by Mick Foley
Poor Page turned the lights off and settled into his bed for a long comfortable nap. Little did he know that his evening wasn’t quite over. Earlier, a fan had given us a whole batch of chocolate chip cookies that she had baked. While Dallas showered, Steve and I had dumped approximately thirty-six soft chewy beauties between the sheets of DDP’s bed, and now as he lay there I could tell that those delicious tollhouses were starting to take effect. It started with a little wriggle, and them grew to the point where he knew something was wrong.
“What, what, what’s this,” Dallas said, to no one in particular. Steve and I remained silent. Suddenly, it hit him.
“There’s fucking cookies in my bed,” he yelled. “Someone put fucking cookies in my bed.”
Silence. Dallas was now screaming at the top of his lungs. “I want to know who put fucking cookies in my bed, right now!”
I soon gave myself away. I was laughing so hard under my covers that I couldn’t help myself. By holding in this laugh, my stomach was rising up and down rapidly, and Dallas detected the quick in-and-out breathing from my nostrils.
“You,” he yelled and jumped from his bed, turning on the light and throwing back the covers to reveal a plethora of crumbs, chunks, and chips that a helpful fan had hoped would be eaten by three of her favorite sports-entertainers. Instead, in an ironic twist, her baking bid had backfired! Instead of being eaten, these innocent cookies had eaten up the livid Page, who was now hell-bent on vengeance. Dallas lunged for me and threw back my sheets-unlike the naked Page, I was attired in Fruit of the Looms. He then gathered as many of the broken pieces as he could carry and threw them on top of me. It wasn’t enough; he wanted to make sure the cookies would torture me and ruin my sleep, the way that I had ruined his. He sat on me and began jumping, trying to grind the offending cookies into my body, as I listened to the strange symphony of bouncing bed springs and crackling Saran wrap.
“There,” he yelled, “how do you like it, how do you like fucking cookies in your bed!” He waited for my reply.
“Well,” I started, “it’s not the cookies that I mind, it’s the fact that you’re rubbing your naked ass all over me.”
DDP got up slowly. He was a defeated man. He went back to his bed and swept away the remaining cookie parts. He turned off the light and lay back down. After about a minute, he spoke. Quietly. Sadly. “Guys,” he began, “I think I’m going to get my own room tomorrow.”
Chapter 15
On February 20, 1992, I became a father. Dewey Francis Foley was born in Massapequa, New York, and after a month of readjusting from his trip through the womb, we packed up our car and two dogs and headed for Atlanta and the house on Lake Lanier that I had just rented. The house turned out to be a real hassle, because as charming as it was to live on the lake, the house was more accurately a cottage. It was musty, without enough room, and you actually had to walk outside to get from our bedroom to the rest of the house. We did have plenty of fun, however, as we would dive off our dock and swim with the dogs, while little Dewey looked on from his infant seat. We had two Shetland sheepdogs, or Shelties: one that Colette had gotten in 1981 named Confusion and another that we’d gotten a year ago as a “practice” baby named Fuzzy. From Confusion to Fuzzy in ten years-my wife had certainly changed. Confusion’s not with us anymore, but we’ve got a big, goofy black lab named Delilah and two guinea pigs named Allen and Ruby to keep us busy.
At about two months of age, Dewey came down with an illness that doctors couldn’t detect. Several of them told us there was nothing wrong, but still a persistent cough continued to worry us. One night, when we were in the car returning from a trip, Dewey was coughing so bad that I really thought we were going to lose him. He was whooping and gasping, and we were completely unable to help him. I began speeding for the nearest hospital. It was 2 A.M. and the highway was empty, so I gathered some speed-up to about seventy-five in a sixty-five mph zone. I saw the red lights of a North Carolina State trooper, and I slowed down to explain the dire situation. Can you believe it?-the SON OF A BITCH actually wrote us a ticket. I was so damn mad that I blatantly cursed out an officer of the law. Now I have respect for the law, hell I even carried a photo of Hawaii Five-O’s Steve McGarrett in my wallet with me for years, but this guy was a disgrace and a prick. I didn’t pay the ticket out of principle, and ended up having my license suspended over it. Sometimes, it just doesn’t pay to make a stand. Dewey would later be all right, but not before giving the cough to me.
