Authors: Mick Foley
Bob used to always confer with me before a TV show to learn just what move I might come up with and how we could best shoot it. It was in Texas that I began using the flying elbow off the ring apron and within a few weeks, Bob had mastered how to shoot it. Back in those days, I used to get some serious distance on those leaps and Bob would make sure that the camera was right to the offside of my opponent’s head while I prepared to leap. When I took off, it would look like I was diving into the fans’ living rooms, and the cameraman would occasionally shake the camera upon impact for added emphasis.
My appreciation for Bob’s work, along with my growing concern that I might leave wrestling both financially broke and physically broken down, led me to travel to the World Class studios in Las Calinas three days a week. In the editing suite, I would brush up on the latest technology as well as do occasional voice-overs using my “professional voice.” So for any of you fans who have old World Class tapes from 1989, listen closely for the Hardcore Legend as he says, “Let’s look back once again at the latest misfortune suffered by Eric Embry.” In addition to learning quite a bit, I also had fun in that studio, although I’m glad to say I have never needed to use my technical skills.
About this time, I received word from my friend “Flamboyant” (Freddie Fargo) that Jim Ross was interested in bringing me into Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling. I was thrilled. This, I felt, was the answer to my dreams. I got the number from Freddie and anxiously called Ross, who was the head of the WCW booking committee. Ross informed me that the company was going to be looking for new talent after the summer and that I was high on their list. It was the greatest news of my young career. Yes, yes, yes!
Two weeks later, I received bad news in the form of a wrestling newsletter, whose headline read, “Ross Resigns from Booking Committee.” My heart sank past my stomach into my testicular region. No, no, nooo!
With my spirits totally down, it was with great amusement that I read a fan letter sent to me at the Sportatorium. I had received a few nice letters during my stay in Dallas, but this one took the cake. It was five pages of glowing tributes to me, including, “Your eyes are as blue as the clear Texas sky,” which they aren’t-they’re hazel, and something about having the strength of ten men. She concluded her love letter by writing, “If you want me to write again, play with your hair when you get into the ring.” Needless to say, I was flipping my flowing locks for the Sportatorium faithful-and for that one girl in particular. I wanted more of those compliments.
As it turned out, playing with the hair was probably a mistake, as when I returned to Dallas the next week, there were five more letters waiting for me—each more ridiculous than the next. Someone pointed her out to me in the crowd, as she had written in the past to other guys as well, but not to the extent that she had written me. She looked so sad and pathetic that I didn’t quite know what to say when I saw her standing by my car. “Are you the girl who’s been writing to me,” I gently said.
“Yes,” she replied with a sad smile. “Is it okay if I continue?”
I was really a little bit concerned, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I said, “Sure, that would be fine.”
When I came back to Dallas a week later, there were ten letters in my box from her, each signed “Mary Ann Manson” in the return address area. During my time in Dallas, I had been renamed Cactus Jack Manson by Eric Embry, and the implication was very clear-she thought we were married. The contents of the letters proved as much as she wrote about our relationship and our marriage. Uh-oh, this wasn’t good-1 had my own personal stalker.
I decided that enough was enough and when I saw her by my Arrow with a white rose in her hand, I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not my wife and that I didn’t want to hear from her or receive letters from her anymore. That, I thought, was that.
When I first got to the Sportatorium on Friday night, I was relieved to find not a single letter in my box. “Hey, I showed her who’s boss,” I thought, just as something caught my eye. It was her handwriting on a letter addressed to World Class announcer Marc Laurence. The return address strangely still read “Mary Ann Manson.”
I asked Laurence if I could open his letter and he obliged. The contents shocked me. “By the time you read this,” it read, “I will be dead. I was married to Cactus Jack but something went terribly wrong.” There was more, a lot more, but the gist of the thing is that I had killed her. When I got home that night, I called the police station in her hometown and inquired about any recent deaths in the area. They reported none.
The next week I saw her in the parking lot. I knew she was a sick lady, but I decided to be firm anyway. It was a judgment call. I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to write to any wrestlers ever again and that if she did I would make sure that she was banned from the Sportatorium forever. I guess the threat of never setting foot in the decrepit, rat-infested, freezing in winter, hotter than hell in the summer Sportatorium was enough to cure her pen-pal-itis, as I never saw her handwriting again. I did see her at the matches, but I made sure never to play with my hair.
