Authors: Mick Foley
“But where have I seen it?” I begged. “I know that ad from somewhere.”
“It used to be on the New York City buses,” she informed me. “In fact, the ad took up the whole bus.”
“That’s it,” I gushed. “I loved that picture. My friends loved that picture. We used to talk about that picture.” This was great. I had just had a date with a supermodel, and had swept her off her feet with an ‘84 LeBaron, a Neil Diamond song, and very little else. I even got a kiss goodnight, and was called the correct name to boot. As I drove the hour back to Setauket, I couldn’t help feeling that I was going to be letting the perfect woman go when she took off for Florida, and I comforted myself with the hope that I’d maybe get to nail her (my wife and I get a personal kick out of this word, which is why I use it here) before she left.
As it turns out, all my fears were for naught, as she came to the matches to see me on Friday, went to the movies to see Ghost on Saturday, took a day off from Foley on Sunday, and moved across the street from me (into the room my neighbors were renting out) on Monday. The Foley charm had simply been too much to resist. For the rest of the summer, we were inseparable, except for my shows, during which time she and my mother hung out anyway. We spent a lot of time at the beach, went on road trips, and in a situation that was a little bit awkward, made many strange noises upstairs directly over Joe and Martha Forte’s bedroom, so that my neighbors of twenty-four years never looked at little Mickey the same way again.
After a few weeks of fun in the summer sun, I offered to show Colette a tape of me wrestling. I just knew she was going to be impressed. She wasn’t. I was a little hurt, and asked why. She got real serious and said, “I don’t like the way you allow yourself to be slapped around out there-you’re better than that.” I had often talked to Colette about my desire to go back to one of the big two, and she saw this somewhat goofy act as being a stumbling block in front of something good. “You’re better than that, Mickey,” she kept saying. “You’re better than that.” Without any real knowledge, she had more or less surmised what Frank Dusek had said a year earlier. “You’re a goof, and goofs will never be top guys.”
Maybe she had a point. Bruiser Brody didn’t look like an imbecile when he was alive. Stan Hansen didn’t make his name doing a Keystone Cops routine. I decided at that point to veer away from so much comedy, and concentrate on getting vicious. For the next year, I tried my best to scare fans when I went to the ring, and many times, especially in front of a small crowd, I would leave a high school gym or armory looking like a tornado had gone through it. I became fond of swinging chairs, and had the best match on every card I was on, and ended up turning in very solid performances with a variety of different wrestlers in a variety of different states and countries.
Around this time, I met a man named Herb Abrams at a wrestling convention in New York. It was there that Herb held a press conference and announced the formation of his new Universal Wrestling Federation, or UWF. In addition, he announced Cactus Jack as a signee with the company, which was a handshake deal that we had just agreed to. Herb really felt that his new group would instantly join the big two and felt confident that in time, it would become number one. When someone at the conference asked how he could feel so sure without having a background in wrestling, Herb replied, “What they’re looking for, I have, and that’s the Hollywood glitz.” Herb also announced Bruno Sammartino as his color commentator and himself as play-by-play man, an idea that would prove to be entertaining, if not exactly wise.
To know Herb Abrams was to like him, or at least be amused by him, as he was a true cartoon character. About five-foot-four-ish, with a small frame, Herb realized that he would never make it in the wrestling business he loved so much, unless he bought his own company. I don’t know where he got his money, but man, did he spend it, as he brought in a crew of guys that actually had more talent than the rosters of either of the big two. The guys he brought in had legitimately been huge names and had drawn big money around the globe. The list reads like a Who’s Who of wrestling with Paul Orndorff, Dr. Death (Steve Williams), Don Muraco, Bob Orton, B. Brian Blair, Danny Spivey, Bill Jack Haynes, Sid Vicious, Ken Patera, Colonel DeBeers, David Sammartino, Jimmy Snuka, and even Andre the Giant being only some of the guys he brought in.
Even with all these guys, Herb Abrams was the star. At least that’s what he thought. I remember watching his show, which was a pretty difficult thing to do. Despite his prediction, the “Hollywood glitz” was nowhere to be seen, as we toiled away in a dingy nightclub that seated, at most, 300 people, and believe me, there were not usually 300 butts in those seats. Even with all the top names, I was the crowd favorite at the nightclub, even though I was technically a bad guy. Maybe it was the “Welcome to the Jungle” music that Herb had made my entrance theme, or maybe it was the “Unpredictable” moniker that Herb had placed before Cactus Jack-the same one that had worked so well for Johny Rodz.
