Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling

  The other major issue was my own words. In building up the Rumble and No Way Out matches, I had spoken fervently about my desire to main-event at WrestleMania. Sure, the honor would have been nice and the payoff even nicer, but in reality, I knew it was not going to happen. I will admit to being crushed at not headlining 'Mania in '99, but that was because it had already been in my hands and was then snatched away. This year's 'Mania was never mine to hold, so I never became attached to it. All of my talk about "living out my dream" had been done in order to put more heat on Hunter when he ended my career.

  I don't want to downplay the importance of WrestleMania as the premier showcase in sports-entertainment. But neither do I want to downplay how satisfied I was with the way things turned out for me at No Way Out. I had never let the magnitude of a show dictate its importance to me and I didn't want to start now. Which is why I was more pumped for an ECW Arena show in front of 1,000 lunatics in 1995 than I was at a Tokyo Dome show in front of 64,000 one week earlier.

  In my conversation with Vince, I had raised several objections, but I had never once flat out said no. If I had told him flat out that I didn't really care about the show, I believe it would have hurt his feelings. WrestleMania was his baby, which he had fathered back in 1985, and to tell him the show wasn't important to me would have been like telling him his kid was ugly. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

  As the next few days went by, I began suffering from the tag-team attack of "conscience" and "prostitute." My conscience kept telling me that I was a fraud, and my memory was running "prostitute" through my mind as if it was Charlie Sheen's living room. In a hotel room in New York, with the thought of the match making an afternoon nap impossible, I decided on another approach. I'd talk to Hunter, and if necessary, I'd talk to The Rock. WrestleMania was almost like their birthright— surely, they would hate me being in it.

  Triple H was oddly accepting of the situation. Vince and his damn logical philosophies had brainwashed him. Something about how 'Mania was like our Super Bowl, except the football players didn't have TV the next day and a Pay-Per-View a month later to think about. Vince could hold off Hunter and The Rock for another month (which in hindsight was a brilliant move, as that next Pay-Per-View event did huge numbers). "Sure, I'd like to have the match for myself," Hunter said, "but I'm fine with the four-way." I decided to call Vince for one last plea.

  I called the McMahon home and Linda told me that Vince was talking to The Rock and would call me back at my hotel. Yes! The Rock had a good sense for business; surely he would straighten out Vince's monkey ass. The hotel phone rang minutes later. I sprang out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning and picked it up. "Hey, Vince, what did The Rock say?" His answer was not quite what I had expected. "He loved it!" I sat in silence for a moment, with the handset to my ear, hoping to hear that familiar Vince deep-voiced "huh-huh" laugh, followed by an assurance that The Rock had talked him back to his senses. It never came.

  Vince then ran off a long list of respected people who loved it as well, and with each passing "Patterson" or "Brisco" I could see my chances slipping away like the sands in the Wicked Witch of the West's hourglass. You know the one that lets Dorothy know how much time she has left to live. Dewey was three the first time he saw The Wizard of Oz. It was the first full-length movie that he ever saw in its entirety, and the viewing was a major event in our family's history. He asked me what the hourglass was for, and when I told him, he came out with a pretty good question. "Daddy, why doesn't she just turn it upside down?" I didn't have an answer for him. And I was out of questions for Vince. I was in the match.

  Since my "retirement" at No Way Out, the fans I had met had asked several questions of me. Actually, it was the same question over and over. "When are you coming back?" When I replied that I was retired, they would look at me like I was crazy. "I know that, but when are you coming back?"

  No one had believed that I was actually retiring— except me. My colleagues before me had killed off the retirement match the same way Teddy Long and Paul Ellering had killed off the "hair vs. hair" match ten years earlier in WCW. "Hair vs. hair" is a match where one guy is bald and the other has a crew cut. This nonbelief factor had weighed heavily on my mind before finally giving in. Since there was no "real" retirement in wrestling, I would in fact have been breaching my contract by refusing to do a match.

