by Mick Foley
He didn’t exactly do West any favors in the book, either. I guess it wasn’t that bad. Aside from being portrayed as a philandering, adulterous, pompous windbag, West actually came off quite well. But that’s not the way Batman saw it. After all of those near-death experiences, those “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel” cliff-hanging predicaments, I guess West thought he deserved better. After all those occasions where Robin had slid so gracefully down his batpole, there should have been a stronger bond. After all the times Robin had played so enthusiastically in the dark confines of West’s batcave…oh, never mind. Suffice to say, Adam West had every right to be angry, even if that anger played itself out in the form of crushing the illusion of crime-fighting camaraderie that so many longtime fans had lined up to see.
The fans were really disappointed. One by one, they’d walk past my table, head down, dejected, clearly disillusioned, after their ultra-quick encounter with the caped crusader.
“What’s wrong?” I asked one particularly battered-looking batfan.
“Oh, man,” the poor guy said. “Batman’s a dick.”
A dick? Batman? Did this guy realize his accusation of penile impersonation bordered on blasphemous? But then I thought back to some interviews I’d seen of West over the years, where he had occasionally seemed arrogant. Perhaps a dicklike demeanor was not beyond the scope of imagination.
I said, “Really? What do you mean?”
“Well, he won’t sign anything Burt has signed. And he charges like twice as much if it’s even a picture that Burt is in.”
By this point, a few other disappointed fans who shared this man’s bat-pain had gathered by my table, sensing they had an understanding shoulder to lean on, a way to vent their sadness and frustration.
“He won’t even make eye contact,” one such sad soul said.
“No eye contact?” I said in disbelief.
“None.”
Another bystander summed it up well, using a now-familiar phallic phrase: “Batman’s a dick.”
Oh, no, this wasn’t good for the hardcore legend. Why? Because little Mick was a huge Batman fan, and I had planned on surprising him with an autographed photo of the duo, who seemingly before my very eyes had gone from dynamic to demonic.
Well, actually, Robin didn’t seem too bad. Fans leaving his table seemed to be genuinely pleased.
It was a heck of a dilemma for me, reminding me of the mid-1980s Clash tune, “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” Should I stay at my table, where it was safe, forever wondering what results a quick meeting with Batman would have yielded? Or should I go over to West’s table, a copy of Have a Nice Day in my hand, opened to the page of my touching tribute to the role West and Ward had played in my life?
What the hell? I decided to go…to Burt Ward’s table. I showed Ward the passage in the book, and he seemed genuinely flattered. Granted, with his speed-reading prowess, the paragraph took him only a sixteenth of a second to read, but it was an emotionally fulfilling sixteenth of a second. I paid for a cool autographed picture featuring both Batman and Robin, and bought the memoir as well. Then, slowly, with great trepidation, I snuck over to West’s table.
What if he really was a dick? Would it ruin my ability to enjoy the old shows with little Mick? Would it be like trying to watch Hogan’s Heroes , knowing Bob Crane was a porn addict, or a Knicks game knowing Marv Albert had a women’s clothing fetish? Would it be like watching Bing Crosby movies, knowing Bing used to beat the pulp out of his kids, or watching Dancing with the Stars , knowing Stacy used to date Test? I took the chance anyway.
It was fairly late in the day, so the West line had subsided, meaning I had only a few minutes’ wait time until my moment of reckoning. Two more people, one more person, my turn. As I started to speak, West’s manager looked up and, recognizing me, said, “Hey, you sold quite a few copies of that book, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Adam, this is Mick Foley,” the manager said. “He wrote a best-selling book.”
West’s eyes were upon me. “Yes, sir, Mr. West,” I said. “And there’s a part in here where I talk about what a big role you played in our family over the generations.”
West took the book from my hand and read it. Aloud. No Burt Ward speed-read either. No, Adam West read it slowly, mellifluously, with his rich, resonant baritone making my sophomoric scrawlings sound like the word-play of Updike.
My kids could not, under any circumstances, look like doofuses on Halloween. I consider myself a pretty lenient parent, but sometimes a dad had to take a stand. Dewey was a huge Batman fan, and exactly as my mom had twenty-five years earlier, I would be summoned into the room to call the action as Adam West and Burt Ward laid the smack down on all the villains’ candy asses. “Bam! Pow! Biff! Kapuff!” I’d yell as my kids both threw kicks at imaginary bad guys. Dewey wanted to be Batman and Noelle wanted to be Batgirl, which was a dilemma, because I knew that half of West Babylon would be wearing the cowl and cape. I was determined that my kids would have the best of all the costumes, so I special-ordered some outfits from the lady who made my wrestling tights. Sure enough, my kids were the best-looking Batman and Batgirl in town. And they weren’t wearing the trendy new black outfit with the built-in muscles either. No, my kids were wearing the classic Adam West blue and gray—the way it was meant to be damnit!
Batman rules! Hanging out with Adam West.
Courtesy of the Foley family.
With the paragraph done, I looked toward West for some type of reaction. A sign, any sign, that my heartfelt words had touched him somehow. But I got nothing. Instead, West started thumbing through pages, studying photos, before turning to page one and reading the opening sentence aloud.