Anyway, during the show, there was an advertisement for wrestling cookies, which I guess Herb felt was the natural snack food choice of all wrestling fans. Herb’s grating voice was doing the talking, as he hailed the benefits of “Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff cookies, Wild Thing Steve Ray cookies, and, coming soon, Herbie cookies.”
He did the same thing with merchandise. Herb somehow landed a deal for his Blackjack Brawl, not only to be held at the prestigious MGM Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, but also to be carried live around the country on Sports Channel. What a sight it was to see 200 fans in a 22,000-seat building. But hey, Herb was ready and no one could say that Vince McMahon had anything over Herb in the “marketing genius” category. After all, he did air ten commercials for UWF merchandise during the Blackjack Brawl, even if all of them did push only one product-the Mr. Electricity, Herb Abrams T-shirt. I asked his girlfriend after the show how he got the Mr. Electricity nickname, and she put her hands over her head, shook her hips, and gave a very animated, “Because when he plugs it in he really turns me on.”
I think that it was at the MGM show that Herb’s announcing skills really came to the forefront. He had invited me to his suite at the hotel to show me a “big surprise.” Herb had an incredible six-room penthouse suite that offered an unbelievable view of Las Vegas. When I got there, Herb had a bandage pressed to his lip, from a wound that he had suffered while wrestling with his buddies in the suite. His surprise-a new UWF championship belt, and a pair of yellow and green ostrich-skin boots that he swore the fans were “going to go nuts over.” Well, maybe the fans didn’t go nuts, but the wrestlers certainly did, as Mr. Electricity strutted out to the ring with the belt and the ostrich boots. There may have been only a few hundred people in the cavernous arena, but they were Herbie’s people, baby, and he was giving them what they came to see.
His announcing that night was truly memorable, as in addition to the fat lip, he was downing cocktails throughout the show and was totally hammered by the time he interviewed Little Tokyo, who had just won the prestigious Midget’s World Title. “Congratulations, Little Tokyo,” Herb slurred, “maybe you have some sake tonight to celebrate.”
Little Tokyo’s eyes grew wide and he replied in astonishment, “How do you know sake?” to which Herb offhandedly said with a shrug, “Oh, I was married to a Jap once.”
I’ve got to hand it to Herb, however, as that night in Las Vegas I got to live out a dream when I wrestled the Superfly Jimmy Snuka in a lumberjack match, in which other wrestlers were to stand outside the ring to ensure that the action didn’t spill outside. There were a few problems with the match, however, as no one ever assigned any lumberjacks to the match, and we had no idea what Herb wanted out of it. As a result, I began asking wrestlers to be lumberjacks, an invitation that many declined, and as a result had a threatening group of lumberjacks consisting of two male wrestlers, two women, two midgets, and three security guards as we got set to go out. Thankfully, Jack Mulligan took control of the situation, and made wrestlers go out to the ring and help us.
The end of the match posed a problem, as Herb didn’t want me to lose, and there was no way I was going to let Jimmy lie down for me. As a result, we did the exact thing that lumberjack matches are supposed to prevent-we fought to a double count-out. The lumberjacks were baffled as we fought outside the ring and into the empty stands. “What are you guys doing,” B. Brian Blair yelled to us as he gave chase into the twenty-seventh row.
“It’s a double count-out,” I yelled as the Fly and I continued to trade punches.
“But you can’t do that in a lumberjack match,” Blair said, laughing in disbelief.
“Hey, it’s Herb’s show,” I said right back, “we can do anything.”
A few months later, I read of Herb’s passing in a wrestling newsletter. I called over Colette, who had gotten to know Herb pretty well, and began reading the article, but couldn’t get through it without laughing in spite of myself. Like his life, Herb Abrams’s death had been way over the top. Apparently someone had alerted the police to a disturbance in a high-rise office in Manhattan, and when they got there, they found women screaming in the hallway, and little Herb running around naked, bathed in baby oil, and swinging a baseball bat, with which he was destroying furniture. He was taken into custody and died shortly after from a massive heart attack.
