, poorly dressed, weird guy, who also happened to be polite, kind, funny, and borderline not too bad-looking. I was like a diamond in the rough, but man, you had to look pretty hard to find me. My failure with women was legendary. It wasn’t that they didn’t like me, but I had a tendency to be too ambitious with my choices, and had a terrible lack of finesse in closing the deal. In other words, I had no killer instinct, and a knack for not saying or doing the right thing.
I had flubbed a major one during my first week in school only about a foot from where I stood on that December evening. A hot chick walked up to me and started talking to me, while breathing dangerously close to my ear, which guaranteed instant wood. My ears were always real sensitive; it’s a shame that one of them is missing, and that the wax content keeps my wife miles away from the other one. I swear, my mom used to irrigate my ear, and things the size of marbles used to fall out of there. Anyway, after a few minutes, this hot-blooded woodmaker leaned in a little closer and informed me, “I’ve been looking at you since you were a freshman.” I thought her comment over, and somewhere in the resources of my mind came back at her with “But I’m a freshman now.” In a moment it was gone-all of it. The hot breath, the arm around the shoulder, the girl, and the wood. Gone, gone, all gone!
A girl named Amy probably represented the pinnacle of my ineptitude. This was also during the first week of school, on the second day actually, when a group of us third-floor Fitzgerald people were invited to the room of Battling Bill Esterly and John Heneberry, whom we would affectionately call Dingle. Bill and John were sophomores from Baldwinsville, New York, and wanted to hold a little social function in their room to help the new people get to know one another better. Within minutes, I was getting to know Amy better, as the vaunted Foley charm was striking in a big way.
Amy was beautiful, and had a figure that was impossible for me to take my eyes off of. Usually, I don’t like people when they’re smoking, but she had a look about her when she took a drag of her cigarette that put a twinkle in my eye and a bulge in my trousers. That rare combination of sexy voice, gorgeous face, swinging sweater puppets, and a somewhat morally casual attitude had my heart racing when we found ourselves somehow alone in Sue Kootz’s room. I believe she could sense my innocence as she began questioning me in a very suggestive way.
“Have you ever had sex before?” she purred.
“No,” I quickly gulped, “have you?”
She smiled as she sexily replied, “Lots of times.” Her questioning wasn’t over yet. “How about oral sex-has a woman ever done that to you?”
She was smiling seductively as I squirmed on Sue’s bed. I’d heard my friends talk about it, and I’d seen Kay Parker perform it, and from all indications, I felt it was something that I wanted to be a part of. “No,” I replied, “how about you, have you ever done it to a man?”
“Oh yeah,” came her sex kitten answer.
I pressed further, sensing what she was interested in. Yeah, I could smell what this chick was cooking. “Do you like it?” I had the nerve to say, with my right eye squinted like the Clint Eastwood poster I had hanging on my dormitory wall.
“Love it,” she simply said, as she snuggled up next to me, with a hand on my thigh and her blouse dropping down at the neck so that I was afforded a view of what looked to be paradise. Her next words were ones that I’d thought I’d never hear-“Can I kiss you?”
Man, this was too good to be true. I really felt that this could be my one way ticket out of the “V-Club” which, along with Chris Walker and John Ambria, I’d been a card-carrying member of for all my life. No doubt about it, this was the moment of truth. I leaned in and proceeded to give her the worst kiss in the history of Cortland, maybe even in all of the seven valley region. It was a kiss all right, but a kiss with no parted lips, no probing tongue-not even a
ny real pressure behind it. Foreign soccer players kissed each other with more passion after scoring a goal. I’d blown it-underneath all the amusing anecdotes and leftover summer tan and (at that time) perfect smile, I was really just a dork, and she’d seen right through me. In a matter of moments, she too was gone, gone, all gone.
Actually, Amy would go on to be responsible for some of my finest passionate moments-it’s too bad that she wasn’t present while they were happening.
Kathy was different, though. I didn’t judge her by the stretching in my slacks, but rather how much fun I had talking to her. Her eyes would light up, and she would literally beam when I talked to her. It didn’t matter to me that she was my friend Kevin’s former girlfriend, and that he’d dropped her like a bad habit-I would be there to pick her up. She was too good for Kevin anyway. I could talk to her for hours, and I did so on that fateful evening. It also didn’t matter that she was slightly intoxicated and that the intoxication made walking quite difficult for her. I was there for that too. “Lean on me,” I told her, “when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on. Just call on me, Kathy, and I’ll lend a hand.” Well, maybe those weren’t my words exactly, but I’m sure they were pretty damn romantic.
The downtown area in Cortland was at the bottom of a hill that led to the campus. Kathy’s dorm was directly at the top of the hill, and I accompanied her on the walk home, while flurries of snow fell softly. Without warning, her cold little hand was in mine, and despite the winter chill, I started to sweat, because, believe it or not, I’d never been that far before. But Kathy’s presence calmed me down, because, after all, this wasn’t the same girl I was clumsily going to grope at the end of our stroll-she was my Kathy, dammit, and she was all I’d ever wanted in a girl.