The coughing started affecting my matches. I could wrestle for about a minute before an attack would set in. The coughing would lead to dry heaving and I would have to bail out of the ring to try to regain my composure. One night in Perry, Georgia, the situation got ugly.
I was wrestling Ron Simmons, a true football legend, and one of the great storytellers in the business. Ron, who had grown up in nearby Warner Robins, Georgia, was an intense performer, and he was particularly looking forward to his hometown crowd. A few minutes into the match, Simmons shot me into the ropes and caught me with a move called the spinebuster. This is legitimately a pretty tough move to take, because the impact is so sudden and violent on the back, but it was even rougher when the powerful former Heisman Trophy candidate did it. In spite of the impact, it was a move that I thought I took well. Some guys instinctively put down their hands or elbows to try to block the bump, and others hold on for dear life, and make it look like crap, but I always took it quick and clean. Bam! It was an impressive sight. Two months earlier, I had even taken the move from Ron in a Pay-Per-View match on the wooden ramp, prompting another great Jim Ross call. “That is a wooden ramp, folks-please don’t sit at home saying, ‘Well, he knows how to fall.’ “
Something went wrong on that night in Perry. I took the bump and couldn’t breathe. I got up, and blood started filling my mouth, spilling up from my insides. Simmons was in the corner, in a three-point stance ready to hit me with football-style tackles aimed at my knees. I tried to tell him I was hurt, but when I opened my mouth, the only thing that came out was blood. Ron charged at me for the tackle. Ordinarily I would cut a flip upon impact, a move that did two things. One, it looked good, and two, lessened the risk of knee injury. Instead, I went down like a wounded deer. Simmons looked confused, but he went to the corner and got down in his stance. Again I tried to speak and again blood oozed out instead. Simmons hit me again, and again I fell like a sack of shit. Mercifully, he pinned me.
I walked back to the dressing room, worried that my career was over. Every four or five steps I stopped to empty my mouth of the red stuff. Over the years, I’ve bled so damn much that I can’t help making a few observations about this liquid that courses through our veins. I’ve seen it spill out of me like water, and I’ve seen it so thick that my face looked like a coagulated mask of plasmic Jell-0. I’ve seen it look like black ink running down my arm, and I had seen my bathtub almost black when I rinsed my blood-soaked clothing in it. My wife used to joke about the “Norman Bates” shower I would take after a match where the “juice” had been flowing. This night in Perry, however, was the brightest red blood I had ever seen. I think internal blood is always brighter for some reason. When I think back to the gob of internal blood that I spat on the floor of the Dallas Sportatorium in ‘89, it seems that it also was noticeably brighter than its head wound cousins. It was almost fluorescent.
Grizzly Smith was there to size up the situation. “Cactus,” he said softly, “I believe we’d better get you to a hospital.” Thus began a series of tests and probes and barium swallows that yielded no further insight into what the hell was wrong with me. A couple of nights later, I was wrestling Barry Windham, and after about a minute the coughing and dry heaves began. We finished the match, but upon returning to the dressing room, I was told that Windham said, “That guy shouldn’t be in the ring.”
This condition did lead to a somewhat humorous situation in Baltimore, however. I was teaming up with Paul E. and Bobby Eaton against the Steiners in a four-
and-a-half-man tag bout. I guess Paul was considered half a man. We went about a minute, and Scott threw me around in his usual sensitive style. I started to cough. Then I started to dry-heave. Bobby Eaton may have, other than Gerald Brisco (one of Vince McMahon’s famed stooges, along with Pat Patterson), the weakest stomach I’ve ever seen. Bobby took one look at me and started to heave too. It was a pretty pathetic sight, as these two despicable heels stood in center ring taking turns attempting to throw up.