As I’ve already expressed, I’m trying to keep this book somewhere in the neighborhood of PG-13. Sure, the AC/DC story was kind of risqué, but I pondered the possibility of using verbiage slightly less graphic and just couldn’t substitute a more innocent euphemism in place of the real deal. Besides, it was a direct quote.
Likewise, what follows is a direct quote from Batman, reading the works of Mick Foley. Please try to hear his voice as you read it.
“I can’t believe I lost my fucking ear.”
West looked up at me. “You’ve got a very dynamic writing style,” he said. “You capture the reader right away.”
With that, West took my ten-by-fourteen glossy of the Dynamic Duo in action and, no questions asked, signed his name. Then he picked up a copy of Back to the Batcave and signed that one, too. I had a fifty in my hand, but the Crusader ignored it, saying, “No charge,” in the same definitive style in which he’d just mentioned my fucking ear.
I was stunned. I walked back to my table feeling alive, almost weightless, as if floating on a fluffy white cloud of Adam West’s making. I had been so full of doubts just minutes ago, but all those bad thoughts had been replaced by a much brighter one—Batman rules!
Then I laughed as I thought of Adam West’s voice as it praised my book’s words. And I said to myself, “Who needs a quote from John Irving when I’ve got a blurb from Batman?”
May 9, 2006
Dear Hardcore Diary,
Yesterday was Raw —live TV—always a hectic day, but particularly so yesterday, as I found myself in the unenviable position of finding out that my grand vision was about to go whistling down the drain.
I showed up early to the Pond (the arena) in Anaheim, around elevenA .M., early enough, I thought, to sit in on the television production meeting, just to make sure that my visions of hardcore grandeur were on the same page as the writing staff. They weren’t. Not on the same page, barely even on the same book.
As it turned out, the production meeting had started nearly an hour earlier, and was drawing to a close as I sat down. However, Vince asked me to stick around, which did not immediately set off any ideas in my brain that something was amiss. But amiss it was.
There would be, I was told, no “Kiss My Ass Club” segment on the May 15 R
aw from Lubbock. Doing so would infringe on Vince’s ongoing saga with Shawn Michaels, the Spirit Squad, and the imminent reformation of DX. Apparently, Terry Funk taking a chunk out of Vince’s ass would intrude on Shawn and Triple H’s sole dominion over Vince’s ass, or any other body part. Sure, I understood the importance of some Vince physicality in completing Triple H’s babyface turn, but unless I’m mistaken, both of those guys have had a little bit of TV time dedicated to them over the last decade or so.*Terry Funk would have a few short minutes to be made into a main-event attraction, and as I’ve mentioned before, to truly maximize that short time, he really needed to take a chunk out of Vince’s ass.
No chunk out of Vince’s ass meant no instant star-making, which meant no marketable match, which meant watered-down Pay-Per-View, which meant reduced buy rates, which meant crappy payoff, which meant, Why the hell am I even here?
Now, let me get back to the money issue—the whore issue. I did not volunteer for this ECW Pay-Per-View because of the payoff. Yes, in the end, I hope to be well compensated, but that compensation would be deserved due to my idea being a successful one—an idea that people would find captivating enough to plunk down their hard-earned money.
To me, that idea would be made almost unrecognizable without the storyline presence of Vince McMahon.
As I was about to vent my frustration, Vince received a message that a road agent had just been informed of a very serious family matter. Although I’m in the middle of criticizing him here, and will undoubtedly continue to do so over the course of Hardcore Diaries, Vince does possess a big heart (I’m not kidding), and he and his daughter Stephanie rushed out immediately to console his distraught employee.
As a result, Brian Gewirtz caught my initial verbal onslaught. “Goddammit, Brian,” I said. I very rarely take God’s name in vain, or curse at all, for that matter, but I did indeed begin this particular conversation by breaking one of the Ten Commandments, Commandment Number Two, to be exact. “If I’d known you guys were going to water this thing down, I wouldn’t have volunteered. You were at the meeting [the one in Stamford]. You know the ‘Kiss My Ass Club’ was the centerpiece of the whole damn thing. Otherwise, it’s just another angle, and I didn’t volunteer to turn heel and sacrifice seven years of goodwill with the fans to turn heel for a second-rate show.”
“Second-rate show” might seem a little harsh, but I truly felt that without the angle being done properly, the show would indeed be second-rate.
Would I sacrifice seven years of goodwill for a huge show, a WrestleMania, with the potential for considerable compensation? Maybe. But for the ECW show? Not likely. Especially because I would be turning on a segment of our audience that had followed me the longest, and supported me the most.
Thankfully, Vince came back in before I could berate Gewirtz any longer.
I should probably also give thanks for the returning presence of Stephanie McMahon. You see, while I have no problem yelling at Vince, I would indeed have a problem yelling in front of Stephanie. First of all, she’s seven months pregnant. Secondly, she’s just really, really…nice. And she’s my friend. Several years ago, before she took on much more responsibility in WWE, she was someone I spoke to all the time. Someone I felt pretty close to. Even though we’ve drifted a little over the years, I have occasionally found my day brightened by a card or call from Steph. No business mentions, just genuine small acts of kindness.