Colette and I sat down and mourned Herb’s death by sharing stories of his life and laughing at what a character he had been. I think Herb would have liked it that way.
In March 1991, I headed to Japan for a one-month tour of Japan for All-Japan Wrestling, which was owned by legendary promoter and wrestler Giant Baba. Baba was one of those great mysteries I have never figured out, in that fans went absolutely nuts over his every move, most of which looked like they couldn’t break an egg. Still, Baba had run the successful promotion for decades and I was excited about my trip as I really felt like it might turn into a full-time job. All-Japan ran regular tours throughout the year, and some Americans, like Stan Hansen, worked them all, which added up to twenty-six weeks a year.
I had been a fan of Japanese wrestling for years, ever since seeing my first Tiger Mask-Dynamite Kid match at Brian Hildebrand’s house in 1986. I had since amassed a huge library of Japanese tapes, which I studied diligently for hours every day, in the basement apartment in Huntington that Colette and I had moved into a few months earlier.
I opened up a Thomas Harris book called Red Dragon as we took off from JFK and was just finished when the plane touched down in Narita Airport. I had trained hard for this match, both mentally and physically, and was ready to take on the Orient.
I did well in All-Japan-so well, in fact, that rumors started circulating about a twenty-week-a-year offer that was going to come my way. This was great. There would be no politics or Ole Anderson to shove me down, and I could feel fulfilled living out my wrestling fantasies 8,000 miles from home.
I ran into trouble at the end of my first week when I broke three ribs in a match with Jumbo Tsuruta, and even more when I broke Johnny Ace’s elbow at the end of week number two. I was attempting to suplex Ace (who was Shane Douglas’s fellow Dynamic Dude in WCW) backward off the top rope-a move that he intended to counter by turning it into a cross body block that would end up with Johnny on top of me as I bumped backward to the mat. Unfortunately, when I tucked my chin to my chest to protect myself, I also clamped Ace’s arm under my chin too, and he was unable to get free in time. When we hit, I heard him groan and I knew he was hurt and I knew I was screwed.
Johnny was Mrs. Baba’s favorite wrestler, which suddenly put me out of favor with her. Seeing as how many people felt she actually had more influence on the company than her husband, being out of favor with her was not a good place to be. I called Colette after the match and explained the injury. “That’s it, Mick,” she yelled enthusiastically, “you show them that they can’t push you around.” When I explained to her the ramifications of the injury, however, her enthusiasm quickly withered.
I later found out (years later) that I had other things working against me in Japan as well, none of which had to do with the quality of my matches, which had been high. I had come to Japan as a big fan of Bruiser Brody, who had run roughshod over not just the Japanese wrestlers, but their fans as well. The fans loved it; you could see them with huge smiles on their faces as they ran from Brody, as he threw punches at whoever was dumb enough to stick around. They didn’t sue over things like that in Japan, they considered it a compliment. I even watched in shock when we got off the bus at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo and saw one of the wrestlers punch a fan who got too close, right in the face. I was even more shocked to see the same fan bow down, while holding his face, and say, “Sank you, sank you very much.” This place was crazy, and even though I wasn’t into punching fans, I got prepared to play along.
Over the course of my first few weeks-the pre-Ace injury weeks-1 had made it a habit of diving into the crowd. I would charge a guy, and he would backdrop me into the fans. I would shoot another guy into the metal guard rail, and he’d reverse it and I’d end up flying backward into the crowd. It was as if all of Japan was my own personal mosh pit.
Unfortunately, however, fans were getting hurt-not just from me landing on them, but in their attempts to get out of the way of my 287 pounds as well. Just as unfortunately, the Japanese wrestling publications had taken to calling me “The American Onita,” in honor of a popular hardcore FMW (Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling) wrestler, and had taken to calling my matches “FMW style.” Apparently, this didn’t sit well with Baba, who considered the Onita-led FMW to be “garbage wrestling” and certainly didn’t enjoy the comparison. Eventually referee Joe Aguchi came to me and said sadly, “Jack-san [“san” in Japan is a sign of respect], Mr. Baba ask you please stop hurting fans.”
It wasn’t the last time that Aguchi came to me with a request from Baba, as a short while later he became the bearer of bad news again. “Jack-san,” poor old Joe again sadly began, “Mr. Baba wants you to maybe wear nicer clothes.”