It was at about this time that Kip Frye stepped down as president of WCW. His replacement was the legendary Bill Watts.
I’ve written a little bit about Bill Watts before. To do him justice requires a lot more writing. The Cowboy was either loved or hated depending on whom you talked to. Jim Ross loved the guy. So did Scandor Akbar, my old Devastation Incorporated boss. Grizzly Smith rubbed his hands in anticipation upon hearing the news. “The Cowboy” he said, “is going to turn this place around.” Watts was revered by many for the success and excitement of his old MidSouth wrestling group. At the time he sold it to Jim Crockett, whose NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) would in turn be sold to Ted Turner to become WCW, Watts’s television show (renamed UWF) was the best in the country. His was the forerunner of episodic, cliffhanging wrestling, and his music videos and editing were state-of-the-art. The World Wrestling Federation later went on to perfect these same qualities, making Monday’s Raw Is War the hottest show on cable TV. Unlike the Federation, though, Watts didn’t portray his show as sports entertainment, or his performers as entertainers. He ran a wrestling show, dammit, and his guys were wrestlers. If you respected the business, like I did, it was easy to see why people loved him.
It was just as easy to see why people hated him. They thought he was a bully and a tyrant, and a dinosaur, and a cheapskate. Let me put the emphasis for now on cheapskate. Almost immediately, Watts began cutting costs. On his first day in, he did away with the catered meals at television tapings. Forget that we were often at the building for ten hours on TV days. Bring your own food or starve! Away went the coffee at all house shows. Take that, all you caffeine addicts! But more important, down went the contracts. Guys who were negotiating with Kip Frye for large raises were screwed. Terry Taylor went from looking at a hundred grand raise to looking for a job. Arn Anderson had his contract cut in half, and several other guys were put on nightly deals. Watts must have loved me, though. Thankfully, he resigned me at exactly the same money I had made the year before.
Watts even made a special call to my house to see how I was feeling during my coughing illness. The Cowboy concluded his call to me with these thoughtful words-“Goddammit, Jack, take care of yourself. You’re a goddamn crazy son of a bitch, and you have no regard for your body, and I gotta tell you, I get off on that.” I’m damn near tears now as I write this, thinking about the compassion in his voice.
Once on a Clash of the Champions, Scorpio caught me with a kick and I went down. Apparently, Bill didn’t think it had looked good, and he let me have it when I got in the dressing room. “Sorry, Bill,” I said, “I thought he caught me pretty good.”
“Dammit, Jack,” Watts shot back as I waited for the verbal assault. It never came. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Dammit, Jack, that’s okay, I know you’re trying your best.” It was almost like I was the teacher’s pet.
Now, wait, don’t think I’m going to go easy on the Cowboy, just because he wasn’t too bad to me. Because I’m not. Bill Watts had some of the most dated, useless ideas and senseless rules that I’d ever heard. In a meeting one day at Center Stage, he let us have it. Within one hour, Bill completely changed not only our professional lives, but our personal lives as well. Let’s call them Bill’s commandments.
Thou shalt not jump off the top rope.
Thou shalt not play cards in the dressing room.
Thou shalt not land on protective mats outside the ring.
Thou shalt not bring your children into the locker room.
Thou shalt not bring wives to the television tapings.
Thou shalt not use sleeperholds.
Heels shalt not travel with babyfaces.
Thou shalt not talk to each other outside of the arena.
Thou shalt not stay in the same hotel together.
Thou shalt not train in the same gym together.
And the biggest commandment of them all
Thou shalt not leave the building until the final bell of the final match.
The last was the one that angered the boys the most. Nikita Koloff questioned this commandment at a meeting a short time later. Bill addressed the boys and then asked if there were any questions. Koloff raised his hand and when called on, made a plea for sanity.
“Yeah, Bill, I know that it’s important for the guys to stay until the end, but sometimes, when we’ve been away from our families for a few weeks, we might have a chance to catch a night flight home. Do you think in those situations, we might be able to get out a little earlier?” Bill thought about it for about a second and a half, and then with all the warmth and sensitivity of an IRS auditor, shot forth, “Yeah, it’s a tough business on families. Any more questions? Okay, let’s go.”