Toward the middle of the summer I started to get the gut feeling that it was time to leave. Part of World Class’s appeal was also its drawback, as its large size ensured good visibility but also ensured a large viewing audience for my recent losing efforts. I really felt like these losses were going to hurt me long-term, and I certainly wasn’t being paid enough to compensate for throwing my career away. Besides, the constant pounding was making it impossible for my wrist to heal. With a heavy heart I approached Embry and told him I thought it was time to leave. I thanked him for his faith in me, and in return he offered me a place to work wherever he happened to be-a promise he actually backed up by calling me a year later when he took over the booking in Puerto Rico. For some reason, even though I was hurt, I offered to work out a six-week notice during which time he assured me of a great buildup to my departure.
I saw Frank Dusek, our color commentator and one of our town promoters, a week later when news of my imminent exit from Texas became known. Frank was concerned and called me upstairs to his office to express his feelings. “Why do you want to leave?” Dusek inquired. “Don’t you like it here?”
“Hey Frank, I love it here,” I was quick to reply. “It’s just that my wrist doesn’t seem to be healing and I’m losing a lot of matches lately.” Dusek nodded his head and then asked when I would be coming back. “I’m not coming back, Frank,” I answered. “I’m going to Alabama to work for Robert Fuller when I get better.”
Dusek’s expression looked pained as he asked, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Now all of a sudden I wasn’t sure-after all, I was just a kid with four years’ experience compared with the forty-year-old Dusek, who had literally grown up in the sport. “Why?” was all I said.
“Cactus, the people like you here,” he reasoned. “You would be welcome back any time. Why go someplace and start over?”
His next words chilled me to the bone and would continue to haunt me for years as I struggled to climb wrestling’s ladder of success. The words were not meant in anger; he was telling it like he saw it, which made them hurt even worse, “You’re never going to be a top guy in this business,” he stated simply. “You will always be the bottom of the top or the top of the bottom, but you will never draw big money.” I thanked him for his honesty but told him that I intended to prove him wrong. He smiled and said that he hoped so too.
I saw Frank Dusek in Greensboro, North Carolina, in early 1998. It was the first time I had seen him since my Texas departure. I was wrestling the World Wrestling Federation champion. He shook my hand, and I asked him if he remembered what he said to me a decade earlier. “Oh God,” he said, laughing, “what was it?” I repeated his “bottom of the top, top of the bottom” speech and saw him wince as if he were John Winger taking a Sergeant “Big Toe” Hulka uppercut to the solar plexus. He then literally got down on his knees and jokingly bowed down to me. “Cactus,” he exclaimed, “I have never been so glad to be wrong in my life.”
I had envisioned great things for my sendoff at the Sportatorium. I had performed in that building over seventy times in my nine months and had engaged in some tremendous matches. I wanted to give the fans a great match to remember me by and had my head loaded with ideas as I drove to Valerie’s for what would prove to be the last time I saw her. The match had been booked as a loser leaves town match and I intended to leave right from the Sportatorium and drive through the night. Over dinner I speculated about the match and saw her become slightly angry as she yelled, “Jack, I know you’re going to lose tonight.”
This surprised me as I had always tried to “protect the business” around her and had steadfastly denied knowing the outcomes to my matches. I decided to call her bluff. “What makes you say that?” I inquired, using the poker face I had honed to perfection years earlier at late-night card games in childhood friend Scott Biasetti’s basement.
Her reply was simple and her rationale was hard to argue with. “Jack, I’m not stupid, Embry’s the boss, not you.” Then came the kicker. “Besides, I’m looking out the window at your car and you’ve got everything you own in it, I know you’re going to lose.” She then asked if I was going to come back for her and I had to admit that it probably would never happen.
My classic farewell match never happened either, as I lost to Embry in nine seconds with a simple backslide, then walked up the aisle as the fans sang “hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more.” I actually had tears in my eyes as I pulled out of the parking lot and didn’t stop for rest until I was in my old bed in East Setauket twenty-seven hours later.