One of my most treasured gifts was a small replica of the WWE hardcore title belt that Steph had put together for the occasion of little Mick’s birth in 2001. As many of you know, the original hardcore belt was rather unsightly. Its collection of broken, jagged pieces of metal held together with duct tape represented a genuine case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder, because to those who earned the right to hold the belt, it truly was a thing of beauty.
I realize I’m talking about a championship belt that was held by Test and various members of the Mean Street Posse, but try to work with me a little here.
Apparently, little Mick was not aware of either the origin of the belt or the origin of the gift a couple months ago when he approached me with a gleam in his bright blue eyes. “Daddy, I fixed it,” he said, holding out his little hand to reveal…oh no, that he had taken off every piece of duct tape and broken metal, leaving only a tiny, clean piece of black leather.
Okay, okay, I’ll get back to Vince, but let me just state my genuine belief that my whole ECW adventure was salvaged by two women and a book.
Vince sat down, ready to tackle the monumental importance of my concerns, which were apparently not as monumental as the importance of the protein bar he was in the process of opening.
“Vince, you know how passionate I was about this angle, right?”
Vince took a bite of the bar. “Uh-huh,” he mumbled.
“I remember how Steph said she was so glad to see me thinking of ideas again because my heart wasn’t into WrestleMania. ”
“Uh-huh.” Another bite. This time he wasn’t even looking at me. Holy crap! I have had a long history with Vince, much of it smooth, some of it great, some of it a bit tumultuous, but I’d never before been made to feel second best to a protein bar.
It was at this point in the proceedings that I first thought of taking my ball and going home. Just saying, “This isn’t what I came back for,” and leaving. Sure, it wasn’t a very mature thought, but as you can surely tell by reading this book, not all of my thoughts are. But Vince with his damn protein bar was really getting to me.
I tried to plead my case for Vince’s involvement in our angle. He understood my concerns, but didn’t agree with them, stating the need for him to not spread himself too thin by getting physically involved in two angles.
I went for broke. “Vince, you know this whole thing hinged on your willingness to get physically involved. Without you, and without the ‘Kiss My Ass Club,’ there’s no angle. I don’t want to go out there and give tough-guy promos. I’m not that guy anymore. I wanted to create something great. I don’t want to come back and give up all the credibility I’ve earned with the fans, just to get involved in something half-assed. Hell, maybe you guys should just do this show without me.”
I was officially in the process of taking my ball and going home, when I thought about my book, this book, The Hardcore Diaries, and how badly the book would suck if it just kind of ended here. I went home. The end. Not very captivating, right? Not to mention it would be the shortest book since The Wit and Wisdom of Test.
It did cross my mind that a plot twist such as this, however damaging to my visions of wrestling immortality it might be, could make for good reading. For some reason I thought immediately of the Bob Dylan line, “You’d better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone.” Did I really want to sink? Was this book really reason enough to participate in something half-assed, something that had just been ordered to take a detour on the road to wrestling immortality? A detour, or a dead end? Was it possible to still get there, albeit in a roundabout way, with the estimated arrival time pushed months into the future?
By the time you read this book, all of the events that I am documenting will have unfolded. Hopefully, it will have been responsible for great, if not immortal, wrestling memories. If so, thank Melina.
Up until that moment, I had not had a single guilty thought about Melina. After all, I’d had no need to—she’s like a little sister to me. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I swear I have never had a single indecent thought about her. I just can’t see her that way.
But as I contemplated leaving, a tidal wave of guilt crashed into me. I just imagined her little voice on the phone, and how excited she was about the idea. This angle would be a big deal for her, probably the biggest break of her WWE career. It would give me great happiness to be responsible for such a break occurring. Likewise, it would cause me a great deal of sadness and guilt to be responsible for such a potential career break not occurring.
“Oh, that’s awesome,” my mind h
eard her say. “Thank you so much for thinking of me.”
What was I going to tell her? “Oh, that idea I spent three hours telling you about? Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Why? Oh, because I walked out on WWE when I didn’t get my way on the ECW program. Sorry to get your hopes up. Talk to you soon. Okay, bye.”
I couldn’t do it. I just wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt.
So I did my best to invoke the spirit of Monte Hall. “Vince, let’s make a deal.”
Thankfully, Vince was done with his damn protein bar. And in truth, somewhere in the proceedings he offered me one, which I graciously accepted.
“A deal,” Vince said, his businessman’s instincts showing signs of perking up. “What kind of deal?”
I thought back to Dylan, and realized it was time for me to start swimming. It was time for me to make the emergency pitch of a lifetime, like Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams of the Phillies, coming to save the day in the sixth game of the ’93 World Series. Wait, Williams gave up a towering home run to lose the game, had his house repeatedly pegged by the farm-fresh eggs of furious fans, lost his confidence, could no longer throw strikes, and was subsequently forced into early retirement. Probably not the greatest analogy.
It was do-or-die time for the hardcore legend. Time for me to dig into the batter’s box and take my cuts. I intended to swing for the fences, and knock this baby out of the park.