This whole staying till the end thing resulted in one really humorous situation. We were wrestling in a minor league baseball stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the last day of a ten-day tour. A lot of the boys still lived in Charlotte, dating back to the days that Jim Crockett ran the NWA out of Charlotte. Most of the boys now lived in Atlanta, which was only a four-hour drive. Either way, everyone was going to get home. But not until the final bell of the final match. I wrestled Ricky Steamboat in the third match of the night, but had to wait until the end. Steamboat lived in Charlotte, and he couldn’t go home. And remember, in honor of the fourth commandment, his son wasn’t allowed in the dressing room.
Vader and Sting were in the evening’s main event. As that match started, all the wrestlers got into the cars and lined up single file, pointing toward the exit. As the match was winding down, we all started our engines. At the finish, the boys all made their move, and before the referee even finished the three-count, we turned the Charlotte baseball stadium into the Charlotte motor speedway.
I don’t know why Bill loved to keep the guys on the road, worn out and miserable. I think he found it romantic.
About this time, my health started to improve. It turned out that both Dewey and I were diagnosed with whooping cough. Pertussis, its technical name, was something that I thought was extinct, but it turned out that we both caught this very rare condition. Dewey improved before I did, and I slowly came around, finally feeling better right before one of the biggest matches of my life-a “falls count anywhere” against Sting at the June 1992 Beach Blast. The match took place at the Mobile Civic Center-not what most would call a tropical paradise, and in truth, we were several miles from water. I had trained hard for this match and in doing so, I had lost most of my “Abdullah” weight. (Sadly, Abby had quit the company shortly after Watts arrived.) Also, I had immersed myself in mental visualization for this match-I had seen it in my head a thousand times.
The match turned out even better than I’d hoped. The Stinger was up for it, as it had been a while since we’d wrestled against each other. The timing was on, the pacing was great, and some of the transitions were breathtaking. Even Ross and the new color man Jesse “The Body” Ventura were on top of their game. I lost the match, but didn’t give a damn. As George Costanza might have said, “Baby, I’m back!” Even Watts was happy. “Gentlemen,” he told us, “it just doesn’t get any better than that.”
For years I considered that to be the greatest match of my career. Sting was genuinely flattered to hear me say that, and he’d occasionally ask me after other big matches, “Was mine still your favorite?” I think he was actually saddened when he heard that another one replaced it. It was almost as if he were the queen in Snow White and the magic mirror broke the bad news.
I couldn’t stop thinking ab
out that match all the way on the 400-mile drive home. I had the top down on my ‘84 Chrysler and life was good; my health was good, I’d just torn the roof off the Mobile Civic Center, I had a beautiful wife and son, and I was still making six F’ing figures a year. A month later, we bought our first house-a beautiful little Victorian with a wraparound porch in Acworth, Georgia.
Chapter 16
Despite all his faults, Bill did have a gift for exciting television. There was one taping in particular that showed me Watts’s gift for creating great human drama. Now, Dusty was still the booker, but Watts was definitely in charge, and one of Bill’s trademarks was creating a black babyface and building the company around him. When the Cowboy saw Ron Simmons, I think he heard cash registers ring. Ron had all the qualities that Watts loved; he was big, he was black, he could talk, he had a legitimate sports background, and he was a legitimate tough guy.
Bill started the ball rolling by doing a great angle with Sting. I honestly can’t remember all the details, but it culminated in the return of Jake “the Snake” Roberts as he appeared from the crowd, and left the Stinger lying. This left Sting unable to wrestle Vader in the evening’s main event. A lottery was held in the ring instead, with the winner to face Vader. Simmons won, and later defeated that ear-tearing bastard to become the new WCW heavyweight champion. People were actually crying in the arena-they were so damn happy. I really thought the Cowboy had helped the company turn the corner.