I headed into Continental country with high hopes for the future. Robert had spoken of this territory as being like heaven, and I couldn’t wait to get started. When I got there, Rob was his normal gregarious self and greeted me with a big hug. “Goddamn, Jack-o, it’s good to see you, boy,” Rob exclaimed, and then asked if I could give him a ride to the post office. “Some arsehole came and repossessed my car, poo poo [this was one of Rob’s favorite terms of endearment], and I need to go and get your videotape,” he told me.
This wasn’t a good sign, and I told him so. I had sent the video that Video Bob had helped me come up with over a month ago. This tape was of me as a single wrestler, was set to the ominous tune of “Helter Skelter,” and was a good piece of business. The Continental area had been a part of the country not exposed to the World Class product, and the video would have been a good way to introduce me to the fans for a full month before I got there. Rob didn’t seem so concerned. “Don’t worry, poo poo,” he said. “We’ll just play it this week instead.”
I felt like he was missing the point. “Rob, don’t you think the tape would have helped get me over?” I asked him. “Now we have to start from square one.” It was damn hard to stay mad at the Stud, though-he was just so damn likable.
“Damn, Jack-o,” he said, “I’m sorry-I just got so damn busy that it skipped my mind.”
My first night in Montgomery was a TV taping at the Montgomery Civic Center. I decided to make up for lost time by kicking ass right out of the gate. I clotheslined my opponent over the ropes and slammed him on the cold, concrete floor, a good twelve feet from the ring. Quickly, I hopped up onto the ring apron and with a twostep approach, came sailing off the apron with a perfect elbow. When I got to the back, I asked Scott and Steve Armstrong how the elbow had looked. “What elbow?” Scott asked.
“The big one off the apron,” I replied.
“No, brother, I’m sorry, but I didn’t see an elbow,” Stevie let me know.
I headed for the TV truck to see what was the matter. I was more than a little bit pissed-after all, the elbow is a painful thing to drop on concrete; it needs to be captured on film. Maybe I’d become spoiled by Video Bob at World Class and would have to point out the error of this veteran director’s way. I opened the door and was shocked by what I saw-a bunch of scared kids looking at an angry wrestler. I immediately opted for the gentle approach. “Why didn’t you guys tape my elbow?” I asked a pimply-faced teenager.
Without a trace of sarcasm but with a whole lot of trepidation, he looked at me and said, “I don’t really know how to tape elbows, sir.”
I thought I sensed what the poor bastard was thinking so I gently explained a little bit about the wrestling business. “No, I’m not talking about physically taping my elbow for an injury,” I said, “I’m asking you why you didn’t videotape me when I was getting set to leap off the ring apron?”
“I’m sorry sir,” pimple face explained, “but this is only my first semester of television production.”
College kids? I went to Rob and got the lowdown. It turned out that multimillionaire David Woods, who owned the company, had been losing money on the wrestling business and decided to cut costs. One of the costs he cut was the production crew, who at one point helped make Continental a thriving territory. As a big believer in close-ups and camera angles, I was not high on our company’s chances for success without a decent production crew, and felt that Woods’ money saving methods were unwise. I also didn’t care for his decision to cut our payoffs.
Forty dollars was the minimum payoff for a show. Often I could wrestle in a single, come back in a tag, and end the night in a battle royal. For my extra efforts, I would be given an extra twenty a night, which averaged out to a cool $220 for my three-month stint in Alabama. Fortunately, we had the perk of a free two-bedroom apartment that in true starving-wrestler fashion, we jammed six guys into. The fact that I temporarily had to share a room with Downtown Bruno tended to put a damper on the joyousness of the free roof over my head.
Bruno was a true classic. A sniveling runt of a man, Bruno was the willing target of several funny but cruel practical jokes that seemed just a little too realistic for my tastes. One night in the dressing room, Bruno was reading off a list of African-American jokes that he consistently laughed the loudest at. Click. Suddenly, there was a gun to Bruno’s head, held there by a shaking Brickhouse Brown, who claimed he’d “had enough of your jokes, you white son of a bitch. Now I’m going to show you what a black man can do!” Immediately, Bruno’s knees buckled and he burst into tears and begged for his life. Brickhouse and all the boys broke out laughing. “Bruno, don’t you know I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good bullet on your worthless ass,” Brickhouse explained.