  As I write this now, it seems ridiculous to think that the World Wrestling Federation would have enforced that issue of my contract. It's a slap to Vince McMahon's face to insinuate that they would have kept the money that I had coming to me. But when I thought of the money I was owed, money I had already earned, I became worried to the point of paranoia. I had a hell of a lot to lose.

  The Royal Rumble and the No Way Out Pay-Per-View payoffs stood to be the biggest ones by far of my career. At the time of this 'Mania madness, I had yet to be paid for either. Have a Nice Day! had at that time been on the New York Times list for twenty-one weeks and was still hanging in there. I stood to make more in royalties than I'd made in my first twelve years in wrestling combined. But I had yet to see a single penny. The fruits of all my fifteen years of labor were just waiting to be harvested. As a husband and a father, I just could not take a chance—any chance—on letting my harvest freeze.

  In a paranoid worst-case scenario, I actually envisioned my breach-of-contract case going to court. "Your Honor," I would say, "I gave my word to the fans that I would retire if I lost at No Way Out" The judge would think it over for about a half a second before making his ruling. "Retirement? That was just a wrestling angle. Get your ass back in the ring."

  I returned to the World Wrestling Federation on March 20 in Chicago on Raw to the loudest reaction of my career. In an interview on the following evening's SmackDown! I got a sustained standing ovation simply for mentioning my new haircut. In truth, the fans didn't hold my words against me because they had never believed them in the first place. But in one way, I certainly had proved to be a man of my word. I swore I wouldn't be like those other guys who "prostitute" their name only to come back six weeks later. And I hadn't. I came back three weeks later.

  I did suffer a major backlash from a minority of the audience who felt what I did bordered on blasphemy. The criticism hurt. Partially because I agreed with them and partially because they were the same type of fans who had believed in me when nobody knew who I was. It bothered the heck out of me until I thought about the proverbial shoe being on the proverbial other foot. I was catching a lot of flak for making a decision that had been very difficult, but I finally saw the truth. Vince McMahon was a very difficult man to say no to. The guys criticizing me the most wouldn't have been able to say no to Vince McMahon if he asked them to mow his lawn, let alone main-event the biggest show in the history of sports-entertainment.

  Come on, guys (and you know who you are), admit it. If you received a call that began, "Hello, pal, this is Vince McMahon, and I'd like you to cut my lawn today," you'd be overjoyed. You wouldn't tell him to kiss your ass. You wouldn't tell him that your wedding was that day. You wouldn't tell him you had Yankee tickets. You would run to your car and would be pulling the cord on the mower in Greenwich, Connecticut, with a smile like Bob Holly giving Al Snow the Penis Suplex.

  So I did the match. And to tell you the truth, it wasn't too bad. In fact, the match went pretty well. Sure, I was once again over 300 pounds and hadn't hit the gym since No Way Out, but I did okay. I even brought the family with me as a way to correct my mistakes of fourteen months earlier at the '99 Royal Rumble. This time we would do Disneyland the right way—after the show. In fact, it was the Disney visit that was on my mind when I came up a good three feet short on an attempted elbow from the second turnbuckle to the table, which nearly crushed my sternum. Oh no, I was thinking as I lay in a fetal position clutching my midsection. J don't think Ym going to make it to Disneyland.

  Oh, don't worry, I made it. Even after a sleepless night spent with a bag of ice dripping down both sides of
my body, "superdad" somehow managed to find the strength to ride Splash Mountain, the will to board Pirates of the Caribbean, and the testicular fortitude to conquer Indiana Jones. We had a wonderful time. But in the end, it wasn't a ride that I recall most fondly. It was Mickey Mouse.

  I really don't quite understand how Mickey Mouse got over so big with the public, with his ridiculously high voice and his ultranerdy persona. But I'll tell you, there is something special about meeting Mickey. I actually get nervous when it's my turn to pose with the Mouse, and a Foley family portrait with Mickey in the middle rests on a special place on our mantel.

