“Thank you, Vince McMahon, for making my decision to leave WWE an easy one!” These were the words spoken by Mick Foley when he jumped ship from World Wrestling Entertainment to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in 2008. If he hadn’t jumped ship, he wouldn’t have had an amazing match with Sting at Lockdown for the TNA World Championship. “Countdown to Lockdown” is a memoir that documents Mick Foley’s moments leading up to his main event match at that same pay-per-view along with the events that led him to leave WWE. This book was published in 2010, a time in Foley’s life where his wrestling career is on hold due to his advanced age and the many injuries he’s accumulated along the way. The number of matches he wrestled during the time documented in this memoir was not the normal amount that a much younger wrestler would have from week to week. One of the things Foley did to make himself useful within the WWE was color commentary on Friday Night Smackdown. Being at that booth was one of the many reasons why leaving WWE was so easy for him since Vince McMahon would actually scream and cuss at him through the headsets while he did commentary. And then you have the many storylines that Vince came up with that would have been worthy of an award for Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The Katie Vick storyline was a huge example of this since it involved murder and necrophilia. And then there was the time Vince McMahon did a skit where he mocked Jim Ross’s colon surgery. But the one storyline that set Mick Foley off was Vince’s limousine exploding and apparently “killing” him. Foley felt that this storyline cheapened death around a time where a WWE superstar had actually died: Chris Benoit. Upon leaving WWE due to these disgraceful storylines, Foley trained hard to get in shape for the few matches he had in TNA. He practiced promotional monologues in order to get people to buy the Lockdown pay-per-view in the first place. All of his time and effort paid off in the end since his match with Sting turned out to be more than just “good enough for his age”. It was spectacular. These words are coming from a guy who doesn’t have any illusions about what he does or how long he’s going to do it, which makes the story all the more believable and Foley a likable guy. It also helps that he can be lighthearted in moments where he’s putting his body on the line and crack a few jokes. We may never know when Mick Foley’s wrestling career will end, but I certainly hope his creative writing days will continue beyond his retirement.
***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“I have a question for Damien Sandow. If Michael Cole’s stupidity is a handicap, will he get a better parking space?”
-Jerry Lawler-
When WWE legend Mick Foley tells you to have a nice day, you can be pretty sure that the rest of your day is going to be filled with barbed wire bats to the skull and pointed elbows through the chest. But in order to get that kind of recognition, Foley had to go through a lot of personal trials that made him as tough as he is today. Even though “Have a Nice Day” was published in 1999, it makes perfect sense in today’s world of wrestling. Like a lot of wrestlers getting their start in the business, Foley was broke and could barely pay for training. He also had a hard time paying for everyday expenses when he eventually emerged on the independent scene. So how was it that a moneyless wrestler with a Buddha belly become a WWE legend over the course of his lifetime? By paying his dues, that’s how. After continuing to press forward in the independent territories, he eventually had a job at WCW, a company that paid him very well despite him not being used to his full potential. Being well-paid is never enough for a wrestler to achieve his dreams of being a big star. Following his departure from WCW in 1994, he went to ECW and garnered recognition as a hardcore badass who loved to use weapons. After taking so many weapon strikes and dangerous bumps to the point where his career would have ended, he then jumped ship to WWE. Like a lot of youngsters that went to WWE from another company, Mick Foley’s character was crafted to perfection. As the raving lunatic known as Mankind, he had memorable matches with the likes of The Rock and The Undertaker, which eventually led to him winning the biggest prize in the industry: the WWE Championship. While there will never be a carbon copy of Mick Foley and the things he went through, it wouldn’t hurt if the young wrestlers of today read this piece of nonfiction as a guide on how to pay your dues in this business. Even though it’s well beyond 1999, these words still hold true to this day. As long as you train religiously, put on stellar matches, listen to the elder members of the business, and know your net worth in the wrestling market, you’ll do just fine in the treacherous waters of professional wrestling. Mick Foley did all of these things and even years after going into retirement, he’s a household name that nobody will forget. Some of the youngsters in the business today have perfected these strategies down to a science and have great careers because of it. If guys like John Cena, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Sheamus, Randy Orton, and Rey Mysterio can become greats by paying their dues, then that opens the door to any athlete who wants it badly enough.
***WRESTLING DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***
MICHAEL COLE: That ambulance weighs over 5,000 lbs!
JERRY LAWLER: Why would you want to weigh an ambulance?
Like “Death Clutch”, “The Death of WCW” is for wrestling fans only. Somehow, I can’t imagine a literary genre nut being too enthused about reading a book dealing with a wrestling company from the 90’s. It just doesn’t seem…“multi-layered” enough! But for the rest of us who appreciate professional wrestling for the art form that it is, please pay attention. Would you like to know why WCW died the nasty horrible death it did? Well, I’ll start by saying that during the New World Order invasion in 1996, nobody would have seen the apocalypse happening from miles away. Business was booming, money was flooding in, and WCW was outperforming then-called WWF in leaps and bounds. But then it started to crumble all around the Eric Bischoffs and Vince Russos that took the reigns of the company. The main event stars were old and stale, the booking was selfishly done, the younger talent wasn’t getting the spotlight they deserved, and the screenwriting practices were downright atrocious. If you want some examples of what I’m talking about, listen to this. Remember “Stone Cold” Steve Austin? Before jumping ship to WWF, he was sitting in contractual purgatory with his career going absolutely nowhere. In WWF, he was a multiple time world champion, a huge star, and a Hall of Fame inductee. How about Chris Benoit? Yes, I dare say his name despite what he did during his final hours on earth. Benoit was also being smothered by the older talent to the point where he couldn’t get over. Since joining WWF, he became a World Heavyweight Champion and a massive star. The exact same story went for guys like Eddie Guerrero and Mick Foley, who were young, extremely talented, and thrived in WWF when they couldn’t do the same in WCW. You’d think that through the publication of this book, these same mistakes wouldn’t have been made again by any other company, right? I’d like to agree with that premise, but then we’d both be wrong. TNA has been called a modern day version of WCW with the horrible screenwriting and unprofessionally-run shows. I stopped watching TNA back in 2011 because it was making me depressed. Because of what happened to WCW and what will eventually happen to TNA, “The Death of WCW” should be in bookstores and libraries everywhere and it should be hammered into the skulls of every young wrestling star looking to make it in the world of professional wrestling. Not literally hammered, don’t get me wrong. They take enough bumps on the head already.
***WRESTLING JOKE OF THE DAY***
Q: What’s Daniel Bryan’s favorite System of a Down song?
A: KNOW!! KNOW!! KNOW!! KNOW!!