  A Disney employee once told me a heartwarming tale of a dying young boy whose last wish was to see Mickey Mouse. Sadly, the boy took a turn for the worse while at the Magic Kingdom and an ambulance was required to rush him away. Mickey climbed in and held the boy's hand en route to the hospital—a destination that the child never reached alive. He died with his hand in Mickey's and a beautiful smile on his peaceful face. His parents, I was told, had cried tears of joy knowing that their child's last moments on earth were also his happiest.

  When I heard this story, I looked back at my wimp of a wife, who had tears streaming down her face. Her tough-guy, hardcore-legend husband, on the other hand, was able to turn his head to face the window before anyone spotted tears of his own.

  Mickey Mouse is far from perfect, however, as I found out firsthand on a Disney Cruise in 1999 as part of the World Wrestling Federation's "Wrestlevessel." The cruise itself was great—my parents came with us, Disney's own Castaway Cay was gorgeous, and Colette and I were able to spend quality time together while Dewey and Noelle played at the Kids Club.

  On our way back from lunch one day, we happened to pass by a room that was holding a "vegetable car" rally. What the heck—it sounded interesting, so we headed in to see families working vigorously on making small cars out of carrots, cucumbers, celery, and other vegetables that I routinely pass by on my way to the dessert bar. Some of these vehicles looked mighty impressive, as Mom and Dad had been carving away for the better part of half an hour. "Can we play too?" I asked the game's supervisor. "Sure," she said, "but you only have five minutes left." Quickly I went to work with knife and vegetables, and after working diligently until bell time, I held in my hands a car that my kids were embarrassed to be around. "Daddy, that's a yucky car," Noelle helpfully informed me. Indeed it was. It was like the Edsel of vegetable cars, and in its first and only heat, it fell off the downhill track and landed unceremoniously on the ship's floor. We were out of the running of what was officially known as the Mickey 200.

  Mickey Mouse himself was brought in to hand out the prize for the winning car. After this was done, we were informed by the master of vegetable-car ceremonies that Mickey would be handing out an additional award for "best-looking" car. Well, that excluded us and our vehicle, which pretty much looked like a potato with four slices of cucumber attached to it. Someone special saw things a little differently, however, and after conducting a careful inspection of all the lovingly constructed cars and one Edsel, Mickey gave the nod to the Edsel. I was happy for the children, who for the rest of the cruise wore their medal as if it were Kurt Angle's Olympic gold, but deep inside, I felt a little sad over what may have been the greatest medal travesty since the U.S. basketball team lost to the U.S.S.R. in the '72 Olympics. On our way back to our room, I confessed my secret fear to my wife. "Colette, I think Mickey Mouse cheated."

  I happened across that Mickey 200 medal just days ago and asked Dewey if he remembered what he'd won it for. His answer was pretty insightful and definitely accurate. "Because Mickey Mouse knew who you were."

  I was exhausted by the time Disneyland was set to close on April 4. We had been at the park for two straight days and had just about seen and done it all. My children had enjoyed themselves immensely on the rides and had their autograph books nearly filled with the Disney characters they had met. They had all the top stars in there—Pluto, Goofy, Donald, Minnie, Pinocchio, Captain Hook, and others too numerous to mention. The brightest star of all, however, was conspicuous by his absence. Mickey was not in the book.

  A park employee had arranged for our family to be picked up by a van in the backstage area so as to avoid being bothered by fans. I sat on a bench with my arms around Dewey and Noelle, both of their weary heads resting on my shoulders. Suddenly, from around the corner, I saw him. Mickey! Except it wasn't a him, it was a her, with a huge Mickey mask held under her arm like a tiny football player returning from a grueling practice. She saw us too, and throwing all caution to the wind, she literally dove behind a parked car so as to avoid detection.

  I felt terrible. Because of me, this tiny person had thrown herself on the concrete and was now lying behind a beaten-up LeSabre so that my kids wouldn't find out that Mickey wasn't really a mouse after all. The commotion aroused my kids, who had begun to doze, and Noelle asked why Mickey had been walking "with a helmet under his arm." Man, this was all my fault. I decided to check on Mickey.

  Physically, she appeared to be fine, even after her brave car dive, but she was emotionally devastated. She was shaking with fear as she asked "if the little ones had seen me?" "No," I lied, "don't worry, I think they were sleeping." Then my thoughts turned selfish. "I'll pay you if you take a picture with my children." A tiny smile appeared on her delicate frightened face. "You don't have to pay me," she said with a shy smile. "Just give me a minute to get my costume on." I walked out from behind the car to see that my children were wide-awake. In truth, I think that the girl needed about five seconds to put the mask on and another fifty-five seconds to regain her composure. When she emerged from behind that car, however, she was no longer a frightened girl, she was Mickey, and with her white gloves waving and her huge mouse ears twitching, she spoke volumes to my children without ever saying a word.

  Epilogue: February 2001

  More than ten months have passed since Mickey Mouse dove for cover in the Disneyland parking lot. A lot of things have changed since then.

  "Stone Cold" Steve Austin is back from his injury and is better than ever. The Godfather is now the Goodfather and has renounced his pimping ways. Val Venis is no longer a porn star, either. He too has renounced his ways. And little Joe C. passed away from celiac disease at the age of twenty-four. Joe had an awful lot of friends in the World Wrestling Federation, and I miss hearing his raspy little foul mouth, but I smile when I think of him because he got so much out of a life that he knew all along would be a short one. He hung around longer than his doctors thought and managed to become both a rock star and a wrestling personality before his little body gave out on him.

  I've started talking to Droz, and feel a lot better for having done so. I even called him up for a quote for this book. There are still a few people I need to get in touch with and am hoping to do so soon. A lot of people have wondered about my relationship with The Rock, and with good cause, since comments I made about him in Beyond the Mat certainly revealed emotional wounds that didn't appear to have healed.

  Well, The Rock and I did what we should have done a long time ago—we talked about it. He couldn't quite explain his actions of January 1999 in Anaheim, and I couldn't quite explain why I chose to hold on to my feelings for two years instead of letting them out in a mature manner. Actually, I think I can explain it. I was simply holding on to some hatred for a promo that never happened. Both of us were wrong, but I think maybe I was more wrong. The Rock made a mistake and apologized as soon as he was informed of it. I may have been the victim, but allowing my bitterness to fester for two years was just plain stupid. And make no mistake about it, I was bitter. Even stupider was my logic for holding it all in: I figured that with all of that anger built up I could cut a hell of a promo with him when the time was right.

  My kids are doing fine. Noelle is big on leaving notes that tell me and Colette how much she loves us. And Dewey . . . well, I don't know how to say this, but Dewey doesn't really like wrestling anymore. I had always said
that I would never push the little guy into sports (real ones), and as it turns out, he didn't need pushing. He just dove right into them, and now no sport or team is safe from his viewing eyes. Brazilian soccer? Watches it. Baseball, football, hockey? Yeah, he loves it all. But basketball seems to be his passion.

  A typical day last week saw him play a basketball video game, go outside to shoot baskets, go to a college game with my dad (who has become Dewey's best friend), and came home to watch the Knicks win over the Dallas Mavericks in double OT. He was then considerate enough to wake up his mom to tell her the good news. Which is really nice of him, except that Colette doesn't care at all about basketball, and at this point she really needs all the sleep she can get.

  Why? Because in January 2001, the Foley family proudly welcomed Michael Francis Foley Jr. (little Mickey) into the world. For those doing the math, you might deduce that our tremendous Christmas efforts were for naught, but fortunately another herculean attempt (or attempts) in April did the trick! As fate would have it, ovulation coincided with Easter, which coincided with my family visiting, which brought forth a whole new set of completely transparent reasons to retreat to the bedroom. A bedroom in which, I'm proud to say, no pornos were shown, no lingerie was worn, and bad language was kept to a minimum. Which is good, because I've got this strange theory about children who are conceived from lusting, rather than loving, sperm.